just an excerpt from larger interview - see link for full interview

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/neil-young-on-pono-his-new-album-and-using-lps-as-roof-shingles-20140314

By Gavin Edwards

March 14, 2014 9:22 AM ET

What does success look like for Pono?
Success is more people finding out about good-sounding music and music choice, whether it's Pono or some other company that decides to do the same thing and beats us because they've got millions and millions of dollars to work with — but we're first.

What's surprised you about Pono?


It's been pretty predictable, because I'm a musician and I know how musicians feel about sound. The record companies made some bad choices and did not realize how big this tech was going to be. And when that happened, there was no alternative to the cheap sound. Smartphones can do anything, but they do it all at the same kind of level. It's a little above a Fisher-Price level: it's a toy stove. So if you want an MP3, and that's what you can afford, and that's what you like, and you really don't think you want anything else, that's fine. But now you have a chance to hear something else, that you didn't before, unless you were an audiophile and you went through all these hoops to get it. We're going to be able to play records back just like the artists made them — with absolutely no magic sauce, no DRM, no encoding, decoding, none of the things that screw with the sound and make it an intellectual property.