A tangential work thought inspired me to pick up a pair of bone conducting headphones to test out for cycling. I've always wanted to ride with music in a safe manner, but never found earbuds a safe option. Too much ambient noise is suppressed.
If you don't know what bone conduction headphones are, here's an article explaining what they are:
I picked up a pair of bone conducting headphones off craigslist and tested them out on a windy day to see how well they worked. Here's a video of my review:
TL;DR: They do an adequate job, but I'm having difficulties with the volume.
My biggest gripe is not the sound quality, but the loudness of the device. If we look at bone conducting transducers like this one found on adafruit:
you'll see that the transducer response is ~similar to what you would find in a conventional audio earphone.*
I thought perhaps the impedance was too high and not matched to the transducer driver properly, but that's unlikely. More likely, the device contact to the cheekbone may not be ideal. The transducers are retained on your cheekbone by a band that sits below your earline. Variations in the fit can cause a exponential drop off of power transmitted through the cheekbone to the cochlea. Even opening and closing your jaw can cause the audio to drop off.
I still have some fiddling to do with the device and maybe a couple more days of testing. I'll probably get the wireless versions and update the blog.
*some caveats with this statement, like transmission medium, power usage, etc.
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