As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I’ve started using Skype a lot more frequently in the last few months. Thus, I’ve been wearing headphones a lot more. Headphones are no longer a necessity for using Skype, by the way; it works perfectly well with the Macbook’s built-in microphone. The feedback that used to plague Skype (and similar systems) in the past has been corrected by newer, more sophisticated software.
There’s still a reason to use headphones, however. First, they keep your conversation from being broadcast to everyone around you; specifically, to my co-workers. Second, they block out external noise sources so that you can focus on the caller.
In my humble opinion, the criteria for an audio/telephony headset is very different from headphones intended for music. Because the voice bandwidth transmitted is much narrower than the music that comes from a CD or an MP3, audio headsets do not need to have the frequency range of headphones for music. Because people’s voices do not go from extremely loud to extremely soft, the dynamic range of the headset does not have to be as large as that of a device intended for listening to music. Instead, what matters most for audio/voice use is clarity: can you distinguish every work in the normal, mid-range frequencies used by the human voice?
The second major criteria for judging a headset, after audio quality, is comfort. After all, you’re going to be wearing these things, sometimes for hours at a time, and they need to be comfortable.
For a while now, I’ve used a Logitech ClearChat headset. In fact, my son has one as well; he uses it all the time for online gaming and voice conversations. Once I started using Skype more frequently, I carried the headset back and forth with me to work. Of course, I’d occasionally forget it at one location or the other, and thus have to go headset-less until the next day. So, I decided to get a second headset so that I didn’t have to carry things back and forth.
The local office-supply store didn’t have the Logitech, so I ended up with a Plantronics Audio USB 645, a “behind the head” model (as compared to the “over the head” Logitech).
The Logitech headset was perfectly adequate, and I’ve never had cause to complain about it. However, once I used the Plantronics, it was immediately apparent that they were vastly superior. The audio is crisp and clear; Plantronics takes pride in the fact that they developed the first audio headsets used by NASA on the Apollo moon missions, and they’ve got the audio engineering down solid. Second, they are amazingly comfortable, almost to the point where I forget that I have them on. The Logitech headset uses vinyl on the ear pads; the Plantronics appears to have very soft leather. Whatever the reason, the Plantronics is much more comfortable.
The Plantronics have one additional feature that I hadn’t thought I needed, but which has come in handy: instead of terminating in a USB plug, they actually have separate 1/8-inch microphone and stereo analog plugs that fit into a USB adapter. If I want to use them on a device with poor support for USB audio (for example, my iPod), they work just fine.
The major caveat with the Plantronics is that the “behind the head” model may not be liked by some people. If you can deal with it, however, these little gems are strongly recommended.
