soundAMP is a sound amplification app for the iPhone. Besides wondering how they came up with the name of their application, I was just as curious to see just how well the application would work. The app claims to help your hearing by amplifying softer sounds and compressing louder ones. Now we've seen apps like this before but I don't think I've personally seen one with a price tag as high as this has. This means it is either the sound amplifier to end all amplifiers or a ridiculously overpriced app.

The app has a few interesting features. Users can click the playback button and hear the last 5 seconds of whatever they were listening to. If you need to hear more, you can scroll through the last 30 seconds in a nice, easy to use format. These features are nice if you happened to miss whatever was said. But even though it is recording on the fly, you cannot save the recording which was sadly missed.

I could see this application being useful for the elderly as they have a hard time hearing things, but in all honesty, how many grannies have you seen strolling the streets with their iPhones? It seems to have been designed for an older generation on a next generation device. My grandmother is still trying to figure out what email is. But usefulness aside, this app is still not sitting too comfortable with me.

Overall, it is just too overpriced for the simple thing it does. I'm sure there's some nice technology in there but nothing that I couldn't achieve with a compressor in any audio software. Good concept, but too expensive and not enough features to make it worth while in my opinion.