The Short Form

$199 ($179 until October 1, 2008; Bluetooth version $249) / soundmatters.com / 800-698-SOMA

Snapshot

An extremely compact, amazingly good-sounding powered speaker system for iPods, cell phones, and computers

Plus

• No system so small ever sounded so good • Tiny enough to slip into Paris Hilton's clutch • Bluetooth version for use with cell phones and laptops

Minus

• Sometimes complains when asked to fill a room with sound • No fan of Led Zeppelin

Key Features

• Two 1-in woofer/tweeters • 3 1/4 by 1 1/4-in woofer • Subwoofer output • Internal amp with 4 watts/channel on AC, 2 watts per channel on battery • 5.6 in long, 9 1/2 oz

These days, traveling sucks for everyone, but it's always been hard on the audiophile. Those $10 hotel clock radios tune in about three stations — literally — and they sound so bad they couldn't beat an Edison wax-cylinder phonograph in a double-blind test. You could tote along a portable audio system, but the ones that sound decent take up half a carry-on bag. You could pack headphones, but they get in your way when you're putting yourself together in time for an 8 o'clock breakfast. So you just suffer through another dreary trip, music-free.

With the new Foxl compact powered speaker system, Soundmatters attempts to make traveling easier on the audiophile. The Foxl is a tiny stereo sound system powered by an on-board rechargeable battery, an AC adapter, or a computer's USB port. It has a 3.5mm input jack that connects easily to an iPod, any other portable music player, any cell phone with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, or any laptop computer. The Foxl costs $199, but Soundmatters is offering it for $179 from now until October 1.

It's also available in a $249 version with Bluetooth, which lets it connect wirelessly to any Bluetooth-equipped cell phone or laptop. The Bluetooth version includes a microphone that hides behind the front speaker grille and lets you use the Foxl as a speakerphone.

The Foxl looks like something you'd attach to bicycle handlebars, but it's built like something that came out of the engineering labs of a high-end audio manufacturer such as B&W or Krell. Pick it up and you know right away this is the result of a serious engineering effort. The metal chassis conceals two Twoofers, 1-inch combination woofer/tweeters with powerful neodymium magnets. The Twoofer has more in common with the custom-designed, high-output tweeters in audiophile speakers than it does with the generic 1-inch cone drivers found in most speaker systems of this size.

On the back of the unit, there's a rectangular, flat-diaphragm woofer that's about half the size of a playing card. To wrest deeper bass response from the woofer, Soundmatters added mass to the diaphragm by attaching the lithium-ion rechargeable battery directly to it. There's even a cute name for this contraption: the BassBattery.

Tiny internal digital amplifiers power the system. The company rates their output at 4 watts per channel when powered by the AC adapter, and 2 watts per channel when powered by the battery.

A vented metal "kickstand" in the back lets the unit rest securely atop a table. The package includes a lanyard, a carrying pouch, a 3.5mm to 3.5mm audio cable, and the AC adapter.

The Foxl was created by Soundmatters founder Dr. Godehard Guenther, an ex-NASA engineer who enjoys a reputation among audio manufacturers as a sort of mysterious wizard of sound. Honest-to-goodness, I've actually heard his name mentioned by speaker-company presidents in hushed, awed tones.

SETUP

With the standard (non-Bluetooth) Foxl I tested, there's almost no setup involved. Plug in your audio source, plug in the AC adapter if you need to, and flip the power switch on the back. Two tiny pushbuttons on the back let you adjust the volume.

If you play bass-heavy material through the Foxl at top volume, the BassBattery can move back and forth violently enough to make the unit scoot around on a smooth tabletop. Soundmatters supplies a little rubber foot that attaches to the metal kickstand to keep the unit in place, but the kickstand won't fold flat when the foot is attached. The scooting wasn't enough of a problem to offset this ergonomic disadvantage, so I jettisoned it. And truth be told, the scooting has emotional benefits for the lonely traveler—it almost makes you feel like you have a little pet with you in your hotel room.

While I was running acoustical measurements on the Foxl, deep bass test tones caused it to scoot right off the top of my 6-foot measuring stand. It fell smack dab onto the stand's 3/4-inch plywood base, but appeared undamaged. I couldn't even find a chip in the paint. I doubt any iPod could survive such a test.

I expect most people will use the Foxl with an iPod or a laptop, but my playmate of choice for the Foxl was my Samsung YP-U3JQG, a portable music player that's about the size of a five-stick pack of Juicy Fruit gum. Like many flash-based MP3 players, the YP-U3JQG incorporates an FM tuner that is vastly superior to the ones built into hotel clock radios. Combine the Foxl with one of these players, and you have a real audio entertainment system you can carry in a pants pocket.

PERFORMANCE

The day after I got the Foxl, I brought it along for an appearance on Sound & Vision Radio. Co-host Ted Cohen demanded to shoot out his nifty Nokia MD-6 portable speaker system against the Foxl. While the $79.95 Nokia is even more compact and portable, performance-wise it was no contest. After hearing the Foxl for a mere five seconds, Ted exclaimed, "You win!" That's the reaction the Foxl gets: You can tell immediately that it sounds vastly better than anyone would expect.

To audiophiles, the most striking aspect of the Foxl's performance will be that the sound is so neutral, so free of unnatural coloration. Vocals, in particular, sound fantastic. No matter if I listened to the wispy singing of Inara George from the eponymous debut CD by The Bird and the Bee, or jazz/blues guitarist James "Blood" Ulmer's guttural song stylings on Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions, the tonal veracity was comparable to what I get from my Genelec recording monitors. (You think I'm nuts? Check out the measurements.)

Non-audiophiles will be shocked by how much bass the Foxl delivers. It's not "get up and dance" bass, but it fills out the sound nicely. This characteristic is key to the Foxl's appealing sound — without that bass, it would likely sound thin and annoying, even with all the fancy engineering that went into the Twoofers.

Placed on a desktop within a couple feet of my ears, the Foxl played satisfyingly loud without apparent distortion. But even a laptop computer can do that. A tougher test is filling a hotel room with sound, something I've never been able to accomplish with a laptop. By and large, the Foxl succeeds at this task. When I played "Oleo" from jazz guitarist Pat Martino's Live at Yoshi's, it played loud enough that I worried I might disturb the people in the room next door. I got similar satisfaction when I listened to classical music, most light pop music, and the talk programs on NPR. To me, it just isn't a weekday morning unless I can hear NPR's Morning Edition, and the Foxl/Samsung combo delivered it with satisfying clarity. (The hotel clock radio wouldn't tune the local NPR affiliate at all.)

The Foxl is a stereo system, but its drivers are too close together to deliver a true stereo soundfield unless you press your nose against the front grille. Still, I was surprised by how full and enveloping the sound could be. But the bigger and more kick-ass the recording was, the smaller the Foxl sounded. When I played anything from Led Zeppelin's Remasters, the soundfield seemed to contract; I was suddenly reminded that I was listening to a tiny speaker system. I got the same results when I played recordings of big jazz groups with lots of horns. Paradoxically, the simpler the recordings, and the less reverb they had, the bigger the Foxl sounded to me. This may well be a psychoacoustic effect and not the result of an engineering anomaly, but it's what I heard.

When I have a good sound system I want to crank it up. However, when I tried this with the Foxl I sometimes pushed it past its limits. The maximum undistorted volume I was able to achieve depended on the recording; Led Zeppelin, as it happens, lost out here, too. With most recordings (and in any hotel room I can afford) the Foxl will play adequately loud enough for me. I can't say if you'll share my sentiment, but in case you don't, Soundmatters offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.

BOTTOM LINE

My house is full of fantastic audio gear, including a couple of excellent home theater sound systems and a multiroom audio rig. I'm guessing, though, that this little $199 system will have at least as big an impact on my life as any of them. In the week I've had it, it's played several hours a day. Not only did it greatly liven up my most recent hotel stay, it's so small, I find myself toting it all over the house and around the yard.

Some people may be turned off by the Foxl's price; most systems of its size go for about $40. But those who value good sound will consider it a bargain — and, perhaps, something of a miracle.

In the Lab

Frequency response (at 1 meter)
63 Hz to 20 kHz ±3.2 dB

Bass limits (lowest frequency and maximum SPL with limit of 10% distortion at 2 meters in a large room)
100 Hz at 78 dB (also maximum SPL)

Maximum full-band output
approx. 86 dB at 0.5 meters
approx. 76 dB at 2 meters

The frequency-response graph is weighted to reflect how sound arrives at a listener's ears with normal speaker placement. Measurements were made from the left channel at 1 meter, which with a system this small is adequate to include full effects of cabinet diffraction and front panel reflections. Response of the "Twoofers" was measured on a 6-foot stand, which delivered quasi-anechoic results to about 150 Hz. Response of the woofer was made with a microphone positioned about 1/4 inch away; this response curve was scaled, then spliced to the quasi-anechoic response.

The frequency response of the Foxl looks like that of a well-engineered, $2,000-per-pair bookshelf speaker. Off-axis response is nearly identical at 10° and 20°, which comes as no surprise given that almost all the sound comes from the Twoofers and there's no crossover in the midrange region. Soundmatters deserves a pat on the back here; if you peruse other speaker reviews on Sound & Vision, you'll see that the Foxl's measured performance is superior to that of many, and perhaps most, conventional speaker systems we've tested.

Our typical bass distortion measurements, with the sound-pressure level (SPL) readings taken at 2 meters, are not really applicable to the Foxl because it's not designed to fill a room with bass. But just for kicks, I did the measurements anyway. Though close-miked measurements show bass response down to 63 Hz, there's a lot of distortion at 80 Hz and below. At 100 Hz, the unit delivers 78 dB maximum SPL at 2 meters when powered by the AC adapter. (To emulate typical usage, I placed the unit on an end table when I made the distortion measurements; this positioning reinforced the bass.) Below 100 Hz, distortion was typically about 30%.

Given the Foxl's small size and dynamic limitations, I decided to measure its overall output to get a realistic idea of what it can do in a typical hotel room. I played various types of music, turned up the level just to the point where audible distortion occurred, then backed the volume down one notch. I then measured the peak output using an SPL meter with peak hold. I made measurements at 0.5 meters (about the distance you'd listen from while sitting at a desk with the Foxl on the desktop) and at 2 meters (more like the distance you might listen from if you were wandering around the room). At 0.5 meters, results ranged from 82 dB to 86 dB depending on the recording. At 2 meters, they dropped to 71 to 76 dB. When I unplugged the AC power supply and switched to battery power, the maximum broadband SPL dropped by about 2 decibels, which isn't a big difference. However, with the AC connected, the bass at maximum output is much less distorted.