[CQ-Contest] Advice Sought for Wireless Headsets & Mics

[David Pruett]

"even a small sidetone delay can drive one nuts"

How small?  5 mS?  You will not notice 5 mS, but 5 mS is indeed small.

I would not argue the statement "even a *noticeable* sidetone delay can 
drive one nuts", but what is noticeable?

During 30+ years in the automotive industry, we had a rule of thumb that 
anything under 100 mS couldn't be "noticed" by the human operator.  
Generally, this was as applied to momentary presses on control switches, 
which begs the observation that whether a delay is noticeable depends on 
what the reaction is referenced against.  Delays on asignal received 
over the air are not noticeable because the mind has nothing to 
reference it against.  A noticeable delay on the CW sidetone will indeed 
be noticeable to the operator.  I know - I've experienced trying to send 
CW with the sidetone passed thru a Timewave DSP filter, which is why 
they provide an input from the amp relay keying line to bypass the 
filter during transmit.

I'm not here to argue Jim's original point.  A/D & D/A conversions do 
indeed add delay, but these are pretty darn small with modern 
technology.  I might suspect that more delay is introduced through the 
transmission time of the Bluetooth signal, which is finite and limited 
by bandwidth constraints.

Without data or real life practical experience, this entire discussion 
is nothing more than speculation.

Dave,/K8CC
Retired Electronics Engineer

On 12/4/2015 2:28 PM, Michael Clarson wrote:
> Dave: The inline microphones usually sound fine (mine is on a BOSE earbud
> set) but they tend to pick up a lot of background noise. As for Bluetooth,
> typical Bluetooth has a latency delay of about 150 ms. There is special low
> latency Bluetooth of about 40 ms, which was developed so if one uses a
> Bluetooth headset to watch video, the audio and video are closer to being
> in sync. While delays of this magnitude are often tolerable on voice, if
> one runs CW, even a small sidetone delay can drive one nuts 73, Mike, WV2ZOW
>
> On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 3:02 PM, David Siddall <hhamwv at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Bose offers an in-line mic to go with the QC15 and QC25 headphones.  It's
>> intended use is for wireless phone calls.  Has anyone tried using it for
>> SSB and attained decent voice quality?
>>
>> Related Question:  does anyone have a recommendation for a BlueTooth
>> headset and microphone combo for SSB, if not the Bose?   I'm trying to go
>> more "wireless" in the shack, especially after shelling out $50+ to Heil
>> for cord replacement.
>>
>> And yes, I realize that given the recent discussion about the "assisted"
>> category, when intending to enter as a single op I will have to use the
>> BlueTooth headset and/or microphone at WiFi 2.4 GHz channel 6 or below to
>> stay within the ham allocation.  Otherwise using it may constitute
>> utilizing a non-ham frequency to solicit QSOs?  Or maybe just using
>> BlueTooth would make my entry assisted?  Or using my wireless mouse to log
>> with N1MM (which I have not forced to channel 6 or below.)  OTOH, as N3QE
>> pointed out, there can be some benefits to the assisted category ....
>> (Funny face.)
>>
>> 73,  Dave K3ZJ
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