I’m looking for the best pair of 2 way radios that are loud, crisp, and easy to use for lube shop communication
Do they already wear hearing protection? If so just replace one ear with an IEM style mould or expanding foam seal.
What are you trying to accomplish with the radios? Lets start there and then maybe we can help you find the radio for your needs.
I work on bottom in the pit, I wear an earpiece. The manager I need to communicate with cannot wear an earpiece. When I talk it’s very garbled. I hear him great. Using Walmart special Midland walkies now. We have fans and compressor background noise. Just looking for a better quality and louder sound from walkie speaker.
Sounds like your earpiece proves that part of the solution is distance between speaker and ear. Distortion on comms gear can be high when volume is increased, but the workshop noise also gets into the transmitted audio. Headsets are a pain to wear, but some consist of lightweight single side with a boom getting the mic to the corner of your mouth. You say the other guy cannot wear an earpiece? Then he’s stuck. Best you can do is try a few different radios and see if any suit him? Bigger radios often have better tone.
First, what specific model(s) of Midlands are you using in your shop? Midland sells FRS, GMRS, CB and Business radios via retail, so knowing that will help in determining your options.
Second, there is no doubt that professional grade radios for business typically have more powerful speakers and circuitry built into them for better audio in noisy environments than consumer radios.That’s just a given, and one reason why they cost more. Having said that, if you are using Midland FRS or GMRS radios, there are a couple of radios available that are pro grade. These are the Wouxun KG-805F and KG-905G, the latter of which is rated IP66 for dust and water protection, but requires a GMRS license to use. They do cost a little more, but they are both much more durable for shop use and have excellent speakers.
Third, and this is the most important to consider, as paulears mentioned, even the best speakers around are going to be limited in an extremely loud environment, simply because the natural properties of sound in an a localized area, particularly in a single open space within a structure, do not allow for isolation of individual noises, or prevent such ambient noise to feed into the mic and back out to the speakers of the other radios. In other words, one loud noise is just going to mix with the other loud noises and add more noise to the cacophony. It doesn’t matter if you’re listening to a two way radio or music from a boom box. If you want to hear a specific sound, there must be a way to isolate it from the other noise in the environment. For this reason, your manager really does need an earpiece, headset, bone induction mic and earpiece combo, or something to filter out the rest of the ambient noise. There is really no getting around that.