If you’re a Neil Young fan, or just a general music lover, there’s some good news—a pre-order and release date for the Neil Young Achives Vol. 1 1963-1972.

The deluxe box set will be available on June 2, but you can pre-order it now in any of its three formats—10 Blu-ray discs, 10 standard DVDs or 8 CDs. Pricing is $299, $199 and $99, respectively.

You’ll find a message from Young on his website detailing the benefits of Blu-ray, especially the BD-Live aspect which will let fans be greeted by Neil and a message asking if they want to get any new material available upon popping in a Blu-ray disc. Could be more photos, more reviews, more recently unearthed recordings—he notes that since the re-mastering of everything Young and company are still finding old performances.

Plus we know how Neil Young’s offended by MP3 and low-quality sound, so you’ll get nothing but the top shelf on the Blu-ray version, with uncompressed high-resolution audio in 24-bit/192-kHz, along with 5.1 DTS-HD audio to accompany the video, which includes a presentation of the rocker’s film “Journey Through the Past” for the first time since its theatrical release in 1973.

There’s also a 236-page color hardbound book included in the box set, and what should be a ridiculous amount of archival material to stuff those 10 Blu-ray discs with—Sound and Vision got a glimpse of what’s coming during the recent SXSW conference and says indeed that the amount is even more than they could have imagined.

We know that the set, and its $299 price tag, may appeal to only devout Young fans, but we’re excited by the project as a step forward for the music industry, and especially an unleashing of possibilities—can you imagine if veteran artists like the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd and even more recent stars like Radiohead and Wilco decided to re-master archives, and make them upgradeable with BD-Live? Count us in. And remember, this is only Volume 1 from Neil.

Arlen Schweiger - Managing editor of Electronic House Magazine

Arlen contributes product news items to electronichouse.com along with his role on the print publication. Got a tip? Send it along!