I’m sure everyone can think of some examples when they were listening to music with their headphones on and couldn’t hear someone shout for them from across the house. Or, maybe you couldn’t hear the doorbell ring because your music was too loud. SoundOut solves these problems by automatically pausing your music and replaying the sound that you missed. It’s a simple application that functions very well.

The app is constantly recording the sounds in your environment by using either the microphone on your headset or the built in microphone on your iPhone. The user selects a sound threshold that, when met or exceeded, will mute the currently playing track and replay the last few seconds of the recording. For example, if while listening to music the doorbell rings, the music will stop and you will hear a recording of the doorbell ringing. The recording is short and will only playback one or two seconds of sound. The music will then resume after a predefined time has passed.

You can choose your music right from inside the app. You can select one song at a time, a playlist or all your songs. Unfortunately, you cannot watch a movie or video podcast while the app is running. Hopefully, this feature will be added in a future update. Other available options include repeating songs or shuffling.

One odd aspect of SoundOut is that the sound monitoring will become disabled if your device is moving around. The app will only function while your device is stable. So, this rules out using it while working out or even just going for a walk. I’m not sure why this is so, but hopefully it can be changed in the future. Also, even though the UI is fairly simple, the music playback controls are very small and close together. It would be nice to have some easier access to these buttons.

SoundOut definitely functions well and provides a service that many of us never knew we needed. However, its clientele is a bit limited due to lack of features. People can’t use it while walking or working out. You can’t watch movies or video podcasts and unless you have a jailbroken device, you can’t do anything else on your iPhone or iPod Touch while this application is running. So, even though it is probably something I’ll keep on my device, just in case I need it, I probably won’t be using it very often. If you were constantly listening to music while in a stationary position, then you’ll definitely want this app. Otherwise, I wouldn’t recommend making the purchase in its 1.0 version.

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