Grizzly rock veteran and long-term audiophile Neil Young will be launching his brand new music player, Pono, at SXSW tomorrow, March 11. It's been in development for almost three years and promises to deliver music at studio quality, in reaction to what Young sees as the inferior options for playback currently available. It's been built from the ground up and will be serviced by its own desktop software and online store, PonoMusic, and portable devices, PonoPlayers.

Pono say on their website: "There's an awfully good chance you heard about a revolution we're working on. Something that will significantly improve the way you get to hear and feel your favorite music [...] Shocking you say? That perhaps the promise of "Perfect Sound Forever" propagated by the inventors of the Compact Disc was a bust? And that "CD Quality" promoted by the likes of iTunes and the creators of the MP3 was only an inkling of the flawed format they were hoping to emulate? [...] We're here to say it's incredibly true! Miraculously, there's a wealth of music & soul (or if you must, "data") trapped on millions of recordings made over the last half century, that we're hoping to unleash for the very first time."

Following the launch, discounted pre-orders for the 128GB-capacity PonoPlayers, set to cost $399, will start being taken via Kickstarter on March 15. As to how it sounds, Pono say, "We here [...] are listening to it now and assure you, IT'S AMAZING!!!!", while Young himself, in a quote cited by Pitchfork, says: "Hearing Pono for the first time is like that first blast of daylight when you leave a movie theatre on a sun-filled day."