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One Montreal-based startup wants to give you a portable sound system that you can take to parties, picnics, or only just as far as your living room. On Thursday, AmpMe announced the launch of a new free mobile app that syncs music across smartphones for a communal listening experience. By playing music together through multiple phones, the app is designed to produce that rich speaker-produced sound through iOS and Android-supported phones and tablets.

The idea first came to AmpMe CEO Martin-Luc Archambault when he was visiting a friend’s new apartment. There were about 10 people listening to Spotify, but Archambault acknowledged the sound wasn’t of the best quality.

“At this point, I thought ‘well, we all have speakers in our pockets, what if we just tried to sync our phones together?’ ” Archambault told foxnews.1eye.us.

The process of developing the final product – which works by allowing the user to sync music through the SoundCloud streaming service – took about a year of trial-and-error testing.

So, how does it work? A “host” user controls the SoundCloud playlist, seeking out their favorite tunes or artists. The app does not use Bluetooth technology, but a server-centric audio “fingerprinting” technology that works using a regular cellular data plan or a WiFi network. The lead host hits “play” on the app, and friends join in on the music-sharing experience by entering a four-digit pass code. Syncing begins automatically, with the song playing from each device. The phones have to be near one another in order for the app to work.

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(AmpMe)

“When people testing this out first heard it (the sound from the app) they said ‘wow this is crazy, wow I’m really happy about that sound,’ ” Archambault said. “It’s the first app I’ve built that is absolutely useless if you are alone. It needs to be shared communally.”

The communal aspect of the app – with an execution that The Verge called “a little sloppy” – is the selling point behind AmpMe, Archambault asserted.

“Music is emotional,” Archambault added. “As speakers on phones become exponentially better over time — as they get more and more sophisticated in the way that cameras on phones are – it will only further enhance the communities we form around music.”