McDonald’s Canada is turning cardboard drink trays into speakers

McDonald’s wants to turn your ordinary drink tray into what the company has dubbed, the ‘McDonald’s Boombox.’ Yes, you read that correctly; McDonald’s, the fast food restaurant, is giving away free cardboard speakers; welcome to 2017.

Created through a partnership with the University of Waterloo’s Audio Research Group, as well as industrial design organization Stacklab, the portable speaker is set to only be available at a one-day event at Toronto’s Woodbine Beach on July 28th in “limited quantities.”

“For our team, the McDonald’s Boombox was a dream project that allowed us to infuse high tech engineering and theoretical acoustics into an everyday item, and on behalf of a great brand in McDonald’s We’re delighted with the result and hope that everyone who gets their hands on one has as much fun as we did in helping bring it to life,” said Janelle Resch, project lead of Audio Engineering Group and University of Waterloo PhD Candidate in Applied Mathematics.

The McDonald’s Boombox works with any smartphone, whether iPhone or Android, and has been designed to double a device’s maximum built-in volume by increasing sound pressure levels via the cardboard speaker enclosure. The speaker is foil-stamped and features ‘double-cone polygon speakers’ that are designed to amplify sound and ‘quality,’ though it’s unlikely that fidelity is a concern for anyone using a cardboard speaker.

The press release then goes on to explain that special slot has been designed in the makeshift cardboard speaker to ensure that smartphones secure in the amplifier while still giving the user access to their phone’s display.

For the audiophiles out there, McDonald’s Boombox speaker can reach a decibel level of 70.4 dB, which is roughly the same volume as a vacuum when it’s in use.

Also, as you may have guessed already, the McDonald’s Boombox is 100 percent recyclable.