Nothing Bose makes is audiophile quality. The take outdated design, use
ultra cheap materials, and market to people who fall for the pseudo
science talk. A dead cat sounds better and is better made.

--
Will Brink @ http://www.brinkzone.com/

What a line of horse shit!


Now, THERE'S the truth. Amar Bose developed one of the leading fraud
houses of audio. People with ANY knowledge base at all laugh at
anything with the Bose label. Want to know where he got the idea for
the ill sounding 901? Look back in a 1948 issue of Radio magazine at
their article about the "sweet sixteen" homebrew speaker, where a guy
fills up a box with 16 cheap 4" speakers rather than spend the money
on a good 15" driver. Some guys at Hammond Organ Corporation read
that same article and loaded up a tombstone shaped box full of cheap
10" drivers rather than use good 15"s, and got similarly horrid
results back in late 1948. Of course, the premise didn't work in '48,
didn't work when the 901 was introduced, and doesn't work now. And
remember....

"Got no highs? Got no lows! Only midrange....MUST BE BOSE!"

dB

This was a joke. Sarcasm does not read well on Usenet.


The "Sweet 16" article actually appeared in Popular Electronics in the early
'60s, at least five years before the 901 hit the market.

The gestation of the 901 was via the 2201, an attempt to produce a "perfect
point-source" speaker. Dr. Thomas Stockham, the founder of Soundstream, worked
with Dr. Bose on the design, providing digital signal processing that "proved" a
properly equalized (???) array of drivers could subjectively reproduce sound in
a way that was indistinguishable from a perfect * point source at the same
position in the listening room. There's a Web article explaining the design
process, but I can't find the URL. This is the closest I can find...

http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/stockham.html

Only a few 2201s were sold. (Julian Hirsch gave it a rave review.) Their sound
displeased Dr. Bose, mostly because it seemed too bright (even though it
measured flat). ** This suggested bouncing most of the sound off the wall, to
smooth and soften it. The business about the "optimum" concert-hall ratio of
reflected-to-direct sound is, as far as I know, an ex-post-facto justification.


The "principles" on which the 901 is designed (other than the use of
equalization) are all technically or aesthetically invalid, and the speaker's
poor sound is proof of this. However, the lack of frequency extremes is no proof
of poor sound quality. The original QUAD electrostatic has an anemic low end,
but is still considered an outstanding speaker. When people criticize the 901s
for "no highs, no lows," they are criticizing it for the wrong reason.


* "Perfect" in this context means not only in terms of point-source dispersion,
but sonic accuracy.

** I don't know whether Dr. Bose asked himself whether this was due to the
recordings, or bothered to make his own live recordings, to try to get a feel
for where the problem lay.

If it was only supposed to be a mid-range speaker I would agree. However it
is sold with an equaliser as a full range speaker, so one should expect some
highs and some lows.

I wonder what you think the right reason for criticizing it is then. Poor
efficiency, poor dynamics, high distortion, peaky response, or something
else?

Whilst the "no highs, no lows, must be bose", is true, it's still a joke,
and not meant to convey the full extent of it's limitations.

TonyP.

1. Simply flattening the amplitude response of a mediocre driver will not enable
it to equal the sound quality of a well-engineered driver with similar response.

2. Bouncing the sound off the wall to produce a sense of spaciousness is
aesthetically invalid when the recording itself is supposed to contain the
original acoustics. This effect might be fine for mono recordings, but it is
antithetical to a well-engineered stereo or surround recording.

3. I owned the original 901 and have not heard the later versions. However, it
was not particularly clean, especially at high levels.

4. If you're going to equalize the drivers, wouldn't it have made more sense to
overdamp them, so that only a 6dB•/8ve boost (though admittedly over a wider
range) were required, as KLH did with their portables?

Along those lines... I owned a KLH Model 11 FM before I bought my first "good"
system, which included Bose 901s. My initial reaction in comparing the two was
that, overall, the 901s didn't represent any real improvement over the portable
in terms of transparency, detail, coloration, etc. Which shouldn't have been
surprising, as both used small full-range drivers (though from different
manufacturers, of course).

That's why the complete phrase is "No highs, no lows, sound really blows,
must be Bose." It's the "sound really blows" part that you are missing.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Never ascribe to malice what can be as easily explained by ignorance and
stupidity.

Bose is market driven. They've discovered that they can sell shit and people
will lap it up. Choice 1: expensive to make quality speaker. Choice 2:
garbage wrapped in slick marketing with a far higher profit margin. They've
obviously picked choice 2 and I don't think the reason has any malice to it.
They're simply out to make a buck and if idiots don't care what they buy then
why should bose?

All of the above, and more. The "direct/reflective" thing was
pseudoscience at its worst...a gimmick. One problem with the Bose
things is Doppler distortion...something Bose doesn't even admit exists.

I first heard that joke back in the '60s. Although it doesn't really
get to the crux of the 901's (and other Bose abominations') problems,
it's a cute ditty!

dB

LOL! Too true.

dB

On monaural, it'd be the equivalent of "electronic stereo" of the
early '60s...in other terms, a fraud, by any other name.

Doppler distortion, plus the fact that the Bose's crappy efficiency
made it work amplifiers of those days to death, similar to the AR "heat sinks."


Exactly. KLH had quite a bit of success with that idea, and is, at
least subjectively, was more valid that Bose's "sweet 16" nightmare.
Pound for pound, KLH had a lot more success with exploring the "big
sound in a small box" idea than Bose ever did.

The KLH 11 was easily as good at overall fidelity as a set of 901s,
I'd hazard to guess. What was intersting about 901s was hearing an
album for the first time on a set of them, and then hearing it on a
set of real loudspeakers, and the conflict of impressions you'd get
between the two presentations. Of course, any of the acoustic (real
or electronic) impressions included in the album would be obliterated
by the 901s, thus giving a false impression of the final result.

dB