"The Muse"

And no, I won't do stereo. There are good reasons.

I'd be curious to know what they are.

******************************

Stereo In The Aircraft

RST does not produce any stereo intercoms, audio panels, headsets, or other
devices that

reproduce stereo music. If you are absolutely determined to have stereo in
your aircraft, you

might just as well stop reading now, because anything we have to say isn't
going to change your

mind.

We made a conscious business and engineering decision not to produce any
product for stereo.

There are good aviation and engineering reasons for this.

First, a little background music or listening to the ballgame in a cockpit
environment isn't all

that bad. Sometimes flying is miles and miles of nothing but miles and
miles. On the other

hand, I know from my own love of music that when there is a particularly
good cut playing on my

home stereo and I have the headphones on (try "Sweet Sir Galahad" by Baez or
"Minstrel Of The

Dawn" by Lightfoot at somewhere slightly below the threshold of pain in the
'phones to see what I

mean) that I get totally lost within the music and the world just sort of
blurs away. Just

about the LAST thing I want in an airplane is a pilot that has zoned out on
music and is just

holding the controls to have something to do with their hands. That's item
#1.

Second, stereo is expensive. Yes, I understand that FLYING is expensive,
too, but to go to the

expense of specially-designed headphones, intercoms, audio panels, and all
the rest of it seems

to us to be on the other side of reasonable. Our company thrust has, and
always will be, to make

flying affordable for everybody. That's point #2.

Now to the engineering stuff. Suppose you try and take your stereo headset
and fly in somebody

else's airplane that is "regular airplane". Will your stereo headset work
without the trick

little switch on the cable to convert it to a monophonic headset? No, you
will hear one ear of

the conversation only. And what did that little switch do? It put both
earphones in parallel,

which cut the impedance of the headset in half. Properly designed, this
MIGHT not be noticeable

to the aircraft radio, or it might. Since airplane radios weren't designed
to figure out whether

or not you were messing around with a stereo headset, the manufacturer
didn't worry about making

sure his radio would drive that low of an impedance.

Even worse, if somebody else takes his standard aircraft headset and puts it
into your stereo

airplane jack, it will short out one of the channels. Depending on the
design of the intercom,

the best you can hope for is that one stereo channel will be dead in
everybody's headphones.

Second worst is that the short on that channel will blow out the amplifier
for that channel. In

a really lousy design, that short will cause the whole intercom/audio panel
to fail, leaving you

without any headphone audio at all.

Given all these reasons, RST has decided not to produce any stereo
equipment. While it probably

won't sway your decision for stereo in your airplane, we thought you should
at least consider

these problems.

Jim

**************************************************

You gave three reasons to not produce stereo equipment for aircraft.

1: One can get lost in the music... to which I ask whether it matters
whether it is in stereo or not.

2: Cost of stereo... to which I ask whether the second channel really
is that much more expensive. In the case of a headphone, I don't see
where the extraordinary expense would come from.

3: Compatibility... well, ok if you are designing entire panels (which
I assume RST is). But there are compatibility issues with mono too.
If others are producing stereo, you have the same issues.

I would also point out an advantage to stereo, used properly (which I've
actually never seen)... and that is the ability to put the intercom
(mostly) in one ear while ATC is (mostly) in the other, or to put Com1
on the left and Com2 on the right (which would be a godsend when trying
to get the ATIS or monitoring CTAF while staying with ATC).

Jose
r.a.owning trimmed - I don't follow that group
--
The price of freedom is... well... freedom.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Furthermore...

"Jose" wrote in message
. ..
You gave three reasons to not produce stereo equipment for aircraft.

1: One can get lost in the music... to which I ask whether it matters
whether it is in stereo or not.

IMHO, it probably does, assuming the music has been recorded to take full
advantage of stereo (much music is not). However, that's irrelevant since
at least some of the market for the device would be for people not flying
the airplane, and for the remainder it's the pilot's prerogative to make
that choice.

For a business run by someone who also has a paternalistic "I know what's
best for you, and even if I can make money doing something, I'm not going to
bother because I know what's best for you", I guess it makes sense to try to
avoid problems with even that small slice of the market that might be
affected (due to the combination of not being able to concentrate, and
listening to a particular kind of music), even if that means ignoring the
rest of the market for which that reason doesn't exist.

But for a sensible company with the bandwidth to design and sell such a
device, it's a silly reason to not do so.

2: Cost of stereo... to which I ask whether the second channel really is
that much more expensive. In the case of a headphone, I don't see where
the extraordinary expense would come from.

To be fair, we're not talking about a headphone here (are we?). AFAIK,
we're talking about a device like "The Muse" that just works better than
that device. That said, yes the extra channel will increase cost
(slightly...most of the real cost is likely in R&D and sales and
marketing...surely the actual hardware doesn't cost that much, even if the
second channel doubled the cost, which I doubt it does).

But I can't believe it would increase the cost significantly compared to
what the device would sell for, nor should that be an impediment to
designing and marketing such a device, since a more reliable, more capable
device can also command a higher sales price.

3: Compatibility... well, ok if you are designing entire panels (which I
assume RST is). But there are compatibility issues with mono too. If
others are producing stereo, you have the same issues.

Again, in this particular case we're not talking about compatibility at all
(other than the need to be able to select stereo or mono output). Ignoring,
for a moment, that the issues related to stereo intercoms and headsets are
entirely solveable (proven by the many successful stereo-capable intercoms
and headsets), those just don't apply here. It'd be like a car manufacturer
saying "we don't provide a full-size spare tire for your full-size
sport-utility vehicle, because we can't fit a full-size spare tire in our
sub-compact models".

I would also point out an advantage to stereo, used properly (which I've
actually never seen)... and that is the ability to put the intercom
(mostly) in one ear while ATC is (mostly) in the other, or to put Com1 on
the left and Com2 on the right (which would be a godsend when trying to
get the ATIS or monitoring CTAF while staying with ATC).

Sure...those are potentially good examples of ways to use stereo in an
intercom/audio panel device to benefit the pilot and the safety of the
flight. But I'm not seeing the relevance here (except perhaps as a rebuttal
to the general philosophy of "we ain't doing stereo, no way, no how").

Jose
r.a.owning trimmed - I don't follow that group

Your post, your choice, I guess. But just because YOU don't follow the
group doesn't mean the cross-post wasn't appropriate. I'd say in this case,
this was a reasonable choice of cross-posting.

Pete

RST,

Given all these reasons, RST has decided not to produce any stereo
equipment.


Not sure I can follow. All your points except no. 1 have been solved
quite well by most all other companies in the business, and the price
delta has become real small. For headsets and audio panels, stereo is
the de-facto standard now. And no. 1 is really not your decision to
make, is it? It's the decision of the customer. But, if that's the way
you want to do business and it works, by all means do it.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Jose,

3: Compatibility... well, ok if you are designing entire panels (which
I assume RST is). But there are compatibility issues with mono too.
If others are producing stereo, you have the same issues.


Other companies have solved this problem to perfection with electronics
sensing whether a mono or a stereo plug is plugged in. It's a non-issue.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Have been for 33 years now. Seen a lot of them come and go. We are still
here. Must be doing SOMETHING right every now and again.

Jim




But, if that's the way
you want to do business and it works, by all means do it.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Jose wrote:

I would also point out an advantage to stereo, used properly (which I've
actually never seen)... and that is the ability to put the intercom
(mostly) in one ear while ATC is (mostly) in the other, or to put Com1
on the left and Com2 on the right (which would be a godsend when trying
to get the ATIS or monitoring CTAF while staying with ATC).

You are unlikely to see this. Tests run in the late 70s fairly conclusively
proved that people cannot listen to two conversations at one time this way; that
is, when one conversation was piped into one ear via a headset speaker and
another was piped into the other ear, the listener couldn't make sense of either
conversation. As I recall, the tests were performed using telephone headsets
(IOW, the listener was trying to listen to two telephone conversations) and were
not directly related to aircraft.

IMO, the current solution of having the intercom mute down if ATC sounds off is
much safer, and listening to both COM1 and COM2 at the same time would give you
a better chance of understanding things in your second example.

George Patterson
"Naked" means you ain't got no clothes on; "nekkid" means you ain't got
no clothes on - and are up to somethin'.

I would also point out an advantage to stereo, used properly (which I've actually never seen)... and that is the ability to put the intercom (mostly) in one ear while ATC is (mostly) in the other, or to put Com1 on the left and Com2 on the right (which would be a godsend when trying to get the ATIS or monitoring CTAF while staying with ATC).

You are unlikely to see this. Tests run in the late 70s fairly conclusively proved that people cannot listen to two conversations at one time this way; that is, when one conversation was piped into one ear via a headset speaker and another was piped into the other ear, the listener couldn't make sense of either conversation. As I recall, the tests were performed using telephone headsets (IOW, the listener was trying to listen to two telephone conversations) and were not directly related to aircraft.

Hmmm... I"ll have to try this. Did the tests compare split listening
with merged listening? Or just conclude that listening to two
conversations is hard period?

Jose
--
The price of freedom is... well... freedom.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

I'll say it is. DId you ever try to listen to your wife and your girlfriend
at the same time?

{;-)


Jim



Hmmm... I"ll have to try this. Did the tests compare split listening with
merged listening? Or just conclude that listening to two conversations is
hard period?

In a previous article, George Patterson said:
Jose wrote:
I would also point out an advantage to stereo, used properly (which I've
actually never seen)... and that is the ability to put the intercom
(mostly) in one ear while ATC is (mostly) in the other, or to put Com1
on the left and Com2 on the right (which would be a godsend when trying
to get the ATIS or monitoring CTAF while staying with ATC).
conversation. As I recall, the tests were performed using telephone headsets
(IOW, the listener was trying to listen to two telephone conversations) and were
not directly related to aircraft.

That's not a good test for this situation. The way I do it is to put the
ATIS on the overhead speakers. I'm not trying to follow two
conversations, I'm trying to get the ATIS while only paying enough
attention to the headphones to hear my call sign. When I hear my call
sign, it's simple to stop paying attention to the ATIS (or hit the speaker
button to turn it off) to hear the call, and then go back to listening to
the ATIS.

--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
The superior pilot uses his superior judgement to avoid situations in which he
has to demonstrate his superior skill.