As Sprocker says, yes, Bluetooth intercom is your best bet. Even just a cheap one off eBay. Critical thing is placement of the ear pieces in relation to your ear canals as well as having them just 'brush' your ears. These placement tips will make all the difference in audibility of instructions over wind noise once your up to decent road speed, especially on motorways/autoroute. I've used this advice after being disappointed with an Autocom system years ago before properly reading and following their extensive instructions on just this point. It made a night and day difference. It obviously applies across all headsets with in helmet speakers. Earbuds remove the ability the wear earplugs, which work well in conjunction with correctly placed headset speakers. You can get custom earplugs with built in monitors and these combined with a Bluetooth receiver might work well. Alternatively regular earbuds with Comply noise atenuating tips also work but you do have the problem with putting a helmet on dragging on the wires and displacing them.
They are big but not that big. Wasn't sure whether you could see enough on the screen to not need intercom.
So with helmet speakers you can still wear earplugs and hear. Do you need special earplugs or can you use those E.A.R yellow ones? Any recommendations for cheap bluetooth intercoms
Yes, I ride with earplugs and headset. Intercom has to be on high volume but perfectly audible at up to 80mph. Can still hear instructions OK at faster speeds with the std. screen, but with Jamie's Spacers, on the high setting on my Multistrada. Music, which I only play on long motorway stretches anyway, tends to loose significant fidelity at 80+ I've used this with various brands of earplugs. The Howard Leight orange MAX plugs, my previous favorite with a high SNR34 rating, worked fine. I now use the E.A.R Earsoft FX ones (fluro yellow) and these work equally well. The key is having the speakers both aligned centrally with your ear canals as well as close as possible to your ears without being uncomfortable. I had to make dense foam and velcro spacers to achieve this. That extra effort with the install makes all the difference at higher, real world, speeds. Around town at lower speeds its less critical. I now use a Sena 10U, quite dated but works well both for GPS but also bike to bike. Previously used one if these which also worked well in both roles (bought a twin set, split with my touring buddy) but that had issues switching between GPS and bike to bike. The main thing I value about the Sena 10U is that it's all inside the shell of my helmet which helps prevent any additional wind noise from having a 'wart' on the outside of the shell close to my ear. Also protects it from damage. My touring buddy now has the same. Bike to bike maxes out at around 1km line of sight which is fine if there's two of you or a small group.
Think I'll give the cheap ebay headset a go and see how I get on as I only want it for sat nav. Looks like there is a bit of trial and error getting the location of the speakers right.
