Sena intercom, anybody done a speaker upgrade?

shedracer

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Anybody with a Sena intercom, particularly the ones with fixed wired ear speakers, changed the speakers to better quality ones? I’m wanting to improve the speakers on my shoei SRL and my Tour X4 10U, so any recommendations would be much appreciated. :thumb2
 
I haven’t changed mine but you would be amazed at how crap they sound if they are even slightly in the wrong place. Mine were driving me mad until I spent a bit of time faffin around with the placement and when they are bang on I can hear them perfectly over ear plugs and wind noise. May not ne the answer you were looking for but worth a try in case your dumping them because of the sound quality
 
I have just ordered a set of Iasus XSound 2.1 speakers to replace my OE Sena ones.

My Sena is a 20S and the speakers were OK when well placed, but not great quality.
One of them failed, so rather than replace with the same again I did some web research for a upgrade that's a reasonable price/performance and the XSounds look like they will do the job.

Am picking them up while on a work trip to US so won't be able to report on the difference until early Feb if you can hand on a few weeks?
 
Thanks for the comments guys, I’m after better sound and volume, but the issue with the SRL and 10U units, is the speakers cannot be disconnected, the wires will need to be cut and soldered. As far as I know, the 20S has a jack plug for other speakers. SPL, keep us posted on the Iasus XSound 2.1’s please.
 
Anybody with a Sena intercom, particularly the ones with fixed wired ear speakers, changed the speakers to better quality ones? I’m wanting to improve the speakers on my shoei SRL and my Tour X4 10U, so any recommendations would be much appreciated. :thumb2
I replaced the Sena speakers with Iasus ones. Simple fit/ replacement on the Evo 20s. Is the sound better? TBH at 70mph with earplugs in it's not exactly like a concert in The Royal Albert Hall...
Probably a tiny bit better than the Sena ones but not necessarily worth the expense...

Sent from my BLA-L09 using Tapatalk
 
This might be worth considering. Say’s you can use with other brands.

[video]https://www.cardosystems.com/shop/45mm-audio-set/[/video]
 
Andy, those look interesting, but the Sena 10U and SRL don’t have 3.5 jack socket. The speakers are hardwired in, to fit them, you’d have to cut the wires and solder them together.

I’d like a boost in clarity and volume at speed, if at all possible.
 
I'm looking for the same with my 10U, basically more volume to overcome good earplugs. The speaker side of any Bluetooth device is still traditional electrics so should essybenough to splice something in. I have a set of Ultimate Ear speaker/earplugs which would work with a 20S but can't use them with my 10U, to be honest though they're no where near as comfy as foam protection on extended rides.
 
This might be worth considering. Say’s you can use with other brands.

[video]https://www.cardosystems.com/shop/45mm-audio-set/[/video]

I upgraded to these on my cardo packtalk slim - £84 and although slightly better than the standard headphones not worth the money.
I think in ear headphones are way better quality and no wind / road noise.
 
Just an alternative thought .... when I first purchased my Ultimate Ear ear buds I was using them with an Autocom SPA and plugged into an Autocom specific comms lead, interestingly plugging the ear buds in didn't cut the sound from the helmet speakers. This meant I'd got hearing protection, in-ear speakers giving very clear spoken voice and music higher frequencies, and also the bass and warmth provided by the in-helmet speakers, this was by far the best sound and volume I've had ever in any helmet setup.

It's very difficult to retain sound clarity when using hearing protection and there's a lot of background noise, I'm tempted to splice in a connector to my 10U speaker cables to take the ear buds (in parallel) but I'm not sure how the Sena unit would handle the speaker impedance change, I'm not great on electronics so not sure whether there's a work-around for this.
 
Bobbins, in ear speakers are definitely the best way to go, if you can do this. As you concur, the 10u as well as the SRL can’t do this, if they could, thats what i would do. I have some old ultimate ear buds with speakers, which i could try, but as i know little about electrics, don’t want to kill my SRL or 10U.

I wonder if there’s someone that knows more about this subject, who could confirm whether a 3.5mm socket could be plumbed into the speaker wire, without wreaking the unit.
 
A good quality 3.5mm socket spliced in on a small lead would be perfect, easy to tuck up into the bottom of the helmet once plugged in.
Even better would be a BT version of the earbuds like with the latest Apple iPhone, but I suspect that's a long way of!
 
I looked into this some months ago, and found the following

Headphones to non 3.5 jacked units

As described, a 3.5 female stereo plug can be spliced into the output wires to the exsisting speakers

Pros

You can within reason, use any aftermarket bud/ monitor you wish - but be aware the huge quad driver unit that looks good in the picture, atually sticks out of yourr ear by 50mm ;)


Cons
Modern spacesaving headphone cables now ony use one wire to carry the the 3 required signals

L , R & Ground - This is achieved by resin / enamel coating the individual wires before wrapping .

This makes resoldering a pain, as you need to remve this coating before the wires will resolder

as the wires are so small, they destroy themselves easier than removing coating!

If you do get a 3.5 jack soldered in, you then need to locate it somewhere dry and away from water ingress / tucking it into your neck / back of the helmet, isnt the most comfiest place lol

3.5mm jacked units

Thankfuly a lot easier, just put your buds in .. job done


Audio quality 1

Unless the buds, monitors come with expanding foam tips, you will get noise bleed from the exterior of the helmet with the std rubber tips, this can be wind and engine noise.
on non expanding foam tipped buds, they are rendered usless over 30 mph

Audio quality 2

So youve splurged couple of hundred quid on some all singing, dancing, bass enhancing 20Hz - 20000Khz killer buds.. matched the speaker impedance ( because you read up on it ;))

plumbed them in, and they sound awesome.

But the battery life of your unit has halved ..


Fact of life i'm afraid.

The 40 hrs battery time quoted by the manufacturer, is derived from playing in an anchoic chamber at half volume playing some middle of the road monotone tyrolean folk song.

Driving a boggo standard single driver bud

Give it Rammstein at volume 11 throug a 3 driver bud, and it will be 20 hrs or less. Those bass drivers need power, lots of it lol! Coupled with the mid and soaring treble drivers, Nav &

phone dutys mean somthings got to give ....


yup, your headset battery,


You could look at the flat speakers in the helmet.. and there are some gains to be made here

Position

Are the speakers inline with your ears ...

sounds daft, but helmets along with most mass produced stuff, are set up to cover the 90th percentile

Which means they will be ok for 90% of wearers, if your not in the 90% then they aint going to work properly.

so the speaker centres, may be nowhere near your ears, so a simple adjustment may be all thats needed.

That said, if there miles off, theres nothing to stop ypu carefuly, and at your own risk, removeing some of the polystyrene, and relocating the speakers.

Distance to your ears

Now i cant explain the maths behind this and if you can, then go for it ;)

But again, the speakers are mounted in a recess in the helmet, which is some way away from your ears,

This is to give the ears some space to sit, and ensure there not compressed by the helmet / speakers

However they could be a country mile away. by moving the speakers closer to your ears, will give noticable gains in loudness

without having to increase the volume . You can often just add an additional pad behind the original speaker that came in the original kit


As a last resort, there are better drive units out there ,

The supplied ones are built to a price / profit point for the oem, not you.

So cutting edge and efficient, they prolly wont be.

But by changing them to some efficient and better quality units. coupled with the positioning tips should see bigger gains

NB caveat 2 wil apply (soldering ) ;)
 
Excellent post, thanks for the info. Certainly plenty to be thinking about!
 
A good quality 3.5mm socket spliced in on a small lead would be perfect, easy to tuck up into the bottom of the helmet once plugged in.
Even better would be a BT version of the earbuds like with the latest Apple iPhone, but I suspect that's a long way of!

They allrady exsist, but the cons are

Power,

Bluetooth needs power, and to drive a bluetooth emmitter needs a lot of power.

i had a plug in blutooth unit in round 2 or 3. it couldnt supply enough amplitude to keep the headphones running. they ran out of steam at 30mph

you need efficent drivers with lots of power
 
Its entirely possible to do it.
I have a number of these units and will be doing it on one to start with.
The decision is to look at putting the two leads into a single socket as a lead and tuck it away OR see if theres enough room to open it up and have a pcb socket internally in an OEM fashion.
 
3.mm jack

https://advrider.com/f/threads/sena-srl-ear-plug-mod.1330618/

see above link for one method of adding a 3.5mm jack.
There are others I've seen online, one guy has done extensive testing with other speakers and mini amplifiers, etc.
see this:
https://forums.bmwmoa.org/showthread.php?90987-So-you-want-LOUD-helmet-speakers

as a fairly new user of the SRL in a Neotec II, I've been a bit disappointed with the sound, mainly the low volume, hence my investigation into some improvements, certainly the speaker socket is too far away from my ears and in the wrong place.
I've yet to try any of the above things but have moved the speakers which makes things better, but am still seeking improvement.
 


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