Best dual-ear/headphone-style Bluetooth w/boom-mic

Illegal to have headphones on in most states. The will allow a one ear bluetooth device.

 

Whatever.

Personally I would think that they could be a great idea for teams.

 

Why would you want to cover both of your ears while driving a semi?

 

Being an Audiophile (someone not old enough to be into HiFi but too old to be into i-anything), trying to listen to just one ear bud is horrible. However, without a doubt there is an earnest safety issue of driving while having both ears covered. I had this problem at my work (I work in a cube farm) because they did not wish me to have my ears covered with headphones. Said I couldn't hear a fire alarm if it went off. However, at least on a laptop or regular computer, there was an easy fix. I plugged a microphone into the mic jack of my computer and added it to the mix. Now, I listen to my music the way I would like to and still hear what is going on around me, including a fire alarm. The only 'loss' is that I do not hear any directional info. I can hear the noises around me at work, but I have no idea which direction they are coming from. I think my boss was a little miffed by my solution and I had him put on the headphones and hear for himself that I could hear what was going on around me. But, he reluctantly allowed me to continue to listen to my music through my headphones.

btw, my brain works kind of weird. Often times my brain will be going in a bunch of different directions at the same time and music helps me to focus on the task at hand. I do analytical type work which requires significant concentrating on my task at hand. They like my work and what I am able to produce, so they let me 'get away' with this even though I think they would prefer I didn't. My listening to music at work isn't a distraction, it is a focusing tool that works for me.

I am not sure how this set-up could be accomplished in a truck, but I'm sure it could be. As for legality and some who think that listening to music (or an audiobook) while driving is an unprofessional activity, I'm not going to try and justify or argue. I merely wanted to point out that there is a way to be able to hear background sounds, like emergency vehicles, while still being able to listen through headphones. Simply add a microphone into the mix somehow. However, you while you would be able to hear an emergency vehicle, you would not be able to tell which direction it is in while the headphones are on.

 

The problem is that the Bluetooth spec does not allow three audio streams to operate at once. So, no stereo audio while the microphone is active.

There may be a headset out there that can switch between A2DP (headphone) and HSP (headset) profiles on the fly, but good luck with phone compatibility.