If it’s the latter, you then have to worry about forgetting you’re connected when you get off the bike. You have to unzip the tank bag and grab the battery and the device. Again, an extension cable could help here. Sound Quality I’m not sure why this is, but I suspect it has to do with the difficulty in measuring and producing such high frequencies with sufficient precision and speed. I’m not even sure most tiny earphone drivers can handle the power necessary to produce noise-cancelling sound waves of sufficient amplitude to effectively cancel the loud road noise motorcyclists are exposed to at highway speeds. I suspect that, when combined with active noise-cancelling technology, would accomplish a lot for us motorcyclists.

The system takes about 1 second to switch on and off, and I don’t know if this is correct or if it’s the switch that isn’t quite engaging fast enough. That, and after 7 continuous days of riding with them in and the ear pain that created taught me a lesson: helmet speakers in conjunction with standard foam earplugs. But I’m certainly not blown away by the sound quality of the Bose system. It’s OK — better than most earbuds — but not superlative, in my opinion. The Bose are way, way ahead of other manufacturers in dampening ambient noise, particularly the lower frequencies (the realm of active noise cancellation). I would guess that the Bose QC20 system is probably designed primarily for sound environments like those found in an airplane or normal street use and not for motorcycle use.

So, the cancelling wave might not perfectly cancel the offending wave even if it makes it there in time.

Then there is another reason to use them for music on the bike and that is the total amount of sound for your poor ears. As you can see, there are probably many hurdles to overcome before getting such a product to market.During testing, we get mixed results. When it works well, the sound does appear to raise itself out of your head, so to speak. It feels like there is a greater sense of spaciousness, and it does feel like the music is coming at you from a slightly different, more immersive angle. There’s a switch on the side of the 7 mm thin battery (it’s 91 mm long by 28.5 mm wide) to turn the noise cancelling system on or off. It’s also possible that earphone driver design will have to mature to be able to produce SPLs high enough to cancel the high noise levels found in a motorcycle helmet. But you may be better off simply using a motorcycle Bluetooth intercom system and connecting your cell phone or music player with the Bluetooth intercom headset.