Victrola-ize your iPhone!?
Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 3:34 am
This was far too silly not to post here. Even after a hundred years, they keep reinventing the phonograph. 
Posted in Hardware, 9th January 2009 18:06 GMT
Macworld Expo Three products shown at this week’s Macworld Expo — two from no-name vendors using the big stage of Macworld Expo to test their luck — attempt to provide iPhone amplification through acoustical, rather than electronic, means. Each is interesting. None is completely successful.
All three are members of that class of off-the-wall oddities that make attendance at the annual Expo mandatory for true believers in search of products that don't have tons of marketing cash supporting them. Every Mac addict may know about iLife ’09, but how many have heard of SoundClip? Ampli-Phone? AirCurve? None who didn't attend the Expo.
Finding out about products such as these is what Macworld Expo is all about. It's the annual opportunity for the Mac faithful to learn about the Little Guy's offerings, and for the Little Guy to break into the big time.
But only if their products are good enough. These three are disappointing.
Each of these ostensible iPhone amplifiers attempts to work its something-for-nothing magic by exploiting the acoustic-wave phenomenon that has been used to passively enhance amplification since the earliest days of sound recording and playback.
Boiled down to its basics, acoustic wave amplification works by tuning the size of a horn or wave guide in such a way as to allow the sound waves emanating from the small end of the chamber to be reinforced as they travel down the tube and out the wide end. Picture those giant Alpine horns in a Ricola commercial, and you'll get the idea.
The SoundClip is a 3.5cm by 0.7cm piece of black plastic that clips into the 30-pin connector slot on the bottom of your iPhone. A small micro-ladle at the end of the clip cups the iPhone's tiny speaker grill, where - according to Ten One Design — it “directs sound from iPhone toward you to increase the volume and clarity for movies and speakerphone.” The tiny cup — which Ten One Design refers to as the “resonance chamber” — has been “tuned” to achieve a “frequency response that is flatter, and more natural sounding.”
Or so they say.
In actuality, although the amplification is perceptible, it’s minimal. Also noticeable is the promised — and welcome — flattening of the iPhone’s frequency curve. Again, however, that effect is minimal.
Then there's the SoundClip's price: $7.95 for a weensy shard of shiny plastic. Peter Skinner of Ten One Design justifies that pricing by saying that “It’s a relatively inexpensive accessory for what it does,” and that “The benefits of it more than offset the cost.”
If only those benefits were more audible.
Although it was difficult to fully appreciate the acoustical properties of the Ampli-Phone amidst the din of the Expo floor, it was clear that bass response was clearly improved, although the overall sound was somewhat shattered and weak at the high end.
At 21cm by 14cm by 16.8cm, the Ampli-phone is a somewhat formidable desktop companion. To its bulky credit, however, it functions equally well when tipped on its side to amplify the sound of movies playing on your iPhone when it’s nestled in the Ampli-phone’s dock.
Griffin’s Category Manager for Connectivity and Power Products (whew...), Rick Kennedy, explained that the AirCurve is constructed of acrylic polycarbonate and that its design was a pet project of company founder Paul Griffin. According to Kennedy, “It took us about a year of engineering time to figure out how the wave guide works.”²
In our testing of the AirCurve in a quiet office, the music amplification worked well — but don't expect audiophile quality. It's a freakin’ iPhone, fer chrissakes.
Unfortunately, as a speakerphone enhancer the AirCurve is a washout. In all the calls we tried, the sound quality was poor on both ends of the connection, with stutters and drop-outs — problems, we hasten to add, that disappeared the instant we removed our iPhone from the AirCurve.
So none of these passive amps were stunning. So what? At least Macworld Expo attendees had a chance to give them a once-over, an opportunity that would — will? — be impossible if — when? — the Expo slides into history.
Remember, every once in a while a product from an underdog changes everything. There was once, for example, a software vendor that may not have been a certified Little Guy like Ten One Design or Gryphon, but was certainly no Adobe or Microsoft: Cassady & Green. One of their products, SoundJam, found its fans, established cred — then was bought by Apple and became iTunes.
You've heard of iTunes, right?
If — when? — Macworld Expo disappears due to Apple’s abandonment, where will Mac addicts go to evaluate such oddities as SoundClip and Ampli-Phone — and SoundJam? Sure, established companies such as Griffin will still be able to punt their inventive oddities on their websites, but — as usual — it's the Little Guy who’s going to suffer.
And when the Little Guy has no stage upon which to perform, the show can get deadly dull quite quickly. ®
¹ Yes, they actually linked victor-victrola.com.
² Apparently re-inventing ‘obsolete’ technology takes a good bit of engineering.
(Quoted from The Register, a prominent—albeit rather snarky—British tech news site.)
Hopefully this was on-topic enough that someone here might be interesting in reading this that otherwise might not have.
Griffin cross-pollinates iPhone, Victrola
No-name Jesus Phone ampers clamor for attention
By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco • Get more from this authorPosted in Hardware, 9th January 2009 18:06 GMT
Macworld Expo Three products shown at this week’s Macworld Expo — two from no-name vendors using the big stage of Macworld Expo to test their luck — attempt to provide iPhone amplification through acoustical, rather than electronic, means. Each is interesting. None is completely successful.
All three are members of that class of off-the-wall oddities that make attendance at the annual Expo mandatory for true believers in search of products that don't have tons of marketing cash supporting them. Every Mac addict may know about iLife ’09, but how many have heard of SoundClip? Ampli-Phone? AirCurve? None who didn't attend the Expo.
Finding out about products such as these is what Macworld Expo is all about. It's the annual opportunity for the Mac faithful to learn about the Little Guy's offerings, and for the Little Guy to break into the big time.
But only if their products are good enough. These three are disappointing.
Each of these ostensible iPhone amplifiers attempts to work its something-for-nothing magic by exploiting the acoustic-wave phenomenon that has been used to passively enhance amplification since the earliest days of sound recording and playback.
Boiled down to its basics, acoustic wave amplification works by tuning the size of a horn or wave guide in such a way as to allow the sound waves emanating from the small end of the chamber to be reinforced as they travel down the tube and out the wide end. Picture those giant Alpine horns in a Ricola commercial, and you'll get the idea.
It’s tiny. It’s unobtrusive. It’s barely effective.
The SoundClip is a 3.5cm by 0.7cm piece of black plastic that clips into the 30-pin connector slot on the bottom of your iPhone. A small micro-ladle at the end of the clip cups the iPhone's tiny speaker grill, where - according to Ten One Design — it “directs sound from iPhone toward you to increase the volume and clarity for movies and speakerphone.” The tiny cup — which Ten One Design refers to as the “resonance chamber” — has been “tuned” to achieve a “frequency response that is flatter, and more natural sounding.”
Or so they say.
In actuality, although the amplification is perceptible, it’s minimal. Also noticeable is the promised — and welcome — flattening of the iPhone’s frequency curve. Again, however, that effect is minimal.
Then there's the SoundClip's price: $7.95 for a weensy shard of shiny plastic. Peter Skinner of Ten One Design justifies that pricing by saying that “It’s a relatively inexpensive accessory for what it does,” and that “The benefits of it more than offset the cost.”
If only those benefits were more audible.
1920s technology vaulted into the 21st century — vertically or horizontally
21st Century Victrola
Baumbach described the $30 Ampli-phone as “based on a Western Electric design from the 20s used in the early Vitaphone movies” that uses a folded-horn method of acoustic-wave amplification.Although it was difficult to fully appreciate the acoustical properties of the Ampli-Phone amidst the din of the Expo floor, it was clear that bass response was clearly improved, although the overall sound was somewhat shattered and weak at the high end.
At 21cm by 14cm by 16.8cm, the Ampli-phone is a somewhat formidable desktop companion. To its bulky credit, however, it functions equally well when tipped on its side to amplify the sound of movies playing on your iPhone when it’s nestled in the Ampli-phone’s dock.
Good sound, but no movies
Griffin’s Category Manager for Connectivity and Power Products (whew...), Rick Kennedy, explained that the AirCurve is constructed of acrylic polycarbonate and that its design was a pet project of company founder Paul Griffin. According to Kennedy, “It took us about a year of engineering time to figure out how the wave guide works.”²
In our testing of the AirCurve in a quiet office, the music amplification worked well — but don't expect audiophile quality. It's a freakin’ iPhone, fer chrissakes.
Unfortunately, as a speakerphone enhancer the AirCurve is a washout. In all the calls we tried, the sound quality was poor on both ends of the connection, with stutters and drop-outs — problems, we hasten to add, that disappeared the instant we removed our iPhone from the AirCurve.
So none of these passive amps were stunning. So what? At least Macworld Expo attendees had a chance to give them a once-over, an opportunity that would — will? — be impossible if — when? — the Expo slides into history.
Remember, every once in a while a product from an underdog changes everything. There was once, for example, a software vendor that may not have been a certified Little Guy like Ten One Design or Gryphon, but was certainly no Adobe or Microsoft: Cassady & Green. One of their products, SoundJam, found its fans, established cred — then was bought by Apple and became iTunes.
You've heard of iTunes, right?
If — when? — Macworld Expo disappears due to Apple’s abandonment, where will Mac addicts go to evaluate such oddities as SoundClip and Ampli-Phone — and SoundJam? Sure, established companies such as Griffin will still be able to punt their inventive oddities on their websites, but — as usual — it's the Little Guy who’s going to suffer.
And when the Little Guy has no stage upon which to perform, the show can get deadly dull quite quickly. ®
¹ Yes, they actually linked victor-victrola.com.
² Apparently re-inventing ‘obsolete’ technology takes a good bit of engineering.
(Quoted from The Register, a prominent—albeit rather snarky—British tech news site.)
Hopefully this was on-topic enough that someone here might be interesting in reading this that otherwise might not have.
— MordEth
Love that Ampli-Phone. Ortho_Fan, I'm with you, I was thinking the same thing. I wounder what this would sound like in place of the regular horn of one of those tiny portables with tone-are horns?