We use helmet headsets with permanently mounted speakers in microphones. No earplugs.
We have the Advance Unit.
The VOX is on and I'm not sure about the 'side tone' feature. Hate to admit it but I'm not even sure what that is. I'll check.
OK, one problem is the VOX. It sucks on the Starcom1 advance and it really makes life miserable because it keeps cutting any background noise or music on and off. Try turning that off completely. You accomplish that just by adjusting the VOX control knob CCW to the minimum setting.
Sidetone is the feature that allows you to hear yourself in your own ear speakers when you speak. It also allows you to hear any wind noise that your own microphone picks up, as well as your pillion's. It is enabled or disabled via the dip switches inside the starcom1 advance case. You'll have to slide the circuit board out of the case to get at them. The default is off, so if you've never played with them it should already be off. There is a separate VOX disable switch for the sidetone, also a dip switch, also factory defaults to off.
Next issue is going to be that you aren't wearing any earplugs, so the wind noise inside of your helmets (even without the starcom1) is approaching the hearing damaging threshold. You probably have to have the volume control set relatively high just to hear each other over the helmet wind noise. I know that this may seem counter-intuitive, but when you wear a good set of earplugs you can actually hear the intercom (and any other sounds coming through the Starcom) much better over the helemt wind noise. By attenuating all of the low frequency wind noise your hearing will better be able to perceive the higher frequencies of voices and music. I know wearing earplugs is a PITA, but it really does work that way. You might want to give that a try.
We wear the maximum available attenuating foam earplugs religiously (Howard Leight Max 33dBa). I have my starcom1 volume set to the half way mark, and I can easily carry on a conversation with my passenger at any speed, even with the music playing. With the VOX turned off the music, GPS or phone call just keeps right on playing and you hear the passenger intercom right over it.
Nearly forgot one more important setting: Microphone sensitivity. Setting it to mid scale usually works best. The microphones each have an automatic gain circuit that reduces the volume of anything that is picked up until it reaches a certain threshold. Think of this like a squelch control on a CB radio. Increasing the sensitivity actually lowers the squelch threshold, so if the sensitivity is set too high the mikes will unsquelched all the time and you'll hear a lot of wind noise.
If you are still hearing a lot of wind noise all of the time from your passenger, try lowering the passenger mike sensitivity. When you lower the sensitivty too much when your passenger speaks you won't be able to hear them very well as it will stay squelched. Also need to adjust the driver's sensitivity based on how much noise your passenger is hearing from you.
Which reminds me... make sure that your microphones are located properly, out of any wind flow, etc. other wise you might not be able to find a point in the sensitivity where her voice will unsquelch the AGC, but the wind noise will not.
Good luck on making it all work.
The reason I am still using a Starcom and not some fancy bluetooth headsets is that there are still (and probably always will be) issues with all bluetooth intercoms. For one thing, bluetooth is completely priority based and will not mix sounds from the various connected devices. So, as an example, if I want to talk to my passenger I won't hear the GPS. Or if you manage to get a radar detector paired to your headset and the thing starts beeping, you won't hear the other sounds.
>>>> Correction!! Thanks to Niehart for pointing this out to me.
There has been some breakthrough changes in how the Sena SMH10 operates on it's latest 4.0 firmware update. It appears that these headsets can now pair to multiple devices and mix the audio to some extent. This could be a big game changer IMO. Now I need to go off and do some studying on these new changes.
Here's a
link
