Important Set-up Tips

The basic principle of an intercom is a microphone, amplifier and speaker. (of course phones and transceivers are just wireless extensions of the system and usually interface into the main control box with other inputs such as music).

The microphone picks up the sound of your voice and the amplifier amplifies it to the speakers. The problem with this type of basic system is that the microphones usually also pick up all the helmet noise and amplifies that too, adding to the helmet noise, making it much louder, resulting in the need for more amplification to hear the speech, but of course having a volume control to be able to turn this up also amplified the unwanted helmet noise. Catch 22. And why we do not fit a volume control. Our systems are set to the optimum level and so any adjustments won't help, other than to compensate for incorrect set-up and use, resulting in poor performance.

The basic fact is that you need a very special microphone combined with specially designed filters and speakers that are tuned and matched to the system. (A race car cannot win races with just the best engine alone, it also needs the best brakes, chassis, tires and of course the all important driver.)

Autocom have designed and provided all but the good driver bit, and so now all we need do is help you understand how to set-up and use our systems properly.

I think that a good explanation that I often use is, if a microphone can pick up the sound of your voice when it is away from your mouth, then of course it can also pick up any sound in between, i.e. helmet noise. Therefore one can expect a system not to work at higher speeds if the microphone can pick your voice up away from the mouth.

Autocom's high tech microphones effectively do not pick up any sound, or very little, when away from your mouth and so if not used correctly can effectively cut out the sound of the users voice along with the undesirable helmet noise that they are designed to not pick up. The solution is to find and use the microphone's LOUD SPOT, as everything's been carefully balanced and tuned to this. Not doing this results in customers thinking and claiming that it's not loud enough? Which of course it won't be if not used correctly.

Obviously if you want the best sound out of the speakers, you need to get them directly over your ears, as if you were holding them there. This helps provide the speaker sound to the ears, in front of the helmet noise. Moving the speakers away from the ears allows the powerful helmet noise to over power the speaker sound, often resulting in low volume" issues. You should test the system out of the helmet before installation, with speech (using the microphone's loud spot) and preferably also with good quality music so that you have a good understanding of just how good it can be at its best.

You should find that when set-up and used this way that it is extremely good, although slight losses can be expected in a helmet, especially at higher speeds/noise, it should easily perform as we claim and provide clear speech at almost any speed, exceeding most users expectations, especially if they have used other systems.