While it’s a prediction that’s touted by music industry pundits seemingly every year, the promise that 2015 may indeed go down in history as the year where consumers and tech manufacturers get serious about high-fidelity music has never been closer to becoming a reality than right now.

As happy buyers around the world are finally seeing their Pono players arrive in the mail — just in time for a hi-fi Christmas — as A Journal of Musical Things notes, everyone, from giants like Sony, to on-demand music service Deezer seems to be scrambling to get into the high-res audio game.

Now, it seems as though high-res has taken what is arguably the most important plunge when it comes to bringing new audio technology to the masses, with the announcement that Neil Young’s Pono company has struck a deal with car manufacturer Ford, who will install Pono in the 2016 Lincoln Continental.

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Having ditched Microsoft after dissatisfaction with their under-performing MySync infotainment system, Ford are partnering with Pono and the high-quality audio system will now also be available in future generations of Teslas, a.k.a. the car of the future, with the help of high-end audio firm Harman.

As Digital Trends reports, Harman have been working to create eerily quiet cabins by installing their sound-cancelling technology into cars. With the news that these cars will soon be fitted with their own Pono systems, it seems Harman want to do more than simply drown out road-caused white noise.

For those still wondering just what the hell a Pono is, it’s the revolutionary, Toblerone-shaped music player created by Neil Young as one of the first mass-market, high-resolution, entirely portable music players, recently brought to life thanks to a remarkable $6 million crowdfunding campaign.

Digital Trends are even speculating that Harman will install Pono’s high-def audio hardware into their own in-car sound systems, which, paired with their onboard LTE Wi-Fi, would allow vehicle owners to be able to download high-quality tracks from the Pono music store directly to their car.

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