Great question, you can definitely hear a lot more ambient information when wearing Duo, compared to all of our other IEMs. It does still provide a bit of isolation to bring down the ambient noise of an already quiet environment but definitely ambient enough to hear someone speak. To your point about speaking, yourself, the occlusion effect is greatly minimized, depending on how bass-heavy your voice is. We see it becoming a useful tool to folks broadcasting in settings like podcasts, live-streaming, video games, etc.