Product idea: Single-speaker iPod station

The starting premise here is: most speakers sold to work with the iPod and other DAPs are crap. They have fragile plastic cases, pointless stereo, and little 1" speakers that “deliver surprisingly good sound quality” or whatever euphemism one uses when trying to rationalize spending $100+ on something that sounds like a telephone receiver.

I’ve pitched my idea for a better approach to my cool product designer friends, but they’re busy working on magnesium snowboard bindings, electric mountain bikes, and military-spec safety glasses.

In short, the idea is this: a ruggedized 5" cube with a single high-quality 3.5" speaker, a volume control, and inputs for your favorite DAP. Built-in NiMH batteries that get charged via a USB connection. That’s it.

I swear that I thought this up before the Tivoli iPal came out. There’s a reason that the iPal reviews rave about the sound quality: it has a bigger speaker. There’s no magic. Make the speaker even bigger, and make the unit cheaper (removing the radio electronics), and there you go. I don’t know if you’ll make a million bucks, but I’ll buy one.

petrilli commented on Mon Oct 24 14:11:58 2005:

A 3.5" mid and a tweeter, please. Pretending that something like that can reproduce anything in the highs is silly, and puts undue stress on it. You could even make them… gasp co-axial, and save space. Honestly, repackage a car speaker for all I care, they’d sound better.

Paul commented on Mon Oct 24 14:27:30 2005:

That’s a great idea – a 3.5" co-ax car speaker would be perfect.