Around town your intercom sounds perfect. Then you join the motorway, the speedo climbs past 100 km/h, and your riding partner starts answering every sentence with “say again?” Wind noise is the single biggest enemy of any helmet intercom, and most of it can be fixed without buying anything. Here is where it comes from and what actually helps.
Two problems, not one
Wind noise hurts an intercom in two separate ways, and it pays to work out which one you have:
- They cannot hear you. Air rushing past your microphone gets transmitted along with your voice. This is a microphone-side problem.
- You cannot hear them. The roar inside your helmet drowns out the speakers. This is a speaker-side problem.
Ask your partner which one it is. The fixes are different, and changing the wrong thing wastes a ride.
Where the noise actually comes from
At highway speed, most of what you hear is not the engine. It is turbulent air around the edges of your helmet: the chin bar, the neck opening, the visor seal and any open vents. A windscreen can make it better or worse. Set at the wrong height, it throws a stream of choppy air straight at your helmet, which is what riders call buffeting.
That matters because the microphone and speakers live exactly where that turbulence is. Calm the air around the helmet and both problems shrink.
What noise cancelling can and cannot do
Hysnox intercoms use CVC noise cancelling with DSP filtering, and every model is rated for voice communication up to 120 km/h (75 mph). The processing is very good at stripping steady background noise out of the microphone signal so your voice comes through.
What it cannot do is rebuild a voice from a microphone that is sitting in a jet of moving air. The rating assumes the microphone is in front of your mouth and the helmet is closed. Get those two right and the electronics do the rest.
Making yourself heard
- Position the microphone in front of your lips, close but not touching. A centimetre off to the side, near the chin bar opening, is enough to let the wind win. Our troubleshooting guide covers placement for full-face and modular helmets.
- If your microphone has a foam cover, keep it on. It is a wind shield, not packaging.
- Close the visor fully at speed. Even a cracked visor sends air across the microphone.
- Seal the bottom of the helmet. Air coming up through the neck opening is a major source of noise. A chin curtain, a breath guard, or simply a snug neck tube under the helmet makes a noticeable difference.
Hearing them clearly
- Centre the speakers over your ears. Helmet liners shift, and a speaker that has moved a couple of centimetres sounds thin and quiet. Re-seat them on their pads with the helmet on.
- Raise the volume in steps, not all at once. Find the lowest level where speech is clear. Maximum volume on top of loud wind is tiring on a long day.
- Try earplugs. It sounds backwards, but many riders find speech easier to follow with earplugs in. They cut the wind roar more than they cut the speaker sound, so the voice stands out. You may need to turn the intercom up a notch. Check the local rules where you ride on in-helmet speakers and earplugs.
Long hours of wind noise at speed are also hard on your hearing, intercom or not. Earplugs are worth considering for that reason alone.
The bike matters too
If your windscreen is adjustable, experiment. Raising it a little can lift the turbulent air above your helmet; lowering it can put your helmet in clean, steady air instead of the choppy edge of the airflow. Both can work, depending on your height and riding position. On a naked bike there is no screen to tune, so the helmet seal and microphone position carry all the weight.
Helmet fit counts as well. A helmet that is a size too big, or one whose liner has packed down over the years, lets air in around your face and ears. If your intercom was fine on your old helmet and struggles on the new one, the helmet is the place to look.
A ten-minute test
Pick a quiet stretch of road you can ride at different speeds and do this with your riding partner:
- Staying within the speed limit, ride at 80 km/h, then 100, then 120 where that is legal, talking at each speed. Note where it starts to break down.
- Change one thing only, such as microphone position or visor, and repeat.
- Keep the change if it helps, undo it if it does not, then move to the next item.
Changing several things at once makes it impossible to know what worked. One at a time, and most riders get clear conversation back within a couple of runs.
Still struggling?
If you have worked through the microphone, the helmet seal and the speaker position and it still falls apart at speed, contact [email protected] with your model, your helmet and the speed where it breaks up. Every Hysnox intercom carries a 12-month warranty. If you are still choosing a model, the model comparison sets the six side by side.