Check it out, hear what you've been missing and fall in love with music all over again!

If you're into Neil Young, this site is for you!

http://www.neilyoungarchives.com/

This site is a gift to the world! Stream hi quality audio from one of the worlds greatest songwriters, inivators and influencers.

Make no mistake - the streamed tunes are "data rich", meaning you'll need some significant bandwidth to get the most out of it.

As noted on the site (in the "audio setup" section), a quality MP3 file is up to 360kbps, a CD is 44.1kHz/16-bit at 700kbps, and Mr Young's high-res files are 192kHz/24-bit recording at 2500 to 6000kbps. That's a big difference.

I've been listening to songs from here at work for the last couple of days, and I gotta say, while I'm familiar with a lot Neil Young's back catalog, I feel as if I'm hearing his music for the first time. The nuances and level of detail is simply breathtaking!

I'm listening directly from the audio out of my laptop through a decent pair of in ear monitors, no DAC, and the sound is stunning.

Note that you will need to use a desktop/laptop computer, or an iPad, as phones don't work at the moment.

From a subtle intake of breath, to the pucussive slap of a bass sting being plucked, the rasp of a strummed chord.. these are all thing lost
to MP3 files, and even CD's.

I do own 3 or 4 vinyl Neil Young albums, but my stereo setup has given way to the ease and convenience of a digital music library.

When I was a kid a record (vinyl) was a luxury. Most of the music I consumed was on cassette, usually taped from a friend. When I started
to earn my own money I spent much of it on CDs. And about 18 years ago I bagan to manually ripped my entire CD collection into iTunes.

I have a lot of CDs... it took a long time to it done, but once it was I boxed up all my CDs and put them into storage (thanks mum). I kept my record collection, but don't have a decent turntable or stereo. And the loss in audio quality was negated by the fact that I could put my entire music collection onto a computer hard drive, and eventually an iPod, and nowadays my phone (my whole collection doesn't fit on a phone, but I can fit a lot). Plus now there are streaming services like Spotify and apple's offering, where you can stream just about anything, anytime.

But immersing yourself in the world of Neil Young's high-res back catalogs and you'll be slapped in the face with the quality and detail we've forgone for the sake of convenience.

Thank you Neil Young!

And well done to the development team. They've made a living, breathing beast!

Of course, there are also plenty of hidden gems to be found, along with all of you old favourites albums and B-sides. All told, there are some 900 odd "cards" in the filing cabinet, and while not all of them contain songs (right now - it is a work in progress), many do - there's a metric ton of music to be enjoyed.

The site's design is special too - I can imagine the amount of work that's gone into this - not just digitalising all the old master tapes, but also building the thing.

There's a lot to look at, from the Timeline to the Filing Cabinet to the Master/360 switch, but after spending some time poking around it becomes
second nature to move between the different areas, all the while enjoying some of best songs ever written.

If you're unfamiliar with Neil Young's work, you can hear his influence on countless artists records, including Radiohead, Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, Dinosaur Jr... and so many more.

Check it out, hear what you've been missing and fall in love with music all over again!

Get in now while it's free. Yep, the entire archive is free to use at the moment, however they are planning to make the archive a subscription model. Just when, and how much remains to be seen.