Is your skull the best speaker? Audio Bone headphones say no
It's an intriguing idea: instead of piping sound directly into your ear so you can listen to an audio source, you can use the bones in your skull to transmit the sound. That's the concept behind the Audio Bone, an $190 set of headphones that impressed us at CES. Since your ears are free, you can listen for incoming traffic while you bike, or you can take advantage of the watertight design and go swimming with your favorite songs.
In practice however, the headphones fail to live up to the promise. Having a review sample in my home allowed me to put the Audio Bone through a more rigorous testing process, and I found that all the things that excited me about the product failed in practical use.
Firstly, I noticed that I could hear the sound very distinctly even when I wasn't wearing the headphones; playing the headset close to my ear it sounded like a normal speaker. Putting the headset on and allowing the pads to rest on the
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