Bose has always held a place at the top end of noise-canceling headsets, with a history dating back to 1989. The company has been virtually silent in the aviation arena for the past 12 years, resting on the continuing strong sales of their Headset X. But even the Bose devotees have been getting restless due to the lack of auxiliary music input and a Bluetooth connectivity for phones (to be used, uh, on the ground only, of course). All the while, Lightspeed Aviations Zulu has been steadily increasing its dominance in the premium headset market by offering active noise reduction (ANR) on par or exceeding that of the Bose, along with music and phone connectivity. At Oshkosh of this year, Bose answered with the new Bose A20. Except for the basic design of the headband, this is an entirely new design, bringing some of the technology from Boses consumer headsets to aviation-and finally offering the music and phone connections.
New Mics, New Speakers
Bose claims the new headset is quieter and more comfortable than the quite-capable Headset X. Trying them side by side at the Bose demo theatre and in the airplane, wed have to agree. The new earcup design addresses a common complaint that the Headset X was too narrow for big ears. Our big-eared editor confirms this is fixed in the A20. The headset is also noticeably lighter. Even though the clamping force is the same as the Headset X, the new earcups and the new foam pads distribute the force better, so it feels less tight.
The new ANR system employs two mics on each earcup (four mics total) to sense cabin noise and create the cancellation signal to squelch that noise for the pilot. There has always been a mic on the inside of the earcup, to sense sound right at the pilots ear, but now there’s also one on the outside of the earcup to sample cabin noise directly. We played with switching headsets between a Headset X and the A20, as we’ll as covering the external mic. We didnt detect a significant difference with low-end engine noise and vibration, but the new system seemed better at blocking high-end whines and whistles.
Bose points to new electronics that process this two-point sample to create a better noise canceling profile, and new speakers they developed that have a dynamic response sensitive enough to actually reproduce that profile as sound (maybe anti-sound is better term). Bose politely declined to give us any further details of these steps.
In addition to the terrific ANR, the headset sound quality for speech and music is flawless. But thats pretty much what youd expect from Bose. As with the previous Bose headset, with a screwdriver and a few minutes work, you can switch the boom mic from the left side of the headset to the right.
New Controller
The A20 has an entirely new controller to handle the added functions. While not dwelled on by Bose, we were big fans of the new volume controls. The curved wheels are easy to control as a pair or individually, and with great precision, all with one thumb. The wheels are guarded by plastic sides so the volume never changes accidentally, either.
Power for the ANR and activation of the Bluetooth are controlled by separate buttons. Pairing of your phone to the Bluetooth is the usual drill of push and hold a button on the headset and then enter the pairing passcode on the phone. We had a moment of trouble testing it as the headset jumps immediately into pairing mode the first time Bluetooth is used. Once we figured it out, it worked fine. There’s also a convenient system to clear stored pairings if need be.
A nice touch with the A20 is a sidetone when you make calls. This means you can hear your own voice as you speak and it helps keep you from shouting at the briefer youre calling from the cockpit.
The A20s Bluetooth only supports the headset protocol, though. It wont pair with