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