It can work by the laws of physics,
IF it is the correct size,
IF it is the correct shape
IF it is the right distance from the antenna
IF you are lucky or actually know what you are doing. So congratulations to drmuso!
For routers that have screw in external antennas you can get high gain antennas designed by real engineers that will extend in the direction they are pointing. Remember, total energy is the same. It is just concentrated over an narrower beam. 180 degrees from 360 is 3 dB gain. No magic. So at least this is one hack that is not total BS.
I tried this, but with the Spectrum router. No help. I tried a plug in extender. Useless. Tried a newer more powerful router. Only slightly better. BTW, 2.5G band has better range than 5 or 6. Snoop to be sure someone else close by is not on the same channel. I would get fair connection, then it would go to crap. Next door is a gamer, so I hard coded a different channel and now we don't step on each other. So I just put in a point to point extender from my attic to the outside of my workshop with a remote switch. Full bandwidth finally. I may plug an access point into the remote switch. That would give me full WI-FI remotely.
Audible? If dropouts, yea. But if no dropouts, then no as we are still talking IP packet based layer one digital transport over low power RF instead of Ethernet. Again I plead with folks to read about how IP works. A little knowledge can help a lot separating fact from fiction.