A tuned conical deflection chamber designed to make the audio from your iPhone clearer and also slightly louder. Sound waves are reflected toward you, instead of away, so you feel more involved in your game, movie, or music.
SoundClip amplifies iPhone audio by 10dB between 6kH and 20kHz, resulting in a cleaner, more accurate response. Storage is simple. A cord-gripping feature keeps SoundClip securely fastened to your charge cable during syncing and charging.
SoundClip solves these small problems, and also improves the quality of sound coming from your iPhone. In our testing, SoundClip amplified the iPhone speaker by 10dB between 6kHz and 20kHz. This small amplification gives your iPhone a brighter sound and additional clarity. The frequency response is improved, resulting in a more linear output and clearer audio.
The way SoundClip works isn't all that hard to understand. The iPhone emits a fair amount of acoustic energy through the speaker. Unfortunately, many of these sound waves are directed down and away from the user. SoundClip reflects them toward you so you can hear them better.
But how does it actually amplify? The dimensions and shape of the conical chamber create a resonance chamber facilitating the attenuation of some frequencies, and the amplification of others. The next part is the trickiest. We tuned the resonance chamber to actually improve the sound from your iPhone, resulting in a frequency response that is flatter, and more natural sounding.
FAQs
How does SoundClip attach to my iPhone 3G?
SoundClip clips into the dock connector using a special clip type. It is easily removed for charging.
Will SoundClip also work for my original iPhone or iPod touch?
SoundClip was engineered to precisely fit the iPhone 3G. Original iPhones have a different shape, and not compatible. iPod touch 2G sports a speaker way down inside that doesn't benefit from SoundClip, but it makes you wonder where the sound is coming from, doesn't it? Like if you swallowed a speaker while it was still playing music, and then went to a funeral. Puzzling, yes. Considerate, no. iPod touch 1G doesn't even have a speaker, so there you go.
What about the other speaker on the iPhone?
iPhone 3G has two grills on the bottom end, so why not amplify the other side, too? Well, the other side is a microphone. Yeah.
How loud does it actually sound?
SoundClip isn't going to give you hearing damage. If you've ever found yourself cupping your hand around the speaker so you can hear better, it's about half as loud at that. It's a small boost, especially in the higher frequency range (5kHz to 20kHz). You'll also notice an increase in clarity, because SoundClip improves the linearity of the iPhone speaker.
Will SoundClip help me hear my ringer?
Unfortunately, most of the ringers have only lower-frequency content, so there isn't much of a difference. However, some of them, like "old phone" do sound louder.
What about speakerphone? Will it work for speakerphone?
All but the most astute listeners would say no. The cellular network compresses voice data, cutting out most of the frequencies that SoundClip amplifies. As a result, your speakerphone conference call will not seem much louder. We are continuing to research the question, and may have an updated answer later.
Is there technical data showing the enhancement?
Yes, documenting the effect was a lot of fun, and have a cool graph showing the results. You can see it here.
Will the cord grip attach to any cables other than the charging cable?
Don't really know. Some third-party chargers use different size charge cables, and we've only tried Apple's as of yet. Lazy, right?