Umbral Echoes Blog

This year for Christmas, my girlfriend got me a BlueAnt Q1 bluetooth headset.  Yes, I know… all girlfriends should be that awesome.  I’ve owned the BlueAnt Z9 in the past, and I liked its performance a lot, though I wasn’t too fond of its look.  Well, that same military grade noise-cancellation technology (or “voice isolation” technology as BlueAnt calls it) is present in this model, plus the voice-activated commands of their V1 headset, except in an attractive package.  Actually, it looks a lot like the Jawbone, which I’ve also owned.  I like this a lot better though.

I’ve only had it for a couple of days, but so far I give it an 9/10.  The only bad things I’ve noticed about it are minor annoyances, and some might even be fixed in the latest firmware (which I can’t upgrade to; see The Bad).  In a nutshell:

The Good

• Good audio quality, both outgoing and incoming.
• Comfortable fit.
• Noise cancellation works rather well (though I need to do some more testing). Update (Jan 1st, 2010): After further testing (windy conditions, radio blaring), same conclusion — works very well, though not perfectly of course.
• Comes (semi-)pre-charged, so that you can plug it in and go immediately upon opening the box.
• Voice commands work well (haven’t tested trying them in windy/noisy environments yet though).  Update (Jan 1st, 2010): Tried the voice commands with loud background noise going on, still works fine.
• The firmware is upgradeable, so as they fix things and come out with new features, you can get those.
• There is caller ID, or as good as it can get on a headset — it tells you which number is calling.

The Bad

• The firmware updating software isn’t yet compatible with 64-bit flavors of Windows.
• After going out of Bluetooth range for more than a few seconds, it won’t automatically re-connect when you’re back in range (you have to restart the phone).
• Whenever any audio stream cuts off, it says “call disconnected.”  This also happens when, for instance, you’re listening to a voice mail, and the voice mail ends.
• Setting up speed-dial numbers requires that you receive a call from the number you want to add.
• Charges via proprietary connector, instead of mini-USB.

These are only the things that stand out.  Its battery life is about average.  It paired up with my iPhone 3G with no problem (actually it didn’t even require the “0000″ password like older Bluetooth units do). Its weight feels about the same as a Jawbone, packaging was similar to that of a Jawbone.  Basically, it seems like they took the Jawbone, tweaked it a bit, and used their own noise cancelling technology.  Which is fine by me.

Voice Isolation Technology

This is really one of the two headliners for this unit.  The BlueAnt headsets boast background noise cancellation technology as good as that of the Jawbone.  It actually works better for me.  The Jawbone uses an induction technology — basically, it has a little nub that sits on your cheek and senses the vibrations.  However, it doesn’t have a good fit and I have a somewhat thin face, so it never rested on my cheek… which meant that unless I used one hand to hold it there, it wouldn’t pick up my voice and I was effectively on mute.

The Q1 uses a different strategy.  It has 2 microphones, one facing your mouth and the other facing outward.  I’m not 100% sure of the details, but my engineering mind imagines it works thusly.  First, it boosts noises that are significantly louder on the primary microphone (that faces your mouth) than the outward-facing one.  Second, it filters out frequencies that are outside of the human vocal range.  Third, it precisely times the difference between when a sound reaches the two microphones.  Using this time difference, it can tell the general direction of where the sound came from, and can therefore filter out sounds that don’t come from the direction of your mouth.

With a previous BlueAnt (the Z9), I was once in O’Hare airport talking to a friend, trying to coordinate transportation.  She said that she couldn’t hear me because of the background noise, and I realize I’d forgotten to turn on the voice isolation.  So I turned it on, and her response was, “Wow.  It sounds like you just walked into a quiet room.”  I’ve also tested while walking by a construction worker using a loud saw, in traffic, etc.  This technology does what it says.

Below is a test I ran by calling my own voicemail.  With the voice isolation on max, I did still notice a bit of background noise from the music vocals, probably from the speaker that was right in front of my face, but the unit still did a very admirable job.

Yes, I am playing the Numa Numa song in that test.

Voice Recognition

This is the main shtick of this headset. When you first turn it on, it walks you through some instructions telling you how to pair it up, and how to use it.  You really never do need to even look at the instruction book.  When someone calls you, you can say “answer” to answer it, or “ignore” to ignore it.  (You can also do this via the headset’s buttons as a failsafe.)

Before giving any voice command, press the multifunction button once and it will prompt you for a command.  If you want to go into pairing mode, say “pairing mode.”  If you want to dial the 4th number in your phone’s speed-dial, say “speed dial 4.” If you want to check the battery,  say “check battery” and it’ll tell you the status (high/medium/low) of the headset, and of the phone.  And whenever you give an instruction, it confirms which instruction you gave it, which is nice.

And if you’re not sure what you can say, just ask, “What can I say?” and it will tell you.

All of the voice commands have worked spectacularly for me, with a few caveats.  First, I haven’t tried them in noisy or windy environments.  Second, you do have to remember the voice commands, or it will misinterpret you.  If you say “battery status” instead of “check battery,” no telling which command it’ll do.  Actually, for me that makes it activate the phone’s in-built voice commands (of which the iPhone 3G has none).

Other Stuff

The overall design of this unit is nice.  The multi-function button depresses easily but with a nice click letting you know you’ve pressed it.  The volume buttons are easy to feel by touch and press, and you get auditory feedback as to which way you’ve turned the volume.  It comes with a variety of ear buds and an optional ear hook, so you can customize your fit.  You can pair it with multiple phones simultaneously, so if you have one work phone and one personal phone you can answer calls from either on it.

Conclusion

I recommend this headset for anyone who needs good background noise cancellation, and anyone who doesn’t like having to remember what pressing a button for 3 seconds vs. 6 seconds does.  If you just need a basic headset though, I recommend getting something cheaper — I’ve always had good luck with the Plantronics Voyager series, myself.

First off, let me say that I’ve only been in one Google Wave gaming session so far, and have seen a few other sessions.  So I haven’t done very in-depth or broad testing of this stuff.  Also, Google Wave itself is evolving — it’s still in beta, so I’m not going to talk about bugs, or technical issues that I’m sure will be hammered out.

My friend and former coworker Justin Achilli is running a 3.5 D&D game via Google Wave, as an experiment in its viability for online roleplay.  He’s shared his own thoughts, and I’d like to share a few of mine from a player’s perspective.

So, from my perspective, so far I’m getting exactly what I expected.   It’s somewhat of a mix of playing via live chat (of which I have several years experience on White Wolf’s now-defunct moderated chats) and play-by-post, with most of the advantages and disadvantages therein.   I’ll list some below, and again, I’m going to refrain from putting any disadvantages down that I expect to be addressed (e.g. it’s still fairly slow and has the occasional glitch).

Advantages (compared to tabletop)

• It’s easier to schedule.  No transit time to/from; just log in and bam, you’re in game.
• When a player misses a session, the playback feature makes it easy for them to get caught up.
• It’s possible to narrate aspects of your character’s actions in more stylish detail.
• It’s easier to have secret side-conversations where necessary (no passing of notes or leaning over and whispering).
• There’s a complete record of each session, which game masters or payers can look back on (or search) if they’ve forgotten something.
• It’s possible for several people to type simultaneously without the “talking over one another” effect you get in real life.
• It allows you to multitask without being distracting to others.

Disadvantages

• Hell of a lot slower-going than tabletop for character interaction.
• Even slower than that for combat — and the more crunchy the combat, the slower it is.
• More impersonal.
• Can’t use things like mood music/lighting to set the mood (though it would be easy to use a third-party app to stream a playlist).

Overall I prefer tabletop, but I do like online mediums (including Wave) as an option if tabletop isn’t.   I think Wave offers some advantages over both chat-based and PbM/PbP play as well — it’s the best of both worlds when talking about those two options.  I also think Wave is better for more story-centric games/systems than crunchy games, but I’m sure that there will be a number of plugins (or “robots” as Wave calls them) for that sort of thing.  There are already some robots for things like dice rolling, maps, and other such things.  I’m excited to see what can and will be done.