QT Halo headset issue and partial resolution

[scard]

I have been using my QT Halo headset for 210hrs and 14 months. I began to notice a few months ago that I was having to turn the volume up higher and higher in order to hear the radios and intercom. I had the control volume turned up almost all the way and began noticing a little high gain distortion because I had to crank the volume up so high. Then I started missing some radio calls. OK, enough. Time for action. This really crept up slowly and I didn't even notice it much for quite some time. Come to find out, Tanya has been turning her headset volume down incrementally over the same period of time as I turned the radios up. She just never said anything . She must have been just being nice thinking I was really loosing my hearing in my "old" age.

I did the little headset swap exercise with our Lightspeed 30 3G. Wow, I can hear. Sounds great. Next I stole Tanya's Clarity Aloft. Yep, that sounds great too with plenty of volume. Oooo, while we're at it, that Clarity Aloft is nice too. I made this comment to Tanya, she immediately said "don't even think about it." The issue wasn't my ears or the airplane.

The logistics officer (Tanya) now had enough information to take action. She called up QT and he knew exactly what the issue was. There is a little metal baffle in the ear tubes that you can see about an inch from the ear tips. This little metal insert is there to tune the audio quality and seems to get partially blocked with sweat and whatever. He said simply cut it off and you'll be good to go. So this evening we went and cut short the tubes to remove the little metal baffle and WOW, I can hear! What a great relief. I like the Halo headset, but this deteriorating volume wasn't going to cut it. The difference was amazing, however, now the tonal quality of the headset is kind of like listening in a tin can. We'll get this resolved. I just thought I would share .

[tcard]

I called up QT this morning and asked for a replacement set of tubes due to the reduced tonal quality. I had the credit card ready to go, but it was tucked back away as QT is sending them out free of charge.

[jferraro17]

Not surprised, seemed to be a great guy when I met him at OSH...another in the long line of great vendors in the homebuilt world.

Joe

[conlimon]

I was actually thinking about trimming down the length of the tubes so that there is less floppy dumbo ear tube action, but the instructions say this is a no-no. do you think it would really affect the sound quality that much?

c

[DGlaeser]

I find that if I tuck the long tubes behind my ears, it very noticeably reduces the noise level.
I've been thinking about playing with the length as well, but haven't done so yet...

[scard]

Our operation was all about the little metal baffle inside the tube. It effectively got clogged. Removing it certainly effected the tonal quality of the unit. I'll explore/experiment with a method for "un-clogging" after we have a new working set of tubes. Simply trying to blow it out didn't do squat.

[Ironflight]

Since I've got about 650 hours using mine, I'm going to check for this as well! I have thought that maybe my volume has been deteriorating (of course, I'm getting older every day, and have been flying noisy machines for 35 years, so I naturally assumed it was my own problem....)

We change ear pieces on our Star Sets in the Control Center every couple months, because they get gunky as well....

Paul

[Canadian_JOY]

In speaking to the owner of QT I asked specifically about cutting the tubes shorter. His answer is that it wouldn't make much of a difference. The real magic is in the location of the little metal accoustic damper inside the tube. If you cut the tube shorter, it's easier to make the cut at the transducer end than at the earplug end because in making the cut at the transducer end you don't have to mess with the accoustic damper.

BTW, that damper is installed specifically to counteract the tendancy of the tube to produce "tin can" audio quality.

[scard]

Just a quick follow-up. I got two new sets of tubes with baffles in them in the mail today from QT. We flew for two hours today. Ahhh, ALL better, volume and tonal quality is all back to great.