helmet speakers

[ryani]

It's getting close to that season again and I'm going to upgrade our helmet communication speakers.

We purchased a new bluetooth system last year to talk back and forth from driver to passenger and it works great.....except for one thing the sound is atrocious!

I got a set of mini transducers to try and was disappointed it their performance also. Very garbled and distorted for speaking and music.

Well here's what version 2.0 will have inside. Visaton K50WP-16 2" Full-Range Speaker 16 Ohm 292-540

I measured the speaker pockets and these should fit perfectly! A little velcro to attach them and we should have decent audio for going down the road.

A little 2" should outperform those transducer. The only problem I foresee is the communicator lacking in power to push these but I can always add a inline headphone amp.

You guys have any input to this project? Have you fellow motorcyclists constructed your own helmet systems?

I'm open to any input good or bad.

 

[Ronion]

Those things will probably be great for this project. Another you may want to look at from visaton is the BF32. A friend of mine does this for the military and says there's a Swiss company making some incredible tech with 2 mics and 2 speakers. They've been hot ridding them with visaton's for fun. They have noise cancellation built in as well--supposedly the bees knees for helicopter and parachuter communication. I guess they could only do it via hand signals even a couple years ago. Wish I had a link, but may e the tech you already have is similar?

 

[ryani]

Thanks for the info. I'll have to check out those too. I would have to trim the square frame off but that wouldn't take much at all.

I'm kind of excited to see how good I can get the helmet to sound. It should be leaps and bounds what it sounded like last year.

 

[Richard Ellis]

I wound up dissecting a pair of Koss headphones $$$ for the drivers & some of the structure, primarily for music. I fabricated(sewed) some fabric so it looked like a tiny pillow, tucked into the helmet. No doubt there are products that sounds as good....but why not go direct to the source? This is DIY, is it not? If you do settle on something.....will you be able to "plug it in" to test quality of sound, attainable volume & whatnot?. In my un-faired bike the music had to compete with air-flow roar.......perhaps full fairings & well muffled engines AKA Gold Wing style make the music more "listenable".



_____________________________________________________Rick...........

 

[ryani]

At $4.00 a speaker I'm going to try out the visaton K50. If they don't turn out I can always put them in the kids room.

Our bike is fairly quiet. Windscreen and stock exhaust and full vace helmets. The speakers that came with are communicators were very critical on placement. I figure if I completely fill the 2" speaker pocket with a 2" speaker we should be able to just slip on our helmets and go. No fiddling.

 

[Richard Ellis]

Honestly.......A pair of $4 speakers quite probably are going to sound like Four dollars worth.....If it's OK then congrats all around......It's just that my old Koss headphones were just shy of $200 worth of drivers, headband et.al. & they sounded as if they were "assembled" as headphones.......I suppose there are full comm kits for Bikes......I just wanted to upsurp the "establishment.


_____________________________________________________Rick........

 

[ryani]

I understand the "you get what you pay for" saying. I'm thinking of ease of use. Taking the helmet off and on when the Mrs. and I are on the road and not having to fumble around with any extra positioning of speakers is a big plus. Makes the experience much more fun.

 

[ryani]

Well i got received the speakers from parts express and got them installed last nite. What a major improvement over the speakers that came with the bluetooth units!

music is far from audiophile haha but the speaking back and forth is great. $16 for the speakers was well worth it.

 

[Richard Ellis]

We want PIX................


______________________________________Rick..............

 

[CZ Eddie]

Cool stuff. I'm considering a project like this.
Kind of worried that a .6" speaker inside my helmet may touch my ear though.