Well, I tried out my new mp3 player, and I've gotta say, it was pretty cool. It is a SwiMP3 player from Finis. The premise is simple--in order to get the best sound underwater, it relies on bone conduction rather than sound waves traveling through air, since your ears aren't in air while you swim. It's the same concept that causes you to hear your own voice differently than others do (it sounds so weird when you hear yourself recorded and played back), because you hear it through your head as well as through the air. The speakers actually rest on the bones of your head right in front of your ear, and the sound waves travel through your head and vibrate the workings of your ear. So the sound is good underwater.

Anyway, that's the way it is supposed to work. That's definitely what I was hoping for when I purchased the item. Since I want to make swimming one of my major workouts each day, I decided to try it to make the laps a little less boring. $199 plus shipping. It arrived pretty quickly via UPS, and I tried it out yesterday. It's got a little waterproof bud in between the speakers, where you plug in the USB cord to load the music. It loads really easily. The only downside is that it does not play iTunes' proprietary format, so any music I've actually purchased I'll have to convert before I can use them. Oh well. Most of my music has been, shall we say, procured another way (that's not to say illegally, necessarily).

So, I got the speakers hooked to my goggle straps, figured out the controls pretty easily (although I'll have to memorize where all the buttons are and what each one does), and ducked my head under the water. Here are my observations:

1. As long as you are underwater, the sound is really good. I didn't have to fiddle with the volume much to find a good level. And the music quality is pretty impressive.

2. Even if my head was above water, as long as my ear was full of water, it still sounded pretty good. That means freestyle, backstroke, and butterfly (since I breathe to the side) all sound good.

3. The only time it didn't sound great was when my head was above water with no water in my ears. With my head up, the sound is a little tinny, like my old crappy headphones on my old Sony walkman years ago. I could still hear it, but the sound quality did definitely change. So breaststroke was a little disappointing, with a sort of ooo-WHEE-ooo-WHEE-ooo quality to the music as my head would rise and fall above and below the water level.

4. It kept me from fiddling with my goggles. I usually take them off and put them on multiple times during a workout, or rest them on my forehead for a while. I left them on the whole time.

5. What I didn't do was use my kickboard at all, and I can certainly see a problem or two there. I usually take my goggles off entirely to rest my head (I get headaches really easily). So I wouldn't hear the music obviously if I took them off. Also, the sound is better underwater, and when kicking with the kickboard I keep my head above water. I'll have to think this part through. I can always kick without the kickboard and keep my head in the water most of the time. But it does change things up a bit.

6. The speakers didn't get disrupted during any of the strokes, flipturns, or anything like that. I didn't try diving, but I don't usually dive in anyway. No big problem there. And it was easy enough to slide the speakers back a bit from my ears so I could talk to someone out of the water and hear them.

So I'm pretty pleased with the SwiMP3 player. It worked pretty well, and it will keep me from getting bored while I swim. I'll sort out whatever bugs I come across. But if you swim a lot, give one a try!