Industry/Military headphone suppliers and applications?

[Happy Camper]

For those who may come in contact with headphones as part of your job, who makes them and what types are they (dynamic, electrostatic, ribbon...). So long as there are no confidenciality issues, how are they used?

I was wondering who made the hps sonar techs use & field & air/space use. Of course other areas of safety, medical, police and civil communications might also be using something for it's accuracy, isolation or special application.

Martin-Logan had a bit in their electrostatic technology history statement describing the Navy's need for a better instrument for testing microphone arrays. The instrument had to be extremely accurate. Electrostatic design offered better phase and amplitude linearity. The first commercial production stat was born from this work by Arthur Janszen in 1952. In 1956, Peter Walker hit the streets with his Quad ESL and a rivalry was on.

What is used for hearing tests, astronaut helmets, diving communications?

 

[moogoob]

Bump, cause this is a very interesting topic..

 

[Duggeh]

This is an interesting avenue of investigation both with regard to current use and with regard to history. I look forward to any insights that might be gained. I doubt though, that the proportion of headphones in military use is different based on its transducer technology to headphones in civilian use. I'd guess that most are moving coil with a few electrostatics thrown in, perhaps for sonar operators on submarines or for communications engineers.

There might be use for magnetostriction headsets in special forces though, as they would mean the absolutely minimum of external noise transmission while doing away with the bulk that might be needed to keep a moving coil drivers output concealed. It'd also be easier to waterproof them.

As I say, interesting stuff.

 

[Happy Camper]

First pass yield

Army Technology - Bose Corporation - Bose Military Headsets: At Work Around the World

 

[Lad27]

Most military jet fighter pilots use dynamic closed headset with integrated mic., 600 ohms, single ended, operating in mono.

JSF (F-35) fighter pilots will have luxury of stereo headsets, 2x300 ohms, 0.5 Watts per channel. Closed, dynamic principle.

Manufacturer is not disclosed in mil-specification of these. BTW all digital audio in JSF and Raptor F-22 is handled via 1394b (Firewire) bus.

 

[Uncle Erik]

Very interesting topic.

This might be not quite on topic, but I've got a small collection of older military and commercial communications receivers and enjoy using them to pick through a number of frequencies - amateur, shortwave, aircraft, lots of stuff.

I love to use the headphones we discuss here. The DT48 digs out faint voices buried under stuff and the K-501 is quite good, as well. The rest of the headphones perform *much* better than the speakers and el cheapo headsets out there.

 

[ephrank]

This topic reminds me of the tank driver in Fahrenheit 9/11

 

[GarageBoy]

Kinda related: remember those headphones they made you use when you were a kid for hearing tests?

 

[Happy Camper]

old radio phones from 20s-30s

Headphone Gallery

 

[Aevum]

i remember someone posted about the headphones used in a helicopter, and that the responce frequencies were very limited compared to music/entertainment oriented headphone, i think its becuase they are designed to transmit the specific information while filtering the rest as much as possible, so for a pair of helicopter headphones, you would want to only convay the frequencies of human voice and try to block out the rest,

 

[Lad27]

The JSF pilot headset audio box is tested for +/-3dB flatness from 30Hz to 16kHz.

Pilots must be bassheads.

 

[Happy Camper]

Some sonar hp data.

http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTR...c=GetTRDoc.pdf

 

[Happy Camper]

Health technology claims to reverse baldness through headphones.
Reverse Hair Loss With These Headphones - Ecofriend