I spent time adapting Sennheiser AMBEO Smart headsets for use with Tympan F. Sadly, the AMBEO is discontinued so I am casting about for a replacement.
I’m going to try the Roland CS-10EM.
What’s been the Tympan community’s experience with headsets in general?
Any critiques or comments regarding particular brands or models?
Anything notable when used for speech clarity in a noisy lab environment?
Thanks,
Dan Stipe
Hi Dan!
I’ve used the Roland CS-10EM. Whether they are good or bad really depends when you’re trying to do.
The problem with the CS-10 earbuds is that there is almost no acoustic isolation between the earbud’s microphone and the earbud’s speaker. So, the mic easily hears its own speaker’s emissions. This means that you can’t apply much amplification without getting feedback. It’s unfortunate that they’re designed that way.
The Sennheiser headset looks nice. But how did you plug it into the Tympan? That headset only has an iOS Lightning connector on it, right? Do you have an adapter that gives you 3.5mm plugs for connecting to Tympan?
Chip
Not specifically what you asked, but perhaps useful. In my own project I’ve tested all sorts of mic/headset/earbud combinations. In all cases there are two problematic issues: Feedback and background noise. An old adage of people who mic things for a living is that the best solution for both is mic placement. My own project is called “Sparky”, but this suggestion should work with the Tympan unit just as well. Buy a setup used for video audio recording that uses a high speed wireless protocol (not bluetooth – too much latency). I’ve got one that cost $100 on Amazon. I plug the receiver module into Sparky (or Tympan) and that leaves me two remote mics I can hand to anyone to clip on their shirt. This locates the mics where they belong – at the source. This totally eliminates feedback and seriously removes most background noise. The remote mics I have even come with selectable noise reduction that works fairly well. These things also have pretty incredible range, so your coworker in a noisy lab environment can be of some distance from you. Here’s what I got: