Ok, I found this product in Wired Mag. Its an iPod waterproofing system that allows you to swim with your iPod. Here is the link: http://www.h2oaudio.com/
I dropped $150 bones on this one and my expectations were very high when I hopped in the water this afternoon. Here’s my review:
Pros: iPod in the water? Are you kidding me? Very cool. Music, audio books, and Glenn Beck Jeopretardy podcasts while swimming makes those laps just fly by. Led Zeppelin under water was greatness. When the sound quality was good, it was great, but when it was bad, it was bad (see cons, below). The tightly coiled headphone cord is well engineered such that it leaves the headset in the middle of the neck boom and lays flat and tight against your back with no slack dragging in the water. External controls worked great. They sell a neoprene waist strap, but I just tucked it into my shorts, which was adequate, but not ideal (I felt like it was about to fall out when I flip turned, so I didn’t).
Cons: The in-ear phones were so big that my ears hurt a little after 2,000 meters or so and yet the still managed to leak water and the sloshing water in my ear sometimes impeded sound quality so much that it was difficult to determine what song was playing and rendered spoken word audio out of the question. The FAQs on the website indicated that there is an aftermarket earpiece ($10) that I should try if the stock earbuds didn’t fit. Also, even with the volume up all the way, it wasn’t very loud. The waterproof case is HUGE (think yellow sports walkman circa 1985); I think they photoshopped the image on the website to make it look smaller.
Overall: If I can solve the sound quality problem (experimenting with different configurations, positions, etc or the aftermarket earbuds) this thing is a winner. If I can’t, then I’m 50/50 on sending it back. Even with the sound quality issues, it still improved my swimming experience.