The problem with cheap speakers is that they sound, well, cheap.

Altec Lansing, the powered speaker specialist, has an elegant solution: inMotion, a $150 portable speaker system designed for the Apple iPod and other digital music players. Apple's web site and stores originally had an exclusive on the unit, but they now are in more general distribution.

When you invest in a high-end, disk drive-based portable music player one of the things you are purchasing is enough storage capacity to encode your tracks at high bitrates (a measure of how detailed the music information is that's stored in the digital file). The result is near-CD quality sound, which among its side effects, exposes the weakness in sound equipment.

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This is especially true with respect to portable speakers. If you want to take a MP3 player with you on a trip but don't want to be tied to headphones all the time or want to share your music with others, you face a dilemma. You want something small and easy to carry or pack. But, although the equation is not absolute, in general the smaller the speaker, the lower its likely sound quality.

Manufacturers tend to tackle the problem with a dual strategy of electronic tricks to enhance the sound and design origami to fold the devices up into compact packages for storage.

Altec Lansing's packaging solution for inMotion is to build the unit into a sleek, flat, white plastic case with satin metal trim that measures 8" (W) x 5.4" (D) x 1.2" (H) -- about the same size as medium-sized paperback. (You know, the ones that are bigger than novels but smaller than cartoon collections; self-help books are common in that size.) It comes with a suede-like bag to stow it away neatly.

You open the "book" and you see that the satin metal trim actually are arms that let you fold it back on itself. You wind up with two speakers sitting on top flanking a nook where you put your MP3 player. The part of the case that had cradled the speakers becomes the base on the unit. On/off and volume controls are in front; connectors for an a/c power adapter, a headphone jack, and a AUX jack are in the back. inMotion takes 4 AA batteries, which the company says will sustain 24 consecutive hours of playback.

Acoustically, Altec Lansing puts two drivers (cones) in each speaker and builds in a bass enhancement it calls "MaxxBass." This is a bit of electronic trickery to adjust speaker output to fool the ear into hearing more bass than the speakers actually can reproduce directly. The idea it to make inMotion sound like it has a subwoofer, while maintaining small dimensions and low power consumption.

It works. The result is high caliber sound, without the normal portable losses in the high and low ranges. Whereas cranking up the volume of most portable speakers usually means cranking up the distortion, inMotion's sound gets richer at higher volumes. Be careful using it in your hotel room or your neighbors are going to call the front desk to complain.

The design is optimized for iPods. At the bottom of the player nook is a docking connector for the new third generation (3G) iPod. This allows you to re-charge a 3G through the connector, and a pass-through will let you connect sync cable to your computer as well. For older generation iPods, a patch cord is supplied to connect the player's headphone output to inMotion's AUX jack, and a clever rubber cover fits over the 3G connector to let you safely rest your player. (You would have to use your standard iPod charger.)

Other MP3 players also will work, but all controls may not be accessible. The design lets you get to buttons and jacks on the top and front of a player. You can still use those players, but have to place them somewhere other than the nook if you need to get to controls on the sides. Nevertheless, the quality of the speakers is such that you likely will see this as only a minor inconvenience.

The best I can muster in the way of complaints is that the unit's sound controls default to zero volume when you shut the inMotion off, meaning of course that you have to reset it every time you turn it back on. While no doubt this is a safeguard against inadvertently blowing out the speakers, it might be more convenient if inMotion defaulted to a moderate volume instead.

Also the beautifully designed speaker set comes with a clunky, black power brick. I asked a company spokesperson about that and was told that the design time worked to tight deadline and did not have time or resources to devote to creating a custom AC adapter and had to go with an off-the-shelf part. The universe of generic power bricks apparently does not include a lot of slick, white configurations.

inMotion isn't cheap, but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. And what you get here is the best combination of sound quality and portability currently available.

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(c) 2004 Al Gordon.

In addition to his computer interests, Al Gordon is a principal in the Boston-area strategic consulting firm, Mary Fifield Associates, www.maryfifieldassociates.com

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You can reach Al Gordon at:

al@tnpcnewsletter.com