August 2, 1998 Bose Introduces Revolutionary New ANR Headset

Email this article |Print this article

by	Michael Maya Charles

About the Author ... Michael Maya Charles made it to the left seat of a major airline via the long, slow, flight instruction-charter-corporate route, but never left general aviation in the process. He is still an active GA pilot who has flown hundreds of different aircraft in his 30 years of flying. Charles also holds an A&P certificate, and restored and maintains the beautiful red 1979 Cessna 185 Skywagon (N301MC) that he currently owns. He is an established aviation writer who is perhaps best known for his "Pro's Nest" column in FLYING magazine and numerous features in AOPA Pilot. He offers his varied expertise as an aviation consultant and expert witness for the legal and insurance industry, and maintains his own aviation safety web site, Air Safety Experts.

Bose Corporation of Framingham, MA, inventors of noise reduction headset technology that set the industry standard, today announced the introduction of a revolutionary new headset with holes. That's right, holes. Called the Headset X, it incorporates "Tri Port Technology" which includes three holes in each ear cup. These holes seem at first to be an illogical approach to designing headsets for maximum noise attenuation since we've always "known" that any outside noise is a direct result of leaks in and around the ear cups.

But that is before the engineers at Bose discovered that high and low frequency sound waves react to the ear cup quite differently. High frequency waves, it was found, cannot enter the ear cups through the ports they've designed into the ear cups; lower frequency waves can, but they are cancelled by the ANR technology. By porting the ear cups, therefore, they effectively enlarge the airspace behind the speaker at low frequencies. This allows Bose to install smaller ear cups in the new design, thus reducing weight to a mere 12 oz. The result: the headset is a lot more comfortable. In addition, the ear cups are cushioned with a new soft leather material which eliminates the short service life and temperature problems encountered with earlier Bose gel seals.

The headband of the new design is also a departure from earlier thinking. This smart looking magnesium frame appears much stronger, yet is surprisingly lightweight; it features a spring at the apex of the band which holds the headset on the head with just enough pressure to create a good seal at the earcups without creating that familiar "hot spot" discomfort at the top of the head. Bose claims that the clamping pressure of the new design is half the Series II model. The headset is easily adjusted for different sized heads by simply pulling or pushing the ratcheted arms of the earcup before placing the headset on the head.

The Bose Headset X will be offered in portable and "hard wired" versions; on the portable version, an inline compact control module is powered by a 9 volt battery good for 20 hours. It contains an on/off switch, battery indicator with a test light, dual volume controls and a mono/stereo switch. The permanent version contains an interface which can be wired into your airplane, just like earlier models. Bose wisely made the previous Series II interfaces compatible with the new model. The boom mic and cable can easily be switched from left to right ear cups.

For those who have worn previous versions of the Bose ANR headset, this lighter, smaller design will be quite a pleasant surprise. When we sampled the new design at EAA Oshkosh AirVenture '98, I was pleased to learn that the headband seemed to float above the AVweb ball cap that I was wearing. The headset seemed well supported and snug enough to stay on simply with the clamping pressure of the headband spring; there is no need for a large pad at the top of the headband like most conventional headsets, including my David Clark H10-40 headset.

Curiously, Bose does not publish any noise reduction db numbers in either active or passive modes. However, the Bose Headset X looked like a rugged, well thought-out package that merits a close look. We'll do just that in a future AVweb report, once we get to spend some time with the headset in the real world environment of our noisy cockpits.