Hearphones with my phone "too much background noise"

[ST - Hearphones]

As much as I enjoy my Hearphones, I get comments from people on the far end of my phone calls about the quality of the sound. People usually comment about "too much background noise".

I think this is the issue:

The noise cancellation is so good it's easy to be unaware of the noise around me when I initiate or take a call.  The result I get is similar to putting my phone on speakerphone.  I wouldn't do that in a noisy environment. 

If it's too noisy to put my phone on speakerphone, it's too noisy to use my Hearphones for a call. 

Is there is noise cancellation for the microphone that is picking up my voice?

ST

[Esther_O]

Hello Strident-Supporter! Thank you for reaching out. 

I like the speaker phone example you've made! Since the microphone does not have noise cancellation, noisy environments and wind noise may enter the microphone capsule and render audio to be unclear. Moving away from these types of areas can alleviate the symptom and allow for clearer audio.  

[Eric_H]

Hello, our Hearphones have microphones in each ear and together they form a pattern to pick up the wearer’s voice. There’s no “noise cancellation” outside of the microphone polar pattern being very directional. 

[ST - Hearphones]

Hi Eric_H,

Thanks for the explanation. Often my experience of things is better when I understand what is going on.

ST

[ST - Hearphones]

Update! I'm getting much better results for telephone calls since the latest firmware update.

Firmware 1.3.3 available

If you haven't updated yet, let me encourage you to do it now.

I was on the telephone for hours with my Hearphones yesterday (even in Costco) and the results were better than when I started this discussion (before the firmware update).

ST

[Mutnat]

Hi everyone,

This sounds like the "sidetone" issue that also plagues the QC30, QC35, and some other headphones (I think SoundSport wireless and maybe one other model?).  The explanation given to us by Bose staff up until now is that there's a feature called "sidetone" is needed becasue without it but with ANC active, you can't "hear" yourself speaking and you might end up yelling into the phone call etc.  It seems the unintended side effect of this is that if you try to make calls in anything but a dead-silent room, the person on the other end hears every little noise like it was turned up to 11, and any big noises are deafening.  Essentially they are unusable in anything but a silent, indoor room.

@ST - Hearphones you mentioned that the latest firmware update seems to fix or greatly minimize this effect on the Hearphones, which is excellent news!  If I could, could you please pass along to the rest of the Bose team that this fix really needs to be ported over to a firmware update for the models I mentioned above and ASAP!  I adore my QC30's for music and tv playback but they are almost useless for calls due to this issue.  Reading that there is a fix for the Hearphones has given me new hope that maybe this can be done for my 30's as well!  Pretty please?!?  Thank you!

[ST - Hearphones]

Hi Mutnat,

Please, let's keep the focus here on Hearphones and have discussions about Bose QC30, QC35, SoundLink, SoundSport in Wireless Headphones.

Even though Hearphones and QC30 look very similar, there are significant differences behind the scenes.

Thank you for your understanding.

ST

[Mutnat]

@ST - Hearphones makes sense.  I'll reference this thread from there then and keep the discussion going there. 

[davidc1]

While he did mention the other earphones, Mutants explanation was an attempt to explain why people we call cannot hear us when we are in noisy environments. This simplest explanation is that Bose has decided not to incorporate noise cancellation in its mics on the Hearphones (as well as it's other earphones). Many other manufactures of earbuds have incorporated noise cancellation in their mics (Phiaton is a good example). Please Bose, you'd have the perfect product if you did as well.