[Guest post by my CEO and best friend, Mark Harrison]

I have been searching literally for years for a voice-isolation, noise-canceling headset that can handle the noisy environments I have to make calls from on a daily basis. As CEO of a globally-distributed online social media company, I spend 2-8 hours a day on calls. More often than not, I am making these calls from an airport, train, restaurant, or car – or while walking from one of these to another. Wind and ambient noise has been such a part of my telephone world that my team had become convinced that I actually live in a cardboard box under an overpass somewhere.

Over the past few years, I have spent a small fortune on headsets, searching for something that would filter out the background noise and transmit only my voice. I tried countless bluetooth headsets (which did middling jobs, and gave me headaches to boot), and a pile of wired headsets (many of which blocked outside noise for me, but transmitted most all my background noise to the suffering people on the other end of the line.)

Then, about two months ago, I discovered theboom.com googling “voice-isolation headset”. I bought the V4, and it solved my problems immediately. I can be in the noisiest of environments, and the only thing anyone hears is my voice. Here is a recording I made the other day while on the autobahn on the way from Berlin to Munich, in an open convertible at 140kph while passing a deafening construction site. I was having a hard time hearing myself speak, but theBoom headset really only transmits my voice.

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The Boom headset is not cheap – the V4 consumer model I use is nearly $200 with tax and shipping, but it’s absolutely worth it to me. The only problem that I’ve had is that the plastics in the V4 have not held up well to my heavy use. The plastic around the earpiece and the ear wrap has cracked and I’ve had to re-glue the foam windscreen. I am thinking for my travel-heavy usage, I am going to have to buy the hopefully more robust “E” model.

In the meantime, I’ve bought a backup v4 for myself (which I am using now what with the first one having fallen apart), one for my girlfriend so we can talk on her morning commutes on the insanely loud BART train, and one for Chris Abraham, my business partner the lord of this site, for his similarly mobile work life. The headsets do work acoustic miracles, I could hardly recommend them more strongly.