The A20 has individual volumes but no inbuilt squelch. The main thing (which may be what you are seeing) is that if one person has a Bose and another a traditional type headset, the intercom / RT volume may need some tweaking to get something that is balanced for both crew. Often I find that I have juggle volume down on my Bose when examining people who have got weird settings on intercom/RT to get decent reception on their cheap club headset.
Does any headset have squelch, on either the mike or the speakers?
AFAIK all headsets feed the mike straight out, and feed the speakers straight out.
ANR headsets have a mike in each earcup, and the speaker is driven to attempt to cancel out the low frequency components of the noise. This needs some input from the incoming audio signal because you don’t want to be cancelling that out. I could be wrong; they may be driving the speakers fully via their own amp, but I think that is unlikely since you would need much more power and the batteries would not last long.
Squelch is implemented in the intercom (audio panel).
I always fly with all headset volume controls set to the minimum, and use the radio knobs to set the volume. I think one issue with instructing and such is that a lot of planes don’t have an intercom (with a separate amp for each headset) but instead drive all the headsets in parallel, which is likely to produce poor results. All the planes I trained in were like that.
They are not missing intercom calls but ATC – but will spend more time on ensuring intercom volumes are balanced.
Too cheap to upgrade to A20 or the new noise cancelling David Clark’s.
I think the same issue occurs with the radio. The radio only has one volume control and what is ok for one person may be too quiet for the other, based on their different headsets.
I often find that with one noise-canceling and one not, a bit of adjustment is required to reach a point that works for all.
