Everything's Better in Digital - Even Digital Communication Headsets

Digital Signal Processing technology is one of the huge growth areas in the world of technology and is now a crucial part of everybody’s lives even if we don’t know it.

Digital technology encompasses many parts of our daily lives. From powering your Internet connection to your smartphone to the new realm of digital cameras and to digital televisions, digital technology has fundamentally transformed our lives in so many ways.

The rise of digital signal processing is now enabling your high-speed 4G smartphones to deliver wired internet at lightning speeds to your handheld devices and deliver superior speech quality through high bandwidth codecs.

If it weren’t for digital technology we would all still be carrying around a ‘brick-like’ phone that would run out of charge in 20 minutes. The fact is that analog technology is now destined for the museum and the world is moving to digital at a rapid pace.

These advancements in consumer applications are now forcing the rest of the world to play catch up. This is especially true in the world of industrial communications.

Two-way radio companies for example are rapidly embracing digital technologies and their customers are realizing the benefits of these advancements in terms of improved performance and productivity.

This rapid adoption of digital communication devices has driven the development of digital communication headsets and digital hearing protection solutions.

The Advantages of Digital Communication Headsets

Digital communication headsets have some huge advantages over the traditional analog headset.

1. Digital Speech Processing

   The most important benefit is the ability to perform digital speech processing. This key feature means your headset has the ability to implement complex speech processing algorithms that increase the audibility of speech while suppressing noise.

2. Digital Signal Processor

   The digital signal processor is able to identify different noise classes and activate processing algorithms to suppress these sounds while boosting speech signals.

These features were not possible in an analog system and they have transformed the ability of headsets to deliver exceptional high noise communication in hostile industrial environments.

Digital signal processing has an important safety benefit as well. Adaptive processing can be employed to accurately measure signal levels and limit headset wearer exposure to safe levels, while still ensuring speech clarity.

Digital technology also enables digital wireless connections to your communication devices. Noise-canceling Bluetooth headsets can pair to digital smartphones and the range of digital Two-way radios for a powerful wireless Bluetooth two-way radio solution.

These wireless systems are safer and offer high speech quality interfaces that enhance the performance over traditional analog systems.

Further, digital communication headsets are configurable and reprogrammable. This means levels and processing algorithms can be adapted to specific industrial work environments and customer needs. For example, Sensear has been asked to modify the firmware in its Intrinsically Safe headset for a number of Oil and Gas customers to meet specific noise thresholds within their environments.

The Future of Industrial Communication is heading 100% Digital

As the industrial communication industry becomes 100% digital it will be even more important to keep audio signals between device and headset in the digital domain.

Every conversion from digital to analog and vice versa causes signal degradation and loss of signal fidelity. Modern digital systems keep the signal digital for as long as possible to optimize the signal-to-noise ratio and audio quality.

These advances would not be possible without digital technology and simple analog processing will soon be relegated to specialist niche applications.

The bottom line is that we as consumers live in a digital world and soon this will be the reality in the industrial communication industry.

Check out Sensear's range of communication headsets today!