Neil Young’s Pono and Harman to bring sweet, hi-res music to the 2016 Lincoln Continental

By Nick Jaynes December 17, 2014

2002 Lincoln Continental Concept — 2002 Lincoln Continental Concept Image used with permission by copyright holder

Tired of the low quality of your car’s stock sound system? Well, you might not be for long, as Neil Young revealed during a CNBC interview that his Pono high-res audio player, with the help of Harman, will be coming to the forthcoming, and before-unannounced 2016 Lincoln Continental and future Tesla models.

This is big news … and not just because we hadn’t yet heard of the ’16 Continental.

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Harman has been working to create eerily quiet cabins by installing its sound-cancelling technology into cars. With this revelation, we now know it’s working to do more than alleviate road-caused white noise. It also wants to fill your cabin with high-def music as well.

As a car guy, I don’t know much about Pono or high-def audio. So rather than fake the funk, let me have Ryan Waniata from the Digital Trends Home Theater section explain its significance.

PonoPlayer Scale Coffee — Pono player Image used with permission by copyright holder

For those unfamiliar, the PonoPlayer is Neil Young’s pyramid-shaped, high-resolution portable music player that has only recently made its way from myth to reality after earning an astonishing $6 million and change on Kickstarter. The player incorporates premium audio components, and high resolution audio files called FLAC files, which offer digital resolution far above CD-quality sound.

Perhaps most interesting, though, is the idea that the PonoPlayer’s hi-res music will go hand in hand with Harman’s noise cancelling tech, not only giving users a silent ride, but a cabin that is specifically enhanced to allow the driver to enjoy the precise detail and greater dynamic range afforded by hi-res music. We can only hope the rest of the system components will be up to snuff as well.

While we’re simply speculating at this point, we can imagine that Harman will install Pono’s high-def audio hardware into its in-car sound systems. Together with onboard LTE Wi-Fi, we can imagine owners will also be able to download tracks from the Pono music store directly to their car.

We’ll be sure to stay on top of this story, so check back soon for more details.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Nick Jaynes is the Automotive Editor for Digital Trends. He developed a passion for writing about cars working his way…

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