Organization: Green Hills and Cows
Subject: Re: Telecom Peeves
Date: 14 Jul 90 12:47:25 PDT (Sat)
From: John Higdon <john@bovine.ati.com>

roy@phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) writes:

> The problem is room noise picked up in the mouthpiece
> and heard through my earpiece (is sidetone the right term for that?)
> If I cup my hand over the mouthpiece, I can hear fine, but that's a
> real drag.  I think what I want is a push-to-talk handset, but havn't
> been able to fine any.  Any suggestions?

Push-to-talk is a common way of dealing with this, but there is
another known as the "confidencer". It is a special network that
eliminates sidetone so that noise entering through the mouthpiece
won't be heard in the earpiece. Yet another method is to obtain a
"noise cancelling" mouthpiece. These are relatively easy to find to
fit the standard (pre "K" style) handsets.

> Do double-hearing people
> find that noise in the non-phone ear is a real problem, or does the
> brain automatically just filter it out?

The brain filters it out. It is very amusing to watch people in a
noisy location jamming a finger in the opposite ear. That technique
does little good when the real problem is noise entering through the
mouthpiece. At one of my transmitter sites, there is a standard phone
that I have been too lazy to modify. When making calls in the noisy
room, covering my other ear has virtually no effect on
intelligibility, but cupping my hand over the mouthpiece makes all the
difference in the world.


        John Higdon         |   P. O. Box 7648   |   +1 408 723 1395
    john@bovine.ati.com     | San Jose, CA 95150 |       M o o !