bone conduction headphone aftershokz bluez review
Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 6:17 pm
http://www.aftershokz.com/AfterShokz-Bl ... /as330.htm
I got these strange bone conduction headphones. Instead of things covering your ears or going in your ears, it has 2 rubber pads that go on your temples, or just infront of your ears, and they pump vibrations straight into your skull and vibrate cochlea. So you end up hearing sound, while exposing your ear to hear everything you usually hear. It's kind of like you just got yourself 2 extra channels coming in. Kind of interesting eh?
First of all, the sound quality is not for any sort of pro audio use. In a room, you can listen to music just good enough to hear what is going on. So fine for "enjoying" music, definitely no for critical listening. The placement of the rubber pads causes drastic changes in sound quality, but when it's at the perfect place, you can actually hear I'd say about 200hz-15hz pretty well. No thumping bass, but the upper end is surprisingly clear. Stereo imaging is pretty good. It's not the muffled sound I was imagining it to be, so pleasant surprise there. Also, if I plug my ears, there's actually lots of bass.. not sure why I can't hear it when I don't plug my ears.. this whole thing's still a bit like voodoo magic to me.
The catch is that these bleed like hell. I'm not even sure how much of it I'm hearing directly from the drivers through my eardrums since the rubber pads (where the drivers are) are so damn near my ear anyway. If you don't blast it in a quiet environment, you might get away with it, but basically, imagine the amount of sound coming from headphones when you're not wearing them, but a bit muffled. It's literally like a straight bleed if you crank it up.
Overall though, it's kind of like having a personal tiny radio playing while being able to hear and talk with people. To me, it doesn't really fall under the headphone paradigm... it's almost like a line in. So it's more like, hey you have extra 2 channels now, what do you want to do with it? And since you control the volume, you can kind of "mix" the bone conducted sound with live audio from your ear drums to achieve an ideal balance. It's just such a strange concept.
And some extra stuff. The thing is bluetooth and charges via USB, plays 6 hrs per charge. (says on the box) It also has a mic, and some buttons so you can use it as a headset for your phone. I also thought being able to trigger Siri with a button was cool. Except I couldn't think of a good way to use Siri other than asking for the weather and feeling cool about it. And some background info about bone conduction.. There's magnetostrictive, and mechanical. Magnetostrictive is the better kind that uses magnetic fields to cause vibrations, and mechanical is the poorman's version that sends physical vibrations via a driver, which is what all of aftershokz's headphones use. I looked for magnetostrictive ones.. TEAC used to make them but they're like $500 and they've been discontinued.
All in all, I think I like this thing. Not so much as a headphone in the traditional sense, but it's a new thing.. a totally new way of delivering audio content to the brain. I think I need to spend some time thinking of fun ways of using it. I think it resembles the ear telecom thing that security people use. It's peripheral, or secondary source information... I need time to think about this.
I got these strange bone conduction headphones. Instead of things covering your ears or going in your ears, it has 2 rubber pads that go on your temples, or just infront of your ears, and they pump vibrations straight into your skull and vibrate cochlea. So you end up hearing sound, while exposing your ear to hear everything you usually hear. It's kind of like you just got yourself 2 extra channels coming in. Kind of interesting eh?
First of all, the sound quality is not for any sort of pro audio use. In a room, you can listen to music just good enough to hear what is going on. So fine for "enjoying" music, definitely no for critical listening. The placement of the rubber pads causes drastic changes in sound quality, but when it's at the perfect place, you can actually hear I'd say about 200hz-15hz pretty well. No thumping bass, but the upper end is surprisingly clear. Stereo imaging is pretty good. It's not the muffled sound I was imagining it to be, so pleasant surprise there. Also, if I plug my ears, there's actually lots of bass.. not sure why I can't hear it when I don't plug my ears.. this whole thing's still a bit like voodoo magic to me.
The catch is that these bleed like hell. I'm not even sure how much of it I'm hearing directly from the drivers through my eardrums since the rubber pads (where the drivers are) are so damn near my ear anyway. If you don't blast it in a quiet environment, you might get away with it, but basically, imagine the amount of sound coming from headphones when you're not wearing them, but a bit muffled. It's literally like a straight bleed if you crank it up.
Overall though, it's kind of like having a personal tiny radio playing while being able to hear and talk with people. To me, it doesn't really fall under the headphone paradigm... it's almost like a line in. So it's more like, hey you have extra 2 channels now, what do you want to do with it? And since you control the volume, you can kind of "mix" the bone conducted sound with live audio from your ear drums to achieve an ideal balance. It's just such a strange concept.
And some extra stuff. The thing is bluetooth and charges via USB, plays 6 hrs per charge. (says on the box) It also has a mic, and some buttons so you can use it as a headset for your phone. I also thought being able to trigger Siri with a button was cool. Except I couldn't think of a good way to use Siri other than asking for the weather and feeling cool about it. And some background info about bone conduction.. There's magnetostrictive, and mechanical. Magnetostrictive is the better kind that uses magnetic fields to cause vibrations, and mechanical is the poorman's version that sends physical vibrations via a driver, which is what all of aftershokz's headphones use. I looked for magnetostrictive ones.. TEAC used to make them but they're like $500 and they've been discontinued.
All in all, I think I like this thing. Not so much as a headphone in the traditional sense, but it's a new thing.. a totally new way of delivering audio content to the brain. I think I need to spend some time thinking of fun ways of using it. I think it resembles the ear telecom thing that security people use. It's peripheral, or secondary source information... I need time to think about this.
