Steve Jobs was working on next iPod with Neil Young

By: Chenda Ngak
Topics: Tech Talk

(Credit: Darren Hauck/Getty Images)

(CBS) -Musician Neil Young said he was working with the late Steve Jobs on the next iPod.

According to Young, Jobs wanted to create a format that had 20 times the fidelity of current electronic music files. Young claims, Apple's AAC format only holds 5 percent of the full recorded data, while compact discs hold about 15 percent.

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"Steve Jobs was a pioneer of digital music. His legacy is tremendous," Young said. "But when he went home, he listened to vinyl," Young said at the "D: Dive Into Media" conference Tuesday.

Jobs and Young agreed there was a lack of high-quality music formats. They wanted to work on new hardware that was capable of storing files with 100 percent of the data recorded in a studio. The only problem is a music file of that caliber would take 30 minutes to download one song.

Young doesn't have plans to carry on without Jobs, as of yet. Jobs died from cancer at the age of 56 last October.

"I talked to Steve about it. We were working on it," Young said. "You've got to believe if he lived long enough he would eventually try to do what I'm trying to do."

The "D: Dive Into Media" conference is held my All Things D. Co-executive editor Walt Mossberg, interviewed Young and confirmed Jobs' sentiment over digital music.

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by Scimajor February 1, 2012 5:28 PM EST: Sorry, one more comment on this article.

It's like the arguement about natural diamonds vs. man made diamonds. The biggest way man made diamonds differ from natural diamonds is by comparing the flaws or lack thereof. Man made diamonds, in similar fashion to digital recordings, have few if any flaws. Natural diamonds, in similar fashion to analog recordings, always (almost always in the case of diamonds but I'm splitting hairs) have flaws.

As an aside: So..... why are natural diamonds more prized when they are technically inferior to man made diamonds? Human's are goofy? Nah, it's all about the marketing.; Reply to this comment

by Scimajor February 1, 2012 1:39 PM EST

"Apple's AAC format only holds 5 percent of the full recorded data, while compact discs hold about 15 percent. "

Danger. Danger Will Robinson. We have detected an serious misuse of statistics leading to an invalid conclusion.

Digital recording and playback is, in every way, superior to analog recording and playback. It is, however, true that if the sample rate is low, the fidelity of the recording will also be low but the sample rate for CD's is easily sufficient to accurately capture all the range of sounds that a human can hear.

I guess the other 95% or 85% that Neil is taking about are the pops and hisses that you hear from vinyl or tape (analog)?

The only way to distinguish a good digital recording from an analog one is to listen for the noise that is unavoidable in every analog recording (and playback). I'd rather do without the pops and hisses but hey maybe Neil likes noise.

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by jtaylor991 February 3, 2012 11:35 PM EST: Not true. Digital recording captures 1/20 of the information that analog does, and the noise is from dirty/damaged vinyl, which is easy to inflict I'll admit but if you take care of your media it's not hard to prevent (the damage). Noise doesn't happen in the recordings to tapes, there might be hiss which is the tape wearing out, which is inevitable, but that takes some time to happen. Digital recording is in no way sonically superior to analog recording, but digital is by no means bad, it works for the manufactured mainstream music of today. It's easier to work with, therefore making it technically superior but not sonically.

Apple doesn't need to make a new format. From the looks of it they wanted a new method of compression to reduce download times and keep most of the data in the process, which would be so difficult to do. If they want to keep the information, sell stuff in ALAC on iTunes and give them the In-Ear buds stock instead of the cheap earbuds with their iPods and things will sound better, but file sizes would be much larger and download times would be much higher. I don't think there is a practical way to accomplish keeping current download speeds and file sizes and retain more musical information without a whole new method/format/type of compression which could work but will take years in the making. I think Apple should try it if they think this is really necessary and that the mainstream will care (which I think they won't) but it won't hurt if they have the resources, which they probably do being as rich as they are. I am getting into vinyl too, and it is nice. If someone cares enough about music quality, they probably won't be using iTunes and will be willing to go the extra mile and buy the CD and rip it at a higher quality or find a higher quality download site if not the CD thing. They probably won't be using any Apple-brand headphones either (or any sold by them like Beats, but maybe the low end Sennheisers). That's my two cents.