Back in 82 I had various expensive audio equipment and I liked to switch out various items. During this time I had a pair of ESS AMT - either - 1b or 3b Tower Studio Monitors -, the Towers that had 2 -12 inch woofers, one active and 1 passive. I drove down the hwy 65 miles or so to hear a pair of 901s at a high end audio retailer. Had a nice chat with the sales manager that I had called ahead for an appointment - to make sure he would be there. When he fired up the 901s I was impressed at the 3D sound bit within seconds I realized that they had near zero Bass and what Bass they had was muddy as in Zero dampening factor. I am in Canada and they retailed for about $1800 and the Equalizer retailed for about $1250. Man was I disappointed with the sound as well as the combines price for what I considered junk sound for any lower price, that works out to over $9,000 in todays money.CAN. These days I have heard that the 301s sound good if one has only a small room for their audio.
As a classical musician, I had a funny experience when a Bose salesman tried to convince me that the opening "turntable rumble" of the recording I had brought in of Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" was completely eliminated by the "superior" 901s. It definitely WAS eliminated BUT (ahem... too bad that "rumble" is supposed to be a 16hz/32Hz organ pedal low C....) LOL.
Hahahaha that's hilarious! I've always heard that rumble so I knew it was supposed to be there. It's not surprising that the 901's couldn't get that low since they were just a bunch of cheap 4 1/2" drivers
32 Hz output is outputted on 901s vs hardly any on most. A little windy perhaps on ported models. I used to have horrible feedback about 30 Hz on a couple cheap turntables. I have clear as day spectrum screenshots of 32 Hz response on my test track, ZZ Top, Mississippi 1 minute into song.
@@carewser RUclips will not let me edit or delete and shadow-bans me for last 3 years. I said I have a pair Vs for 4-5 years I got for experimenting. With cabs and EQ. I orginally had a Series II family member has them. I had to fix EQ after having them for 10 years, cap failure no bass, in around 1987, purchased in 1975. Many prefer the early sound better. Over the years I have many speakers and buy a few or modify a few. Build larger systems for DJs, plus horn enclosures. i typically run pink noise spectrum tests to verify performance.
Sounds about right !, my experience with their product from a electronics repair serviceman & live sound engineer, Bose for me was all way way over hyped , much more style than substance !, and serious deficiencies in performance & reliability of their 802/302 speakers.
Still love the good old joke about Paul Klipsch passing Amar Bose in the hallway. Paul cupped his hands and shouted 'hi Amar' and Amar turned his head away from Paul and shouted at the wall 'hi Paul'.
My dad got his Doctorate in Acoustics at MIT and while he was teaching there Amar Bose was one of his students. I always got a kick out of his statement that Acoustics was not Bose's major, it was Marketing.
Bullshit "After graduating from Abington Senior High School in Abington, Pennsylvania, Bose enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating with a BS (Bachelor of Science) in Electrical Engineering in the early 1950s. Bose spent a year at Philips Laboratorium in Eindhoven, Netherlands; and a year as a Fulbright research student in New Delhi, India, where he met his future first wife. He completed his PhD in Electrical Engineering from MIT"
I was a technician in the 80s. I was at an audio store listening to the 1812 overture with canon, on a set of Klipsch corner horns. The salesman said, "Listen to this", and hit the switch for the Bose 901s. There was a squeek. Then nothing. He switched back to the Klipsch and said there must be something wrong with the switch panel. Later that week I went out to lunch with a tech friend of mine. He told me the story of a set of Bose 901s he had in the shop that had every driver toasted. I asked if they were from Team Electronics. He said, yes, how did you know? We had a good laugh!
Klipsch corner horns... I had a listening experience in a demo room of those speakers. Frankie goes to Hollywood IIRC. THEY WERE LOUD, CLEAR, PUNCHING ME IN THE CHEST. WE COULDN'T HEAR OURSELVES TALK. Carver Amp and pre setup.
Just as important, and perhaps even more important than the technology Bose was developing, was the army battalion sized legal team that aggressively pursued their patents. Bose was well known for taking an existing technology and tweaking it just a bit and then slapping a patent on it. A good example of this is the Bose Wave radio. Anyone with experience in speaker building could recognize what is essentially a Helmholtz Resonator, but because it used plastic tubing wrapped around a radio receiver in an active system, voila'! There's your 'Wave' patent. And this was a frequent occurrence. Bose was also notorious when it came to hiding specifications. It was marketed as a luxury brand at a high price, but was manufactured with cheap materials and cut corners everywhere possible. My friend has a pair of 901's that he has loved ever since buying them in the 80's, but I think he might still be compensating for how much he paid for them with stands and the optional EQ. To this day, I've never bought anything from Bose and never plan on doing so. There's nothing they do that someone else isn't already doing with better build quality and a lower price.
"Better sound through litigation" should have been their slogan. IIRC they sued Consumer Reports back in the late 1960s over a reviewers subjective opinion about the stereo imaging of a reproduced symphony orchestra.
You are not kidding about the 901's being iconic in the 70's. Sitting in a friends basement smoking funny things, munching Doritos, and listening to Tubular Bells through Bose 901's made for a great summer afternoon.
The funny things you were smoking no doubt changed your perception of how good the speakers were. How could you hear the music over all that crunching of the Doritos? Seriously, though, it must have been quite an experience. Those 901's were better than anything I had at the time, and Tubular Bells was quite an amazing album to listen to!
I sat in a Hawaiian apartment overlooking the North Shore with some Maui Wowie and my Bose 901's in the mid 70's and now I'm 70 and still the Bose are bouncing off the wall surrounding the Lounge of Loma Vista 😀
Oh I remember setting up so many Bose Acoustimass speaker systems for Home Theater customers. It always pained me greatly to have to look the customer in the face while outright lying to them about how wonderful their new overpriced system sounded. Complete and utter junk! Thanks for another great video.
@@myquietreviews would always reccoment the Denon S301 instead of the Bose 3-2-1. But if customers only wanted Bose (after advice not to) you sell it to them and keep the middle managers satisfied. The Denon system was so much better and the speakers were only a little bit larger same price aswell.
@@myquietreviews Its all subjective. You can think something sounds bad and is overpriced, but that's just an opinion. You can't prove something that's subjective. People buy things all the time that other people hate.
Same years ago we had dinner with friends who wanted to show off their brand new Acoustimass system. We suffered through a movie where even though they turned the volume up to uncomfortable levels, we couldn't understand the dialog. A couple of months later we had them over for dinner and watched a movie in our dedicated home theater with a calibrated 7.1 audio system. They were astounded at the clarity of dialog and the overall quality of sound, even at comfortable listening levels. I then hurt their feelings by telling them I'd actually spent less on the speakers than they did.
This was hands down the best history of Bose products and their marketing strategy that I have ever seen. Bravo. I briefly owned a floor standing Bose 501 in 1973 but soon after traded it in on a pair of JBL L26 Decade Speakers. During the 80's and 90's, I briefly had a "business" with a friend of mine when every wife was hounding their husbands with "when are you going to get rid of those gargantuan speakers you got in college in the 70's and get one of those Bose Satellite/Subwoofer Systems"? I went to countless garage sales and during that period bought close to 40 Advent/JBL/AR/Cerwin Vega products and then refinished the cabinets and would have them refoamed if necessary. Most we sold on EBay but finding boxes suitable for shipment became an issue. I had a fellow who did all my refoaming for me and he once exclaimed: "have you ever looked inside a Bose 901 speaker. Literally a bowl of spaghetti wire." Needless to say, one of my least favorite speakers to take on as a "resale" project. Please do a similar "seminar" on JBL's golden hour: the 1970's. My favorite? The L50. Similar to an L100 Century but with a 10 inch foam surround woofer and a "real" grill. I even prefer them to the venerable L166 Horizon.
Some older speakers are just awesome. Me and my brother both want my Dad's Polk Audio SDA-1C's. God dam those speakers still sound better then anything I have heard. And they are over 30 years old.
@@mindcrome The SDA series are what put Polk on the audio map. Now they're riding that SQ and popularity wave like Bose is still riding on their successes with the 901s, 501s, 301s, and 101s......
Bose has always claimed to be a high fidelity brand. However, audiophiles like myself have learned over the years that they are mid fidelity at best. In particular they don't compete with other headphone makers like Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic and HIFIMAN in my humble opinion.
I bought their portable home bluetooth speaker for like 480 bucks (more expensive in my country). Now it only pairs with my iphone. Never again Bose is crap ime
Back in the day Bose was being introduced in the restaurant and disco market in Finland and I came across many of their speakers that looked like the 901, but had two ports in the front, while I was installing better audio equipment to a venue. I was curious and inspected the setup that always required a preamp between the main amp and say, a mixer. It turned out that the preamp actually was a fixed equalizer with a hard cut somewhere around 50-60 Hz. Why was that? Well, inspecting the speaker itself I found out that Bose had figured a new business model for building speakers with cheap components. They sourced small mid range speakers by the tens of thousands bringing the price down to a minimum and made a speaker cabinet with 8 pcs of those acquiring a modest power handling of say, 8 x 20-30W = 160-240W with the condition that the frequency range was kept above 60 Hz. The bass sound was created by peaking (amplifying) the 80-120 Hz range just before the cut off at 60 Hz. This makes it sound like there is good bass when there really isn't any. In other words Bose was misusing his scientific knowledge to fool the customers. And it worked. 😁
Makes sense. That trick imparted the kind of clarity that was never heard before and produced a Unique Bose sound. Plus not many artists have used very deep base in those days.
I remember those dual-ported ones in the 80's. I guess marketed to the pro-audio market because I only saw DJ's and auditoriums using them. Back in those days there was alot less content below 50hz than today.
Bose also used some trickery with air passages in the cabinets that also created the impression of a solid bass because it increased the sound pressure of lower tones (the famous jet pipes on the front). The drivers you already mentioned were horrible quality portable stereo type broad range speakers that failed often (hifi enthousiasts often accused Bose of just wrapping some copper wire around a piece of carton and call it a driver). Many a Bose owner has had to have multiple drivers in their 901's replaced just because the quality was bad. You didn't even have to drive the 901's hard, because the drivers would spontaneously fail over time. The professional version of the 901's, the 802's, proved that Bose could do it right, as those had higher quality drivers ánd were used in combination with subwoofers that supplied the bass the 901's missed. I've only heard the first version of the Acoustimass when Bose introduced them and those were terrible. Lots of screeching and lots of thumping but an almost absent mid-range and an overall terrible sound quality.
@timothymartin2137 The 802's are the professional version of the 901's and those have 8 drivers and the front with the single driver has been replaced with a backplate and you do point the 8 drivers including the "jet" ports at the crowd. Because with the 802's it's about pushing sound at the crowd, not at the walls to create a different soundstage.
I went to a few Bose presentations some decades ago. The Acoustimass AM5 was the first sometime in the late 80's and my teenage mind was absolutely blown away by the glorious sound coming from these tiny cubes and subwoofer. I sang praises of Bose until I started working in car audio straight out of high school, which is when I learned that the Bose systems in GM and Nissan cars were utter bunk compared to what I could put together for much less than the Bose options cost using JBL speakers and Rockford or Kenwood amps. But, surely Bose was still "audiophile quality" in the home arena, right? Bose wowed me again right before heading off to college with their powered Roommate II speakers which were a dead ringer for their quite ubiquitous 101 bookshelf speakers, but with an amplifier in them. In those days they were still expensive for me (just over $300 back in 1990) so I could only dream of having a pair. That changed in 1991 when a guy down the hall from me in the dorms showed up with a pair of Paradigm Atom speakers and an old Aiwa receiver after Christmas break. Everyone on my floor were stunned at how good those little bookshelf speakers sounded. It was to the point where I hopped into my car and drove to the nearest department store with Roommates so I could have a listen: They couldn't hold a candle to the Paradigm speakers. Many moons later and I wound up owning both: I picked up the Roommates in '94 and got the Paradigm Atom speakers (an original set) around 2000. I've since A/B'ed them and, yeah... The Paradigm blow them out of the water in every conceivable way. I still have both pairs of speakers. I've used the Bose for computer speakers for years and the Paradigm served as my main speakers with a sub to anchor them for a number of years until eventually becoming my listening pair in my bedroom.
Once upon a time, I visited a Bose outlet store in NH USA. One product caught my attention, a 'bookshelf' stereo system. I read the price as $349.99, and thought that it was just a bit overpriced. I got closer, and then realized that the price was actually $3,499.99. Crikey, the speakers must have cones made of unicorn hymens. So I popped one of the speaker covers off, and while a sales clerk was leaping over furniture to reach me, I determined by inspection that the speaker cone was made of plain old paper (i.e. cardboard). Yeah... $3500 and cardboard speaker cones. Nutzoid. What a racket. Their customers must be empty headed.
Pretty much the same as Apple or Tesla. Yet they sell, and the companies skyrocketing. There IS a market there, based on mentally challanged, but deep pocketed customers.
paper cones arent inherently bad. all materials have a specific response. yes, paper is inexpensive, but it has a sound that many people enjoy. i will say that they tend to use very thin paper, so it doesnt last and it cannot take a lot of power.
@@emszabi Not so much Tesla, but with Apple the build quality, components, and manufacturing are actually quite high while Bose isn't. For some reason, these companies gained cultish followings irrespective of quality, features, innovation, etc.; whatever may be the case for that company. They know how to market and brand, I guess, to the group willing to overpay.
I remember going into a Bose brick and mortar store and sitting through one of their presentations where you going to a room and hear this phenomenal sound coming from these great looking speakers; and then what they do is lift those great looking speakers up in the air to show these little cubes which are actually producing the sound. Then, of course, a sales rep would try to sell you a $5,000 acoustimass system that, if I bought it, would replace the $2,000 system I already had that sounded terrific. Now we know those rooms were actually heavily equalized and acoustically treated in order to get that sound. That means that what Bose could have done is to sell acoustic treatment packages along with their products. Of course, that would kill their recall program, but I think it might have also advanced home audio appreciation in general; as a public would have finally discovered that the best way to improve the sound of their systems (whatever that system might have been) was to improve the sound of their listening spaces.
I still remember, as a child, my jaw dropping from that cello coming from what was revealed as a tiny cube once the curtain was pulled away. It was a magical experience! Not a Bose fan now, although I do use their S1 for gigs, as it's quite light and has good features for me.
Except almost nobody is going to spend $15k plus to turn their living room into an audio studio, never mind putting up with how it would look and not having windows, maybe even having to add walls and doors they don’t want, now costing you more in the $30k plus range
I've had some Bose products over the years, 141s and 161s in my early experimental days, then a set of Acoustimass 3 on stands driven by a quality stereo receiver (they actually did decent imaging - ! - when carefully set up), and some 402s and MB4s as PA speakers. I have more serious speakers, but the Bose speakers are fun to play with every so often. Don't let anyone look down on a speaker for using paper cones; virtually all PA speakers currently made, even the high-end ones (JBL, Meyer, Nexo, Renkus, etc.) are using paper cones, because even though paper is not the strongest possible cone material, it has the highest tensile strength to weight ratio, and this produces the most efficient conversion of electrical signal to sound output.
Haha... I actually do enjoy the mid/late-90s AMs. I wouldn't have ever claimed they have great imaging, though. It was definitely more about "big" sound, than being able to place sounds accurately in a panorama. Maybe I've never had them "carefully set up" though. :-) As for paper cones, yes -- my Yamaha Club V PA tops have been absolute workhorses for y-e-a-r-s. Paper woofers. I'm actually building my own DIY speakers that are designed to look exactly like miniature Club Vs, shrunk down to 4" woofers. I selected Dayton Audio DS-115 4" paper cone drivers for those.
I have a set of 301 Series IIIs that I loved until I got a set of Paradigm Atoms that were 2/3s the money and blew them away. But I think Bose noise cancelling is top notch.
I met Amar Bose and his wife on a service call as a technician for his satellite tv system at his Hawaii house high up on a ridge looking down over Honolulu in 2004. It was between thanksgiving and Christmas. Very nice guy. I told him I owned a pair of the QC2 headphones for the long flight over the pacific. He then Told me about the noise canceling headphones idea he came up with in the 1970’s but had to wait until tech caught up to make it small enough to fit in portable headsets. But used it in helicopters for years waiting for the QC line to come to fruition. As I was leaving standing in their foyer his wife goes in that kind old lady voice “Amar did you give him his Christmas present yet”. I chimed in being on the clock we were not allowed to receive gifts. He said nonsense walk over to a closet by the front door opened it and stacked from floor to ceiling were boxes of the QC2 head phones. He reached in grabbed one turned and said here merry Christmas. Holding a $300 pair of brand new Bose QC2 headphones and being on the clock not allowed to take gifts I kindly said thank you and left with the box in hand.
@@ChefPHD Yup, in the 1950's Dr. Lawrence Fogel invented noise cancelling headphones for aviation Bose just made them commercially available although this story is 20 years old so it's likely he's misremembered some of the details
I actually own the Bose QC 2 earbuds : I didn't pay 300$ for them but I can say they have really good noise cancelling but a lousy microphone and tons of firmware bugs making them not suitable for daily phone calls. that last point alone, makes them good for flights only . barely worth half their Price.
When I was younger, and looking to build my audio system, I looked at Bose. I considered both the 901 and Acoustimass products. I ended up with Martin Logan Sequel II speakers. I paid more for the Martin Logans, but have never regretted that choice. If you buy the best, you’ll never regret that you settled for less. It is now 2023. I am out of the game. I no longer know what’s good and what’s not. I still have those Martin Logans. They still sound great. 30 years later, and my ears can no longer hear the capability of those speakers, though those speakers are still reproducing sound as well as they ever did.
Ah yes....good memories of the 301's in college, as a bachelor, and through the first 5 years of marriage. When placed right, they sounded awesome for their size. They're long gone, have moved up in the home theater world with speakers, but man, did they ever serve me well when I had them.
I think I have a pair of 301s kicking around that I got somewhere that I don't remember. I used em for a good handful of years before retiring them. I don't think I paid much of anything for em. They also fit the room well looks wise when I was using them. We moved and now not so much so I don't even remember where exactly they are. 😂
@@goosenotmaverick1156 My sister and brother-in-law bought a pair of the floor standing 401's back in 1992. 32 years later, they still use them as their main speakers! IMO, those were exceptional Bose speakers..
The Bose AM series are what I called "well-engineered" speakers. "Well-engineered" in that they were designed to appeal to a target market, and they did so very successfully. A casual inspection of two of the AM5 bass modules showed me that Bose did not waste any money on features that would not make a difference to the target market. The bass drivers used in the modules look cheap because, doh, they're in the bass module - who's going to be looking at them? Several years ago, my aunt's Bose Lifestyle system failed, and while they were looking for a replacement, I lent them my retuned Mordaunt-Short speakers and a DIY subwoofer that IMO would run rings around one of the AM systems in terms of sonic accuracy. She couldn't wait to replace them with a new Bose system. Turns out that being able to get speakers and their stands off the floor and replace them with tiny hidden modules mounted near the roof was more important to her than sonic accuracy, and I think Bose realized that most of their target market probably thought the same way.
That is exactly it. I grew up a huge Bose fan. I then learned "the truth" and replaced it all with Polk Audio RTi series bookshelf speakers. I swore off Bose forever, and realized it was all a sham, and they were the evil empire, etc etc etc. Now, I just laugh about all of that. They are what they are, and you're spot-on here. They spent money in exactly the right places, and not one penny more than they had to. They developed a product that fit the needs of consumers like a well-worn glove. There were better products. There were cheaper products. There were cheaper, better products. But there were also a lot of truly satisfied Bose customers. What else do you want?
Yes, done very well. I remember when Bose created separated demo display areas in stores away from the retailers soundrooms, to focus on the marketing message and to lessen the chance of direct A/B comparisons with other brands. The AM5 rollout was also full of stage tricks, they created a light cloth covered frame to emulate a big speaker only to have a pair of AM5 upper modules sitting inside the cloth. Again away from anywhere direct comparisons were available. Later when the cubes and bass modules were incorporated into our sound rooms and displayed against their direct competing sub-sat systems, they were the blown away by just about everything else on the shelves...All smoke and mirrors. So sad. I recall my old soundrooms and having 301s, 501s, 601s comparing to other brands, and as a serious pro and enthusiast of good audio, those speakers actually did sound good, compared well to the other marquee brands we had in the rooms. Bose DOES know how to build good product. But the insane profit margins and ease of manufacturing of the acoustimass line just really completely diverted the company away from what we call ' hi-fi '..
OK, to be fair... I bought a set of Acoustimass 7 speakers when I was much younger. I wasn't yet old enough to move out on my own, so I was living at my parent's home, and had only my own bedroom. Big speakers weren't an option. But I loved audio, and was obsessed with home theater, and surround sound, etc. I had an absolute ton of fun with those AM7s. So much, that recently I decided to build a shed out back, with a retro theme -- CRT projection TV, LaserDisc player, old computers and video game consoles ... that sort of thing. I'm going to put that Redline generation of Acoustimass speakers out there. Are they the best sounding speakers I could use? Not by a long shot! But they're pretty, they're fun, and they'll fit in well with 480i resolution video sources and Sound Blaster audio. :-) Horses for courses. Nothing "sad" about it, except when people think they're getting something they aren't. If your expectations are aligned with reality, and the price is acceptable to you (whether that's because you can afford the mark-up, or you're getting something secondhand), then nobody's getting hurt.
Exactly what I wanted to say @socalav! Thanks for saving me a few minutes of typing! 😄 Many years ago, I talked to a Hi-Fi store (remember them?) sales guy who said that to be allowed to sell Bose gear, they had to set up a separate Bose demo area and they were not allowed to do A/B demos. Breach of these conditions could've had them cut off by Bose. Because some people were looking for these, they went along with it for a bit of extra cashflow which all businesses can do with. I think Bose gear is a fashion statement first and audio product a (distant) second. I've never liked the whole Bose image with underwhelming product specs, overpricing and legal strongarm tactics.
@@sandman0123 Yes I had been told about the threats Bose had made. Our company really started emphasizing our anti product disparagement policy, salespeople were prevented from saying negative things about products, but it was mostly Bose that sent in secret shoppers. I was free to show something better but I couldn't say something was drek.
" I remember when Bose created separated demo display areas in stores away from the retailers soundrooms..." Hi-fi manufacturers ALL disdain the idea of competitors speakers in the demo environment, they act as passive resonators and color the sound of the speaker you're listening to.
As a retired repair tech who worked for a music store, I used to have to work on the Bose 802 along with other products. I hated working on the 802 due to the way they were made. first, all 8 of the speakers were 1 ohm speakers wired in series with some extra crossover thrown in the mix. There was no cabinet back so each speaker had to be removed from the front making service difficult. If one speaker developed an intermittent voice coil all of the speakers would cut out. This made finding the bad one a pain since there was no back to remove. You couldn't just jump around the speakers to locate the bad one. You wound up pulling the speakers out the front until you figured out which one was bad. The crossover they used was stupidly designed. As I recall, for the boosted highs they had a small size crossover cap that jumpered across 6 of the speakers throwing all of the highs on 2 of the speakers. This meant that for those high notes, the amp was driving those speakers at a 2-ohm load instead of an 8-ohm load. They also used another cap across some of the speakers to further change the characteristics of the speaker system. Again no back to to remove in order to get to the crossover caps. If all of that was not enough you were to use their special Bose processer ( which was a preset equalizer) to make it all sound good.
I feel your pain, having to get a screwdriver in through the front speaker holes to undo the two screws holding in the crossover aka "Directivity control circuit" to find out what capacitor had rattled off of it!
The cabinets on those began life in 2 pieces. After they drivers were installed, the back was installed to the cabinet by a process called "Emma Bond" . It worked by having a gasket between the sections with metal flakes in it. The Emma Bond process generated microwaves that fused the 2 sections into one.
I want a pulsating spear! When I used to go to symphony, I usually had pretty good seats. But one time, all that were available were WAY in the back, under the second balcony. When I was seated there, I finally understood what the 901 experience was all about -- it sounded EXACTLY like that. (My Magnepans, and then my Apogees, on the other hand, did a very good job of recreating 7th row center.)
Dreamed of getting "everything Bose" when I first heard the 901s back in the 70s, peer pressured into being the "best" ever. Fast forward to the 80s, joined the Navy. Got the Acoustimass AM5 at my base exchange when it first came out. Bose expanded their speaker models going into the 90s, got the 601s, 301s and a Bose center speaker for my 5.1 setup at the time along with a sub from another brand (forgot what) and a Pioneer A/V receiver. Now retired and along the way I have read and researched about other audio components and such and took off my blinders away from the overpriced Bose products. I now own a much "simpler" 7.1 setup for a fraction of the price of that old 5.1 Bose configuration. A refurbished Denon AVR S760H A/V receiver, Jamo Studio Series 803 5.0 system speakers, Polk bookshelves for heights and an F1 BIC America sub. I'm no audiophile but it sounds just fine to me. With emphasis on TO ME.
People HIGHLY underestimate the power and beauty of a good home theater system. I've had a denon 7.1 system from around 2015 I believe and it was great, I gifted to my uncle. Currently I use a Harmon kardon AVR 135, jbl bookshelf speakers, infinity center channel and jbl/Polk subwoofers, all driven off my fiio m11+. It sounds amazing, best setup for a small room, the soundstaging and emersion is incredible, every person I have ever showed my system is immediately blown away. You don't have to spend thousands to get the audiophile experience, it's just about matching the right gear to the right environment (:
@@POPDELUSION " it's just about matching the right gear to the right environment " I would definitely agree with you on that in general, but if you want the "audiophile" experience, you'll be better served by dedicated 2 channel equipment. I have some of the best home theater components money can buy and they pale in comparison to good 2 channel gear set up properly, and don't cost anywhere near as much. Maybe if recordings were originally engineered for multi channel systems, it may be something worth looking into, but they're far and few between.
I have a pair of Bose 501 ser. 2. I got them cheep and refoamed the main speaker in each cabinet. I love the low end they provide. I also have a pair of Klipsch RP-600R II's as well. These bring out the mids and high's the Bose are lacking. Personally these two speakers together make for a great sound in my front room. So I have old and new speaker technology in my stereo system. By the way. I power my system with a Pioneer SA-7500 II amp from 1977. Works just fine for my listening pleasure.
I owned a pair of 901s series 3 that I had refurbished about 6 years ago. They sound pretty awesome. Maybe they are not as accurate as my jbl 4312s but the sound is pretty incredible. I can't speak for the modern Bose speakers.
@@Arch007 I think most who bash haven't really heard them. I have friends come over and all they want me to do is plug in the 901s, put a ACDC CD in the player and crank it up. Keep up the great videos!
Been using Bose products for over 40 years. Still using Bose in my home theatre and with some of my musical instruments (they sound great). I've never had a problem with any of them. I'm using 3 other, different types of speakers (all brand names) and the Bose sound still rules. If the price is in your budget; you like the sound and it makes you happy, buy it. Screw the reviews and enjoy YOUR sound.
@@directcurrent5751 Exactly. I use other quality brands also. Buy within your budget and if you like the sound then own the purchase and be proud of it. Bose is still a good sound.
thats very nice and not at all the discussion here. the discussion here is does Bose use incredibly cheap electronics and charge luxury prices for their products, which they do. the discussion is also does Bose lie about their engineering and quality, which they do. If you enjoy pissing away money then please have fun. You are one of millions of people who contributes to a shitty market and doesnt realize it, thats fine. But try to keep up with the conversation.
@Shorty_Lickens Nope. And nope. Along with the millions you mentioned, I've not paid high prices for Bose speakers. Take note that I did not lower myself to defending my point by being condescending and dismissive of your post which had nothing to do with my point.
I used to own Bose cinemate system and it sounded great specially if understand how sound travels in your room. No I didn't had room acoustics on my living room but I knew for the surround effect to work I needed strategically use the walls in my room . It was the most organized , better sounding sound system I ever owned.
I purchased two new pair of Bose 901 series IV speakers around 1981. I wired them to 4 ohms. Powered by a Pioneer SX-1080 and coupled with to a Technics 3300 turntable. Hung from the ceiling per Bose parameters in a hard 25 x 25 foot basement the four-speaker system continues to perform admirably especially when cranked in a party atmosphere. Mostly Classic '60's and '70's rock. Although other types of music play well also. Direct to Disc albums at high volumes are especially ear and mind blowing. Never clipping or failures. The only issue with the speakers is that I had to install new surrounds about ten years ago. Other than that this will continue to be my forever system.
A quad setup! Have you looked into quad versions online that were made of the classic rock era before it crashed in the mid 70's? RUclips supports quad and other multichannel postings.
@@echodelta9 Never looked into it. Had friends that had quad systems when they were "popular." To my ears the sounds were distracting. Possibly look into it given current workaround technology. Thank you.
@@billfioretti3013 You're welcome. Would allow you to use a powered sub if so desired crossed over about 80Hz which would remove the bass from the 901s which might clean up their sound a bit. Given bass is non-directional, the sub or subs should fit right in and would actually give a more accurate concert type sound.
I used to have a pair of Bose 6.2 (like 301s on steroids). They were OK. The .2 series is probably the best series Bose ever made. I eventually replaced them with a pair of vintage Dynaco A25XL. No comparison. I got rid of the 6.2. The A25XLs are magical with my old Pioneer SX720. On the other hand, I use Bose's A20 noise-cancelling aviation headset at work. They are absolutely awesome. I was able to compare directly with other brands of aviation headsets and they are the absolute best in noise-cancelling and comfort.
I was big into home and car audio in the 90's and 2000's. We used to call it "No highs no lows Bose". Their marketing was a lot better than their sound quality or dynamic range.
@billdang3953 Either way, Bose still sounds bad. :) Their newer motto was, "Hey guys, we have little satellite speakers your wife won't bitch about" lol
I remember my parents finally getting a stereo of their dreams in the 1970s It was a set of Bose 901 series II speakers driven by a Pioneer reciever, they had a nice turn table and a flash cassette player to go with it. I just remember it was the loudest and clearest stereo I heard for many years, though the sound stage was never one of its strong points. It did make me a bit fussy about audio though. When looking for my own stereo and AV system components I did a lot of looking, that original system was a benchmark. Thing is I never ended up with Bose speakers, never even close. I heard lots of speakers that were worse but, there were always speakers that were better at a better price.
I bought a number of Bose speakers cheap, at rummage sales in recent years, for my cabin…I was amazed at how good they sound. At home…it’s Klipsch only, but in the log cabin, they rock.
I kind of feel the same way. Bose isn't nearly as good as many people pretend they are. But they also aren't nearly as bad as many people claim, either.
@@BaltimoreAndOhioRR So they're.... really average? Below average? Saying two things that negate each other doesn't amount to 'a point'. But to be clear, Bose as a brand is inconsistent at best and seriously trash at worst. Sure they HAVE made SOME good things, and so has Behringer and a lot of other inconsistent brands that don't deserve to be lauded either. They're selling a mystique and a status symbol, not 'good sound'.
@@jamescarter3196 My point is, Bose is in an odd position. There are people who love them and will buy anything and everything they sell and think they are the best. Then there are idiots who go around making snarky comments to everyone mentioning Bose. (I hope those people know who they are). Bose are not "that" bad. Yes, they're definitely overpriced. But too many people act like they're the worst speaker ever built. Some people, actually many people, like their sound. I equate it with photography. Some photography purists can only appreciate a photo that is as close to natural (and authentic) as possible, while many people think a picture that came from a camera that oversaturates a blue sky for example, actually LOOKS better, regardless of it's accuracy. Their sound is not accurite and they dont reproduce the input exactly. But what they do produce sounds good to many people. Also, some people think of Bose as 901's, others 601's, and some others the 321 surround systems. So you get varying emotions. The bottom line is, as I was trying to say, is that Bose is NOT just an average speaker. They sound above average to many people, but quite below average to many other people. Some people like the accentuated mid-bass and the lack of "directioning" - scattered sound everywhere. Some people hate that and want an exactly accurite sound reproduction of the input media. And those people seem to be on a mission to tell the other people they are wrong. That was my point. (PS, when I talk about Bose, I generally refer to their older bookshelf and floor speakers, not the newer ventures they've branched into like surround sound, clock radios, headphones, car audio, docking stations, etc...)
I remember, back in the early 2000's being keen on getting an Acoustimass home theater system. I listened to a demo (in a normal room, not a specially setup one) and felt that it was....ok. Then I listened to a demo of the Energy Take 5.1. At half the price (including a Yamaha surround receiver) it just flat out-performed the Bose system. It's what I ended up leaving with instead.
Yamaha is a solid brand for a lot of the stuff they make. Never much cared for Bose. Had too much good equipment growing up (my dad is an audio nerd) to hear the difference in a few moments (flat highs, flat lows - decent mids in MOST cases; their car stuff has been solid from the cars I've heard them in - though not the best, but not bad). Too expensive for me that sounded no where near how expensive they were/are (IMO). Not saying it was junk, but not for me.
In 1980, I bought my first decent stereo setup. The shop I was at had a set of Bose 301 bookshelf speakers to use for comparison to what they were selling. I bought a pair of Mission 700s, to go with my NAD receiver. The Missions were excellent, and I still have them!
When the Bose 901 came out at $900 a pair, my neighbor and some enterprising engineers reverse engineered the speakers and crossover network. I remember they built over 10 pair in his garage and the wood materials were the most expensive part. Speakers as I recall were $1.75 each.
Great History story. I remember selling Bose products. I never owned anything carrying a Bose label, but customers came in wanting them. I never lied about them. I just explained the differences as you went up the Bose price line and let the customer convince themselves with the volume control. One interesting thing I heard was when Amar was a professor at a prestigious university and he owned a speaker company. He had research done at a very low cost. College students worked cheap. I wonder if they got grades rather than patents.
In 1970 me & a friend went to a consumer products hi fi show & went to the Bose room & after the demonstration we asked if he could turn up the volume on them & he wouldn’t do it, so we went back after everybody left and turned on the tape he was playing , slowly turned up the volume & those things sounded like they were gonna explode! Just distorted all over the place-terrible
Yeah, had a pair of Series 2 that I picked up when stationed in Germany. 220 volt equalizer. When I turned up the volume quickly I got that same distortion. Never felt the same way again about the system.😢😢😢. Eventually just dumped the system unfortunately.
That's great! I'd have fed a guitar or drum recording into it and reamp'ed it with a solid stereo mic pair, except that portable DAT technology came along about a quarter century too late for that.
I love their (older) QuietComfort 25 headphones. It's one of the most comfortable headphones you can buy and they sound surprisingly good too. I never checked out their follow-ups like the QC35 or QC45.
It's the only Bose product I ever owned, and they were awesome at the time when they came out (not many good nc headphones back then). I still use them to this day because as you said, they are super comfortable and sound okay.
I still have AM5 setup I bought from Costco in 1990. Works fine. QC2 ANC headphones was a game-changer for air travel, but terribly cheap materials. QC3 sounded even better, but the same junky build. When my QC2 broke beyond repair I replaced with QC30 wireless. They didn't sound as good nor cancel as much noise as the QC2, then the power switch broke one week past warranty and would not turn off (or disconnect) making them drain quick and useless. Bose offered 40% discount on replacement, which I applied to the neck-wrap "earbud" version of the ANC headphones (QC35?). Terrible HISS when in ANC. Exchanged them, same HISS, and they started falling apart within a year. A colleague bought the wired version (two of them) they hiss too, so it wasn't the Bluetooth. After that I was done with Bose.
I got the QC35 II, and they are honestly.. not so geat. my Apple AirPods Pro deliver better sound quality and better noise cancelation... and the AirPods Pro don't come with ear pads that die within one year of usage. The AirPods also don't "crash" and require you do plug them into USB power to reset them.
I just got back from a trans-atlantic trip. The neck-wrap "quiet control" BT NC earbuds are now officially dead too. You can't press the switch hard enough to turn them off/on. There is no tactile "click" anymore. I'm officially 100% done with Bose, no trad-ins anymore. Fortunately, I brought my Galaxy Buds Pro as a backup (but they never sounded that good and the ANC is marginal). Time to shop around.
Back in the 1960’s and ‘70’s my father and his brother owned a midsized woodworking business located in Cambridge, MA. They were suppliers of speaker enclosures to Bose Corp. most notably the oddly shaped 901 cabinets. I worked there one summer between years of high school and built many 901 cabinets. It was such a simply designed enclosure, with just plywood on the 5 sides, but we did use some very nice walnut veneer over particle board on the top and bottoms. There was nothing fancy about those cabinets. We would build and finish the cabinets, pack them up in the boxes that they would eventually be sold in, then truck them out to the Framingham plant to be completed. My understanding was that the appeal for the Bose was always around it’s direct reflecting design, and that the room becomes as important as the speakers in developing the full sound potential. I never forked out the money for a set, so couldn’t say if they were great sounding or not.
The only thing worse then a Bose speaker is a Bose fanboy. It's unbeliveable how many of them think they have the best thing on the market - and have NEVER even tried something else. I grew up listening to a pair of 601s (was playing music on them since I remember being alive, like age 4 or 5) and I worked at a hi-fi shop when Acoustimass 3 & 5 came out. Literally EVEYTHING ELSE in the shop sounded better, regardless of price - but we had some good brands there. Anyways. This is probably the best BOSE video out there. Well done.
I got my BSEE in 1990. One of my professors had been a contemporary of Amar Bose at M.I.T. I don't know what transpired between those guys back in the day, but he had a couple of lesson plans based around demonstrating scientifically how Bose was "Better Sound Through Marketing"
I have Bose 301 book shelves a friend gave me. Hey, can you shed some light on the class of amplification in the great old receivers, amps, inter.-amps? Also satellite speakers and subwoofers combo’s. What ever happened to Carver equipment? Thanks
I had a pair of the orignial 901s but they represented a big drop in audio quality from my previous AR3as. But the effect was very cool, so I sucked in like many. A friend bought a pair and took them apart. He found the exact same nine speakers ($3.29 each) from a wholesale catalog and built the boxes to match so he had two pair. Cost less than $100. Identical sound as far as we could tell (McIntosh electronics, Thorens/SME table). Over the years, it has been hard to ignore all the store demo rooms with really crappy sound for thousands. Amar may have been a good physicist but couldn't tell a flute from a clarinet.
May I ask, did you have the dedicated EQ? There was period of time in the 70s that the Army PX stores were selling the speakers to serviceman WITHOUT the EQ, and many people later bought them 2nd hand the same way. Hooked up with enough power the 901s with the EQ sounded pretty damn good. As for the other comment made about the 901 drivers being in a catalog, the ones I am familiar with and trained on, at least series IV onward, were DEFINITELY NOT catalog bought. They were absolutely made by Bose, with the voice coil wire and the cylinder formers both made from aluminum, to prevent warping under high heat (both the formers and wire had the same coefficients of expansion and hence retained their shape) and the wire was flat edge wound as well for better heat dissipation.
@@socalav The EQ was necessary to compensate for the poor frequency response. Every Bose speaker I have heard sucks. The same for their headphones. Great sound cancelling but poor sound quality. I use the Bose while mowing the lawn to quiet the sound of the mower but for far better sound quality I use my Audio Technica M50X headphones.
@@nyobunknown6983 LOL Im partial to the Sony MDRV6, AKF240s Denon SHD950 and a bunch of others.. not sure what Bose speakers you have heard and where, but they did make some really decent ones for a while. My personal favs are the Bose 301 series II and III. They still sound good compared to a lot of others on the market today. For a low price entry level bookshelf they did really well.
That would be DR BOSE to you ? right..... further more and additionally his net worth is WAY more than yours I'd venture to speculate...HEH!! heh heh heh:) Now aren't you the "Better" man....
Around 1976, I bought a pair of Bose 901’s, and a Bose amp. It was ok, but no real wow factor. Later I listened to some JBL box speakers and I was amazed how good they sounded. Much later, I wanted a good sound system for my new TV. I listened to a myriad of small systems and sound bars, but nothing sounded that good. When I listed to the new Bose, it actually hurt my ears. I later learned that if speakers do that, it’s because there’s too much distortion. Then I discovered Axiom Audio from Canada. They have excellent sounding speakers and excellent customer service. I’m totally satisfied with my purchase, but I had to upgrade my subwoofer from them twice until I got one powerful enough for all of my movies. Another upgrade was a rather large center channel speaker. But once I discovered what it was I wanted, I doubt I could do better. Pairing them up with a Pioneer Elite receiver was a good match also.
I moved to Sacramento in 86. Started going to Faces Disco. The club used Bose 802's. Two3 302 bass speakers, Bose and the four 802's suspended about 8' high. Sounded pretty good but never loud or strong enough. They remodeled several years later. I did the sound install. I ran 14 gauge wires through the ceiling to the four corners of the dance floor. Providing the sound after playing with amp levels etc. comes out pretty flat, then you did a good job. Now the "dance floor disco EQ curve is a boost at 100hz, a small boost at 250hz, a small cut at 1k,, then boost 2k, 4k, & 8k to bring the cymbal energy alive and the 100 hz boosts the kick drum while cutting the 1k stops the singer from "screaming in your ear. The sound was not fatiguing and the eq made the music alive but not shrill at that volume for 5 hours a night. They had a sound engineer from a rock club come and eq the system. Brought up the mid bass and vocals, made it really muddy and exposed this system's weaknesses and they sounded like shit. They ended up buying the system from a club that was closing. This system was TOO BIG for that club. Even playing at "normal" disco levels, the sound was so much stronger, you can now hear the dance music in the video room stepping all over their videos & music. Oops.
I recently found your channel and I have to tell you that I'm not into audio as much as I was in my youth but the level of research and knowledge that you impart with your storytelling is absolutely phenomenal and I've been watching all your old shows just to catch up! Cheers
Does he have any videos about quad receivers? She said her stereo was 4 way......... And I just love it in her room........ -the one and only Frank Zappa
Ah Bose... My granddad (the man behind a certain audio firm now widely associated with big blue wattmeters) knew him and eh, pretty much despised him. There were two people who could cause my grandfather to utter profanity in conversation - FDR, and Amar Bose. He considered referring to Bose as a snake oil salesman to be a slander against snake oil salesmen.
For decades I played live music through my Bose L1M2 pa system, thousands of shows.... Being a pro musician I made my living off my ears. It was the best sounding pa system Ive ever used and ever heard for solo live performance and I could play at lower levels and reach large crowds up to 500 people or so. The thing I most loved is I heard what my audience heard as the pa system sat behind me, and the sound level was almost exactly the same at the stage and at the back of the venue, meaning everyone heard the same thing I was hearing on the stage. Once I hooked into some dirty power at a venue and fried all of my pa components, Bose replaced the entire $3.600. pa system for less than $300. and it was wayyyy out of warranty. They also shipped out my new pa before I even had time to box up my old broken pa. If I was still playing live shows I would still be using my Bose pa system. On the other side of things, I absolutely hate their car audio products.
When I sold hifi in the early 1980's, a critic of their products once told me, "No highs no lows... it must be Bose." After listening to the 901s back to back with some Snell Acoustics and Polk Audio systems we had in the store, I had to agree. You've pegged it: it was hard to beat their combined marketing and legal strategies.
LOL. Polk Audio? You think that's HiFi? 🤣🤣😆 Polk Audio is basically the Great Value brand of speakers. Try Bowers & Wilkins, Focal, or Definitive Tech instead.
@@SergeantExtreme In the end it's all about buying what you like and not what someone else thinks that sounds great. All those "HiFi" brands claim to be the one closest to "true sound" but they all sound different. It's like your favorite color, it's a matter of taste but some swear that the same color of paint from another overpriced brand is much better especially after watching it dry for a while.
Back in the '70s, after weeks of speaker shopping, I finally settled on the IMF TLS80. My dealer had a pair of Bose 901s set up in the same room, and just for the heck of it, I did A/B comparisons on them both. I figured the IMFs would sound a little better, since they were about twice the price. But, I was surprised how big the difference was. The IMFs were detailed and dynamic, while the Bose sounded mushy and smeared. Ever since then, I've had a strong dislike for Bose, and it reminded me of a comment I once heard: "No highs, no lows, must be Bose."
I bought a pair of Celestion speakers from a man whose wife insisted he get rid of them and have Bose instead because they took up less space. He was holding back the tears as he told me. The things we do for love.
I still have my Bose Series II speakers that I bought in 1976. I don't use the Bose equalizer, I use the one in my receiver which has auto set-up. I also have the rear of the speakers facing forward. Works great. 👍👍
I am not a Bose fan, except for their QC headphones, but my university pub's sound system back in the early 80s had 12 Bose 901s and was powered by some massive Carver amps. I have to this day never listened to sound this loud with such clarity.
I also attended a live concert in a room that had dozens of 901s in a mid sized room. It was truly amazing. I know audiophiles make fun of Bose, but when properly set up they were formidable.
I have a set of 301s that I ran the line through a passive/active crossovers and into a set of 10" subs in a open multipass bandpass box to handle everything under 120Hz with a gradual taper up to 200Hz. When setup in my room with a Yamaha RX770 it sounded amazing.
@@kenandbarbie-b6c I'm not sure how those 901's were configured, but it's now a common thing to stack speakers in what's called a "line array", and you can get surprisingly good sound out of not-so-good speakers that way.
Nothing beats a dedicated stereo loudspeakers and an integrated amplifier. Be it standmounters or floorstanders. Proper stereo imaging is the key. Not some multiple drivers placed in awkward position aimed to reflect, deflect and direct sound waves. Hoping to make the sound big for its size. It just doesn't sound good because our room varies a lot. That's why I sold all my bose smart speakers and went back to traditional good old stereo speakers and subwoofer.
@@BostonMike68 It depends on the budget. I can only afford loudspeakers that could go down to 50 hz. A subwoofer can provide a cheaper option to take care of the low frequencies to 20 hz. Of course if I have the disposable resources, I would go straight to full range ones.😉
@@BostonMike68 That's a myth. You can use subs with small speakers, but you get the best results when subs are used with full range speakers. Otherwise you are asking the sub to try and handle the frequencies the full range speaker are supposed to handle. Or you just have a hole in between the small speakers and the sub.
@@pinkypoohable that's true it's hard to find speakers that play that low. I built my own with 10" woofers that hit really low and a MTM with 6.5 mids and that doesn't start rolling off until 40 Hz but not to many people can build quality speakers so I am lucky but I agree it's just the timing the larger subwoofer moves slower . I'm actually building a diy sub mostly for movies and it has 2 voice coils so it moves faster but its going to cost me almost a $800 just to build it myself but it's going to be really hard to beat and I want it to get down to 22 Hz
I listened to various Bose products over the years. Their sound is big for the size, they are very good from this aspect. However they will never beat a proper bulky setup in the overall sound quality and impact.
The cube drivers are wired out of phase... that's why they have an apparent "larger" sound. They're basically dipole speakers, with really cheap parts.
I guess, you hit the nail on the coffin here. Bigger, bulkier setups sound better than the smaller Bose speakers. They are not meant to replace high-end HiFi setups. They are meant to sound really good in a small package. Regarding products in the same category, the Bose speakers are among the best in their respective class. Bose soundbars are really competitive in the overall soundbar space.
@@rvb_drolf3950 When compared to other systems of similar size, Bose tends to blow them out of the water. I had the opportunity maybe two years ago to take a look at a wave radio with built in bass module as the add on CD changer wasn't working right. It sounded very good for its size and would easily hold its own with radios of similar size, but it definitely would not replace my big stereo system primarily because the bass module isn't flat to 20Hz. However, if all I had space for was a small radio, the wave radio is what I'd choose.
Still rocking my 901's in wood cabinet from the 90's in my Den, Bose 301 satellites and base module in my bedroom and Bose Smart 500 in my Living Room. Great company.
In the early 1990's I was receiving too many neighborhood complaints about my huge loudspeakers so I sold them and bought an Accoustimass 5 system. The speakers shorted out and back fed and blew up my Yamaha amplifier. I lost a lot of money there and will never go back to Bose. I finally brought my system back out of mothballs with Cerwin Vega loudspeakers. Millennials are blown away by the experience of feeling music.
My dad gave me his system he bought in 1970... a McIntosh set MC 2505 and MX114 and a set of the first Bose 901 speakers. I refurbed both McIntosh units and are now working in my current set up. The Bose speakers are still in storage. I don't have the interest to refoam the 18 speakers for average weird sound quality. I also don't have the heart to tell my dad I don't like them, as he is one of the original Bose lifetime customers to this day. Always getting the latest system, bless his heart!
"No highs, no lows .. it must be Bose! " Retired hifi guy here and that's what was said when Bose was brought up as a serious speaker. Bose was known for spending more on marketing/advertising than any other speaker manufacturer by a wide margin. Perceived performance due to marketing hype and many unscrupulous and likely paid for glowing reviews and write‐ups in every genre of magazine from Popular Mechanics to Playboy. Small full range drivers firing in all directions caused the sound to reflect back to the listener at different time delays and some in reverse phase from the original signal. Many people find this to feel like sound is coming from all around them and were easily impressed by this simple psycho-acoustic technique. It is soon found to be just not tonally accurate with a non defined stereo image when compared to quality designs from the likes of Thiel, that he mentioned, and most other quality speakers using the traditional design approach of front firing only stereo drivers. Our goal was to reduce unwanted and out of phase reflections and charged accordingly for proper wall treatments to absorb, diffuse, or a combo of both. This is the same technique used today for better 2 channel listening as well as full home theater walls built with different materials and thicknesses to the point of an entire room framed with an air gap between two walls (room built inside another room) for the best results . Fun times! Enjoy whatever sounds good to you, NOT what someone else says you will like ! 😊
Did Mr. Bose change the world of audio? Yes. Was the 901 an absolute masterpiece? Yes. Did they beat a set of monster floor speakers with 12+" woofers? Nope.
When I was a kid in the early 2000s, you were a baller if your parents had Bose speakers. I remember going in houses with 401's and Acoustimass Red Lines. Every restaurant had 151's and 32SE's outside. Good times.
I was a kid in the early 2000s and all I remembered was how tinny the Tahoe's Bose sound system sounded and how underpowering the wave radio was compared to my family's Klipsch home theater setup. Granted, we're comparing apples and oranges, however, I just remembered not being all that impressed with Bose products, especially when the wave radio was advertised as having sound as huge a large stereo (it doesn't.) I do love their headphones though.
I've got a ridiculously complicated chain feeding my Bose 901 Series V and an ideal placement facing an exposed brick wall. These speakers absorb endless amounts of power and really do show their best when using a muscular amp, even at low levels. I sort of Dr. Frankenstein'd my own monster amp with a vintage Sony STC 7000 feeding a vintage Crown MacroTech 1200 (which is astonishing in terms of clarity and control) for an easy 310 per channel into 8 ohms. I use a Pine Tree Audio passive single ended to balanced converter to handle the RCA out from the preamp to the XLR in on the amp. (Jensen transformers handle the conversion in that box and act as a natural Bessel filter.) I replaced the original active EQ with a DSP unit from Deer Creek Audio. (I A/B tested them when I received the DSP from Deer Creek and it definitely sounds better. Better clarity, better dynamics.) The 901s are not the last word in detail and resolution, but the sound stage and involvement is incredible. When no one else is home and you want to crank it up, they deliver smiles all day. I've been collecting and swapping gear for a long time, and I'd always been curious about the 901s, so when a nice set came along and I had the money in my pocket I went for it, just for fun. Now, they look so great in the living room that my wife won't consider approving any other speakers at this point, so the mission has been to make them sound as good as possible (and to put cool looking systems in other rooms!) Anyway, I really like your channel! I hope to visit the shop some time. All love from Chicago!
Back in the day, I installed a set of AM-3 Series II speakers in my BMW. The two satellites velcroed in place on top of the dash, and the sub strapped in the back seat with the seat belt. It sounded awesome! Before that, I drove around with a pair of Cerwin Vega AT-40s in the back seat (a little less practical, obviously).
Lol your crazy man, props for thinking outside the box. I also really like the old bose subwoofers. I own a few and they always surprise me with big sound from small package. In my area the old bose subs resell for 30 40 dollars I feel like they are worth more, so i never sold any of mine :) i have 4 total
This was actually the demise of my old Acoustimass system. The bass module did not last long in the hatchback of my old car, connected to a Sony 200W amp treating it like an actual subwoofer. ;-) After a couple weeks, it started making some unhappy noises, and then it stopped making noises at all.
I hated the Profit margin that Bose insisted on working on. All R & D. The sound was good at reproducing mid-range. Never quite found they had the high-end sound I was looking for, or the low end. A lot of money for a midrange speaker. Friends with the 901s and the 501s. Not impressed with the sound. My brother-in-law knew that I was the electronics guy in the family. They left it in my hands to pick out all the audio equipment for his New home. After shopping, comparing, having everything shipped to his home and did the installation on my own. His wife was not happy the equipment. Telling me everything was big. Especially the speakers. They were shopping size not sound. Never made sense to me. They had plenty of room. Ended up with a Bose system, I don't know what they did with what I purchased for them. I believe in name brand only. High-wattage amplifiers, if the room is possible the bigger the speaker the better. I was using a total of 4 15in woofers, 2 horn 4×10 mid range. 8 tweeters. Carver, Crown, Altec Lansing, JBL, Techniques, Teac, Pioneer. That was the equipment I was using. Almost forgot. I was using a pair of Audio-Technica speakers when I didn't want to run the big equipment. They had 10in woofers that would be down-firing. A mid-range and a tweeter that were front-firing. I had to send a way for the stands as they were small. In height.
I always thought of Bose as a 80% speaker, they cover 80% of the audio spectrum, which for 80% of the listening market is 100% enough. And there is nothing wrong with that, let the market dictate product design, in that way, Bose was very smart. Full disclosure, I don't like their sound myself, but respect the design work that went into them.
@@KentTeffeteller No, that doesn't make any sense when we're talking about companies that create gimmicky products of inconsistent quality that crap out after 4-5 years and rely on a false mystique to overcharge everybody for everything. Sony's products are a LITTLE more expensive, because they actually make high-quality stuff. Naming random tech firms based on 'bigness' isn't the point.
The ESS AMT1A was ground breaking. Heil air motion transformer (ribbon tweeter) was a pretty amazing design. It projected from the front and rear. ESS also used passive radiator in their main cabinets to increase the bass response which complemented the tweeter.
A friend of mine has owned a pair since the mid 1970s. He recently replaced the drivers in each speaker. In his words the price for the new drivers was too good to pass up. They are about the nicest sounding speakers I have ever heard. To hear them being driven by a pair of McIntosh Mono Tube Amps is jaw dropping. Sadly he no longer has the Mac amps. His current sources and amplification really don't do justice to his AMT 1As. Those AMT 1As are so good they inspired me to get a smaller, more affordable pair of ESS, the RM II 6"
Hi. I'm an Australian 62 year old gay guy and DJ and an Audio/Visual Engineer. I started spinning at a club but before I did I was horified at the way it was set up. They were using an Amcron DC300 for the treble and an under powered amp for the bass. I said to the owner that this was a failure waiting to happen. I removed all the rubbish from the console and started on a re-install of the equipment. All the processors and amps were taken off of the rack and blown clean of dust using compressed air. I looked at both amps and replaced the fuse holder in the Amcron wondering how it had not shorted to ground. I vacuumed the DJ booth and started reinstalling from the start. First was the limiter which I just set to limit in real time with a quick fast attack and decay. I rewired the 15 inch JBLs to the Amcron from the electronic cross over and the 4 BOSE 802s to the other amp as well as wiring the active BOSE processor to the input of the other amp. Luckily, someone had used a terminal strip to connect them and after a phase check, I wired them back in for good.The BOSE processor was just a way to feed the upper frequencies to the 802s. Once I had checked it was all working, I killed the 25 and 30 HZ on the graphic because 60 HZ is where the bottom end started really. After a few tweaks and adjusting the processors and the graphic EQ it actually had some really good grunt.I ran it hard after finding a fan to keep the gear cool for about 2 hours. I screwed some clear PVC over the gear with a warning not to touch the settings. It sounded 40% better and the DJs were impressed. They asked me why the graphics 25 and 30 HZ faders were pulled right down. I said that the subs cannot reproduce those frequencies so all you're doing is wasting amplifier power. After a few more tweaks with a crowd there I checked the 802s for sound quality. Because these speakers have 8 tweeters per box I raised the upper frequencies just a bit, put the perspex back to stop prying fingers. I said to them that at the end of the night to turn the gain controls on both amps down first to stop spikes from blowing them out and to reverse it when powering up. BOSE speakers are the most ridiculous units ever made. They sound ok for highs but not full range. Cheers Andrew.
@@davej9228 The reason I mentioned it was because of stereotypes. For example many people think that gay guys sit around all day talking about Kylie and Madonna. I love good sound and love improving a system and getting it up and running properly. I don't fit the standard of most engineers which is why I mentioned it. I've been fascinated by electronics since I was 4 years old. I got bitten by the electronics bug and haven't looked back. Cheers from OZ, Andrew
I can't recall the name of the company that made the series 1 and 2 drivers, but starting with series 3 all 901 drivers were produced in house in Framingham Ma.
I had Bose 301 Series 1 bookshelf speakers that I thought were the bomb back then. About a year later I bought a pair of Large Advent speakers which were the best sound-for-the-buck I'd ever heard. I had the Advents for years and years, even had to replace the woofers due to the foam degrading. Loved those Advent's. Can't say the same for the 301's.
I remember when I worked at Circuit City in 1997 we had a listening room that was only supposed to have Bose in it. I put a JBL Simply Cinema SCS120 system that blew the Bose out of the water in terms of both clarity and dynamic, it's key features being the larger satellites and self powered subwoofer. Our Bose rep found out, since the JBL out sold the Bose Acoustimass 100 series II by 5 to 1, and threatened to pull Bose from every Circuit City in the region and possibly the country if we didn't take the JBL out of the room. Since Bose didn't have a brick and mortar store, we dared them to do so. I Since CC eventually went belly up years afterward, not sure who truly won that, but it felt good to have both my store and my regional bosses back me up.
How I hated that store. All those red lanes angled to the front and someone coming down each one to hassle and follow you around before you even had a chance to look at anything. Thank heaven for internet advancements.
I've NEVER heard a consumer level Bose product that sounded musical. I did however utilize Bose Professional RoomMatch line array boxes and PowerMatch amps for a large commercial installation. That system is unbelievable even by today's standards. Even the reps for the competing systems who lost out made comments as to how impressed they were. One of them even stated that if Bose ever managed to get a firm grip on the Pro market that his company (one of the top three in the world of pro audio) would go broke.
Maybe 10 years ago I went into a Bose store in an outlet mall. I entered to win their home theater system and 09I listened to it. At first it sounded pretty good. As I listened longer it seemed there wasn't a lot of solid bass. I asked about connecting a sub to the system. They didn't have an output for one. The whole system was limited. I didn't win either.
You don't need an output for a sub. All you need is a sub that has speaker level inputs. This is actually the best way to go because it achieves the best integration between the speakers and the sub. The only instance where a sub output may be better is on the low frequency channel in a home theater system. There, specific information goes to the sub channel, but other than that, speaker level inputs are the way to go.
I had a 1976 bose spatial control receiver pretty powerful had a neat way of turning it on you would touch the name bose on the front it had conductive letters the bo and se were seprate they controlled a relay that would turn it on. It was made for the 901s you could use the spatial control to shift the sound to fit the room and had built in 901 EQ.
I bought a pair of Bose speakers on consignment. my plan was to accentuate my Polk Audio Monitor 10s. I My Yamaha receiver did not allow me to adjust the volume of both speaker. I am not kidding, My Polks were so efficient that I had to put my ear next to the raised speaker before I could hear them. I brought them back for a prearranged buy back if l . The only speaker that came close was the Klipsh Heresy, but it lack the polks and l was unable to adjust the brassy tone. I bought my polks in 1982 and still used them until they were stolen. I am on your side mate, Bose should have cut their advertising budget abd instead buy decent sound designers and higher quality components. I fell for the hype like everyone else, but I would rather look at the Klipsh Chorus if l was to trade up, or graow some balls and build a pair of la Scalas.
There paper cone and then there are PAPER CONES. JB LANSINGS WERE USED IN THE FENDER SHOWMAN. SUPER SHOWMAN, FENDER BASSMAN, SUPER REVERB, AND TWIN REVERB. I BOUGHT 4, 12" JENSENS WHEN I MODIFIE MY BOX, BUT ONLY BECAUSE THEY HAD LIFETIME GUARANTIES. I WISH NOW THAT I HAD BOUGHT 2-15" D120 JBL'S. I AM NOT AWARE OF ANY MENTIONED FENDER AMPS THAT BLEW A CONE OR A SURROUND. I WAS THERE. BUT THEN THE MARSHALS CAME TO TOWN. . . . .
Awesome capture of what Bose was and is. I remember the sale tactics of Bose just as you described it. I am not a Bose fan. This started when they would not help me with my Nissan Maxima Bose stereo system which would produce a large shrieking noise every time I turned it on and their CD player would get very hot. I end up ditching the whole system for an Alpine. Love your reviews, especially your knowledge of Audio equipment. If I ever come to your shop, I probably will spend hours drooling on just about every system you have there. Thank You for very informative videos.
Could you do one on the Bose professional line?....just as controversial among musicians. I admit that I was a skeptic regarding their personal amplification systems until I actually tried one and found that they delivered as good as promised while being much more compact and lighter than other PA systems.
I really liked 901s when I heard them in 1980. A few years later my parents were looking to get a sound system professionally installed in their house that features a large open floor-plan (kitchen, living room, dining room). My dad was upset that the estimate came in at well over $5,000. I told him my opinion about Bose speakers and suggested he try out a pair of the shelf sized ones. One in the NE corner and one in the NW corner of the open area were more than enough to give great sound coverage to the whole open area. He was very happy with them and they are serving still 40+ years later. About 10 years ago my sister bought me one of their mini blur-tooth speakers and I'm still using it today.
Back in 1998, I was getting a huge bonus from work and decided to spend a couple grand of it on a stereo system. I walked into a place and was totally sold on the Bose Lifestyle surround system (add 1998 model number here). Thankfully, the bonus was delayed and I kept checking out other systems, but still really liked the Bose one. Then, this is back when there wasn't much on the Internet, someone gave me the best advice ever when it came to choosing a stereo system at the time.... bring your own CDs of what you like to listen to. Holy crap! Everything I played of my own sounded terrible on the Bose system. They had really cherry picked songs that sounded great on their system for their CD in their device, everything else sounded terrible. It wasn't just a little difference, everything other than the music Bose had picked out sounded terrible. I ended up getting a Yamaha system with Energy speakers for less money that sounded 100 times better than the Bose system. (Energy was great at the time, but went downhill shortly after.) So, while I don't hate Bose, I just don't think it is worth the money. (Just like Apple products.)
The funny thing is, in the Cardiff, Wales Bose store in 2015, I asked an employee to hear a twin-waveguide small Wave unit. He asked me which CD track I wanted him to put on out of the small selection, and I said "Hey Now, please" (the London Grammar song). I picked that track knowing that it had heavy sub-bass, and I could hear the distortion from the speaker drivers trying to play that bass and the midrange at the same time! So why they put that song on the CD I don't know!
@@lunam7249 Gee, Apple is finally going to switch to the much better Android RCS text messaging system, that came out in 2019, sometime later this year. So iPhone users will no longer have a problem sending large files and such to Android users. Yet, you Apple users think it was an Android problem, while it was just the opposite. Apple is fashion-tech.
I had a love affair with the Bose AM5 back in the early 90's. I thought they were the best thing after listening to one at a friends place so had to run out and buy a set. I always thought wow how can such a small speaker system handle up to 200 watts (RMS) per channel as stated on the bass unit. It wasn't until I upgraded my amplifier to a unit at 100w per channel that I started noticing some kind of serious sound compression and the bass would flatten when I cranked the amp up. So I opened the bass unit, played some music and all of sudden this crazy light started emanating from the circuit. WTF? It was then I realised Bose deploys a current limiter to protect the speakers which obviously aren't rated up to 200w. In reality I was only really getting around 50-65 watts of power into the speakers (depending on the music) before the protection circuit would cut in. Love affair over. I ended up giving them away.
Interesting video. My perception of Bose is that their expertise really lies in marketing, certainly not in audio quality. Being an old guy who got into audio way back in the 70s, I've owned some pretty great gear over the years. Always avoided Bose and still do.
You are right about marketing, they don't seem to have real hi-fi systems anymore. I see lots of their small "fake stereo" powered speakers used by young generation needing more bass than anything else, the rest are systems made for surround. This might be their way to first serve the customers when they are very young and go from there, or follow example of the record labels who rather don't pay for high quality recording, studios and all that. I went from passive monitors to active because they offer so much more for very low price like Adam Audio and similar. Amps are D class at this price point but they have some A/B for not much more.
The main thing I've heard about Bose speakers from everyone was how great they were, albeit pricey. I finally had a chance to hear a home theatre system with Bose components and I must say, I was thoroughly unimpressed. I noticed even after calibration, the soundstage had a severe "sweet spot" and that drove me crazy. Plus, I noticed it couldn't produce accurate bass tones and the highs sounded rather strained. I guess I wasn't the target audience for Bose speakers because I want to believe I'm hearing actual instruments, not a recording, and Bose couldn't do that for me.
I was living in the UK back in the 70s, when I first heard the Bose 901 at Lasky's in London, one of the famous hifi stores at that time. Lasky's was on several floors, if my memory serves me well, i believe it was six or seven floors. The higher the floor the higher end the gear. Guess what floor the Bose 901 were on. If you guessed the ground floor, you would be right. No one in our group, took them seriously, they would only show up at parties, being used as midrange, for loud playing, accompanied by 15" or18" bass units, and various tweeter systems. At 21, I was designing tube amplifiers out of my head, I wasn't the only one in the group doing that type of thing, we were feeding off each others knowledge. In fact, most of us were often working on various equipment designs. At 17, I built my first Peerless 12" two way speaker kit, and have not looked back since, never buying loudspeakers my entire life, now pushing 70. Just in case you are wondering. Yes I am working on a desktop speaker, also a full range system design. The only thing I can reveal about the latter, is that the bottom end will be servo driven. Bose like everyone else is entitled to their slice of the market. I just never saw them as a valued proposition for me, or any of my group back then and now. Yes! I am an audiophile to the max!
Well. Although not a big Bosé fan, I bought a soundbar 900 and a sub 700. That is seriously magnificent sound wise. The app could be better, but that's software that could be updated
I remember being young and hearing a "vintage" Bose speaker and being amazed. Then I studied physics and became an acoustician and sound system tuner and I cant tolerate them or their methods in business practice. It was great in my opinion in the past and then it just went to the deep end, the cost does not justify the quality or performance. Great vid
I was always under the impression that Bose had the best sound in the industry. I heard some speakers that seemed to have great channel separation and sound bouncing. I always envied people who had their headphones, but I just couldn’t justify paying so much for their products. This summer I was determined to treat myself. I went into a couple of Best Buy’s to demo their S1 Pro speakers against others. This time I was going to get the Bose, but the UE Hyperboom kicked its butt with sound quality AND separation for a fraction of the price. Not what I expected. Got the Hyperboom. Still Boseless.
If I may, you were "under the impression" because the Bose company's marketing department drove the company, not R & D or engineering. As mentioned in previous posts, cast a disparaging comment towards a Bose product and face a battery of Bose lawyers. The Emperor's New Clothes.
Go to any real home theater shops well if there is any still around Bose never compared to a lot of brands back in the day we had one about 49 minutes away can’t remember the models but Advent sounded better and had more impact then the Bose towers they had but that’s my opinion
I was fortunate to be able to get one of the last production sets of the 901VI's. I truly enjoy these speakers. I have an old Marantz 2265B receiver from the 70s, and they compliment each other perfectly. One of the best speaker investments I have ever made. Thanks for posting this information about Bose. Cheers!
I purchased a Panamera in 2014 and ticked the Bose option box. It was the worst mistake I ever made; the audio "dynamics" sounded impressive for a short while, until you really started listening. The low and high ends discrepancies became so mind-numbingly jarring, I couldn't live with the car anymore and sold it after 9 months.
I bought a Bose 901 Series IV in the 80s brand new and I am still using it until now after I refoam all the drivers. It is still sound like new to me. Bose 901s are hungry power. I used a Carver Power Amplifier of 200 watts per channel and a total of 400 watts. I also have few dbx equipment to make the sound clearer and better. I used my 901s for music and movies right now. With Panamax surge protection and voltage regulator makes a big difference and a Kimber Kable speaker wires for the 901s. I have no negative issues on this speaker even in the lowest volume when I listen at night.
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Back in 82 I had various expensive audio equipment and I liked to switch out various items. During this time I had a pair of ESS AMT - either - 1b or 3b Tower Studio Monitors -, the Towers that had 2 -12 inch woofers, one active and 1 passive. I drove down the hwy 65 miles or so to hear a pair of 901s at a high end audio retailer. Had a nice chat with the sales manager that I had called ahead for an appointment - to make sure he would be there. When he fired up the 901s I was impressed at the 3D sound bit within seconds I realized that they had near zero Bass and what Bass they had was muddy as in Zero dampening factor. I am in Canada and they retailed for about $1800 and the Equalizer retailed for about $1250. Man was I disappointed with the sound as well as the combines price for what I considered junk sound for any lower price, that works out to over $9,000 in todays money.CAN. These days I have heard that the 301s sound good if one has only a small room for their audio.
Effective marketing can dupe so many unsuspecting people. I would never buy Bose. Way overpriced for what you get.
As a classical musician, I had a funny experience when a Bose salesman tried to convince me that the opening "turntable rumble" of the recording I had brought in of Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" was completely eliminated by the "superior" 901s. It definitely WAS eliminated BUT (ahem... too bad that "rumble" is supposed to be a 16hz/32Hz organ pedal low C....) LOL.
Hahahaha that's hilarious! I've always heard that rumble so I knew it was supposed to be there. It's not surprising that the 901's couldn't get that low since they were just a bunch of cheap 4 1/2" drivers
32 Hz output is outputted on 901s vs hardly any on most. A little windy perhaps on ported models. I used to have horrible feedback about 30 Hz on a couple cheap turntables. I have clear as day spectrum screenshots of 32 Hz response on my test track, ZZ Top, Mississippi 1 minute into song.
@@gregsz1ful do you own a pair of 901's?
@@carewser I do have a pair of 90@ Series V.
@@carewser RUclips will not let me edit or delete and shadow-bans me for last 3 years. I said I have a pair Vs for 4-5 years I got for experimenting. With cabs and EQ. I orginally had a Series II family member has them. I had to fix EQ after having them for 10 years, cap failure no bass, in around 1987, purchased in 1975. Many prefer the early sound better. Over the years I have many speakers and buy a few or modify a few. Build larger systems for DJs, plus horn enclosures. i typically run pink noise spectrum tests to verify performance.
Years ago I was a researcher at a major loudspeaker company, and it was an open secret that Bose had more lawyers than engineers.
There is no such thing as an open secret.
@@mrsmith8436 Shhhh... that's an open secret.
Unless you where in upper management at Bose, you don't know that. Rumors are rarely the whole truth
Sounds about right !, my experience with their product from a electronics repair serviceman & live sound engineer, Bose for me was all way way over hyped , much more style than substance !, and serious deficiencies in performance & reliability of their 802/302 speakers.
Ha ha he had allready developed a very good system and he had to take care of an evil and jealous world.....so he needed lawyers instead of engineers.
Still love the good old joke about Paul Klipsch passing Amar Bose in the hallway. Paul cupped his hands and shouted 'hi Amar' and Amar turned his head away from Paul and shouted at the wall 'hi Paul'.
After which Paul concluded that Amar sounded way taller than he looked LOL. Paul was a terrific guy, a true legend.
@@HansOvervoorde After which Amar concluded that Paul sounded a lot thinner than he looked. 🤣 What legends.
I owned both and With a proper amp there's no comparison.
My dad got his Doctorate in Acoustics at MIT and while he was teaching there Amar Bose was one of his students. I always got a kick out of his statement that Acoustics was not Bose's major, it was Marketing.
Haha thats fantastic
My Dad was a Sound Engineer, Grad of RPI. He would laugh at Bose.
Bullshit
"After graduating from Abington Senior High School in Abington, Pennsylvania, Bose enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating with a BS (Bachelor of Science) in Electrical Engineering in the early 1950s. Bose spent a year at Philips
Laboratorium in Eindhoven, Netherlands; and a year as a Fulbright research student in New Delhi, India, where he met his future first wife. He completed his PhD in Electrical Engineering from MIT"
His major was mathematics. He was brilliant.
That is a fantastic story. lol
I was a technician in the 80s. I was at an audio store listening to the 1812 overture with canon, on a set of Klipsch corner horns. The salesman said, "Listen to this", and hit the switch for the Bose 901s. There was a squeek. Then nothing. He switched back to the Klipsch and said there must be something wrong with the switch panel. Later that week I went out to lunch with a tech friend of mine. He told me the story of a set of Bose 901s he had in the shop that had every driver toasted. I asked if they were from Team Electronics. He said, yes, how did you know? We had a good laugh!
Klipsch corner horns... I had a listening experience in a demo room of those speakers. Frankie goes to Hollywood IIRC. THEY WERE LOUD, CLEAR, PUNCHING ME IN THE CHEST. WE COULDN'T HEAR OURSELVES TALK. Carver Amp and pre setup.
That didn't prove anything, i've had faulty speakers from a few manufacturers. It happens
Well that says it all. ..... didnt put the ohm converter /amp in the line. Fries them often...... name that shop so we can avoid.
BTW, who was team electronics ?
There was one in Dubuque. Ia. Bad experience with some JBL I bought there. Never went back
Just as important, and perhaps even more important than the technology Bose was developing, was the army battalion sized legal team that aggressively pursued their patents. Bose was well known for taking an existing technology and tweaking it just a bit and then slapping a patent on it. A good example of this is the Bose Wave radio. Anyone with experience in speaker building could recognize what is essentially a Helmholtz Resonator, but because it used plastic tubing wrapped around a radio receiver in an active system, voila'! There's your 'Wave' patent. And this was a frequent occurrence. Bose was also notorious when it came to hiding specifications. It was marketed as a luxury brand at a high price, but was manufactured with cheap materials and cut corners everywhere possible. My friend has a pair of 901's that he has loved ever since buying them in the 80's, but I think he might still be compensating for how much he paid for them with stands and the optional EQ. To this day, I've never bought anything from Bose and never plan on doing so. There's nothing they do that someone else isn't already doing with better build quality and a lower price.
Bose bluetooth speakers are nice, not accurate but really fun.
There's nothing "optional" about the equalizer that "MUST BE USED WITH BOSE ACTIVE EQUILIZER" printed right on the 901 speakers.
Bose does the best noise cancellation in headphones
"Better sound through litigation" should have been their slogan. IIRC they sued Consumer Reports back in the late 1960s over a reviewers subjective opinion about the stereo imaging of a reproduced symphony orchestra.
@@cafe80s definitely not lol
You are not kidding about the 901's being iconic in the 70's. Sitting in a friends basement smoking funny things, munching Doritos, and listening to Tubular Bells through Bose 901's made for a great summer afternoon.
"Tubular Bells" very good LP.
The funny things you were smoking no doubt changed your perception of how good the speakers were. How could you hear the music over all that crunching of the Doritos? Seriously, though, it must have been quite an experience. Those 901's were better than anything I had at the time, and Tubular Bells was quite an amazing album to listen to!
Nah, you should have heard Magnepans early speakers!@@theclearsounds3911
I sat in a Hawaiian apartment overlooking the North Shore with some Maui Wowie and my Bose 901's in the mid 70's and now I'm 70 and still the Bose are bouncing off the wall surrounding the Lounge of Loma Vista 😀
@@dannymccolgan88 What amp do you use?
Oh I remember setting up so many Bose Acoustimass speaker systems for Home Theater customers. It always pained me greatly to have to look the customer in the face while outright lying to them about how wonderful their new overpriced system sounded. Complete and utter junk! Thanks for another great video.
Why not just keep it honest with them 🤦🏾🤷🏾
@@myquietreviews would always reccoment the Denon S301 instead of the Bose 3-2-1. But if customers only wanted Bose (after advice not to) you sell it to them and keep the middle managers satisfied. The Denon system was so much better and the speakers were only a little bit larger same price aswell.
@@myquietreviews Its all subjective. You can think something sounds bad and is overpriced, but that's just an opinion. You can't prove something that's subjective. People buy things all the time that other people hate.
@@myquietreviews I was an Installer, not the sales person, unfortunately that was part of my job.
Nice insight
Bose is the apple of the sound industry.
So they're the best?
@@sinistermoon no not the best. But has the most amount of lawyers 😂
@@Emilthehun sure you're not thinking of Nintendo?
@@sinistermoon that as well. But I guess it's the nature of the beast. It's what ferrari does , samsung , apple and so on.
this guy , is not a gamer lol
Same years ago we had dinner with friends who wanted to show off their brand new Acoustimass system. We suffered through a movie where even though they turned the volume up to uncomfortable levels, we couldn't understand the dialog.
A couple of months later we had them over for dinner and watched a movie in our dedicated home theater with a calibrated 7.1 audio system. They were astounded at the clarity of dialog and the overall quality of sound, even at comfortable listening levels. I then hurt their feelings by telling them I'd actually spent less on the speakers than they did.
This was hands down the best history of Bose products and their marketing strategy that I have ever seen. Bravo. I briefly owned a floor standing Bose 501 in 1973 but soon after traded it in on a pair of JBL L26 Decade Speakers. During the 80's and 90's, I briefly had a "business" with a friend of mine when every wife was hounding their husbands with "when are you going to get rid of those gargantuan speakers you got in college in the 70's and get one of those Bose Satellite/Subwoofer Systems"? I went to countless garage sales and during that period bought close to 40 Advent/JBL/AR/Cerwin Vega products and then refinished the cabinets and would have them refoamed if necessary. Most we sold on EBay but finding boxes suitable for shipment became an issue. I had a fellow who did all my refoaming for me and he once exclaimed: "have you ever looked inside a Bose 901 speaker. Literally a bowl of spaghetti wire." Needless to say, one of my least favorite speakers to take on as a "resale" project. Please do a similar "seminar" on JBL's golden hour: the 1970's. My favorite? The L50. Similar to an L100 Century but with a 10 inch foam surround woofer and a "real" grill. I even prefer them to the venerable L166 Horizon.
Means a lot! Thank you! Great info as well, I definitely feel we nailed that part.
@@LennyFlorentine The JBL Aquarius line was pretty wild. Would definitely like to hear your thoughts on that!
Some older speakers are just awesome. Me and my brother both want my Dad's Polk Audio SDA-1C's. God dam those speakers still sound better then anything I have heard. And they are over 30 years old.
@@mindcrome The SDA series are what put Polk on the audio map. Now they're riding that SQ and popularity wave like Bose is still riding on their successes with the 901s, 501s, 301s, and 101s......
How were you selling on Ebay in the 80s and 90s my man?
Bose has always claimed to be a high fidelity brand. However, audiophiles like myself have learned over the years that they are mid fidelity at best. In particular they don't compete with other headphone makers like Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic and HIFIMAN in my humble opinion.
I bought their portable home bluetooth speaker for like 480 bucks (more expensive in my country). Now it only pairs with my iphone. Never again Bose is crap ime
Their self powered speakers are low wattage at high prices
Their noise cancelling tech is very good, probably best patent for consumer use currently
@@jackedkerouac4414 They were crap to begin with - but you're just now finding out.....
Klipsch Heresy's. The End
Back in the day Bose was being introduced in the restaurant and disco market in Finland and I came across many of their speakers that looked like the 901, but had two ports in the front, while I was installing better audio equipment to a venue. I was curious and inspected the setup that always required a preamp between the main amp and say, a mixer.
It turned out that the preamp actually was a fixed equalizer with a hard cut somewhere around 50-60 Hz. Why was that?
Well, inspecting the speaker itself I found out that Bose had figured a new business model for building speakers with cheap components. They sourced small mid range speakers by the tens of thousands bringing the price down to a minimum and made a speaker cabinet with 8 pcs of those acquiring a modest power handling of say, 8 x 20-30W = 160-240W with the condition that the frequency range was kept above 60 Hz. The bass sound was created by peaking (amplifying) the 80-120 Hz range just before the cut off at 60 Hz. This makes it sound like there is good bass when there really isn't any. In other words Bose was misusing his scientific knowledge to fool the customers. And it worked. 😁
Makes sense. That trick imparted the kind of clarity that was never heard before and produced a Unique Bose sound.
Plus not many artists have used very deep base in those days.
I remember those dual-ported ones in the 80's. I guess marketed to the pro-audio market because I only saw DJ's and auditoriums using them. Back in those days there was alot less content below 50hz than today.
@@v12alpine Billy Cobham - Stratus was released in 1973. Leland Sklar on the base. Plenty of it 😁👌👍
Bose also used some trickery with air passages in the cabinets that also created the impression of a solid bass because it increased the sound pressure of lower tones (the famous jet pipes on the front). The drivers you already mentioned were horrible quality portable stereo type broad range speakers that failed often (hifi enthousiasts often accused Bose of just wrapping some copper wire around a piece of carton and call it a driver). Many a Bose owner has had to have multiple drivers in their 901's replaced just because the quality was bad. You didn't even have to drive the 901's hard, because the drivers would spontaneously fail over time.
The professional version of the 901's, the 802's, proved that Bose could do it right, as those had higher quality drivers ánd were used in combination with subwoofers that supplied the bass the 901's missed.
I've only heard the first version of the Acoustimass when Bose introduced them and those were terrible. Lots of screeching and lots of thumping but an almost absent mid-range and an overall terrible sound quality.
@timothymartin2137 The 802's are the professional version of the 901's and those have 8 drivers and the front with the single driver has been replaced with a backplate and you do point the 8 drivers including the "jet" ports at the crowd. Because with the 802's it's about pushing sound at the crowd, not at the walls to create a different soundstage.
I went to a few Bose presentations some decades ago. The Acoustimass AM5 was the first sometime in the late 80's and my teenage mind was absolutely blown away by the glorious sound coming from these tiny cubes and subwoofer. I sang praises of Bose until I started working in car audio straight out of high school, which is when I learned that the Bose systems in GM and Nissan cars were utter bunk compared to what I could put together for much less than the Bose options cost using JBL speakers and Rockford or Kenwood amps. But, surely Bose was still "audiophile quality" in the home arena, right? Bose wowed me again right before heading off to college with their powered Roommate II speakers which were a dead ringer for their quite ubiquitous 101 bookshelf speakers, but with an amplifier in them. In those days they were still expensive for me (just over $300 back in 1990) so I could only dream of having a pair. That changed in 1991 when a guy down the hall from me in the dorms showed up with a pair of Paradigm Atom speakers and an old Aiwa receiver after Christmas break. Everyone on my floor were stunned at how good those little bookshelf speakers sounded. It was to the point where I hopped into my car and drove to the nearest department store with Roommates so I could have a listen: They couldn't hold a candle to the Paradigm speakers.
Many moons later and I wound up owning both: I picked up the Roommates in '94 and got the Paradigm Atom speakers (an original set) around 2000. I've since A/B'ed them and, yeah... The Paradigm blow them out of the water in every conceivable way. I still have both pairs of speakers. I've used the Bose for computer speakers for years and the Paradigm served as my main speakers with a sub to anchor them for a number of years until eventually becoming my listening pair in my bedroom.
Thumbs up for paradigm. I own a pair of towers monitor 9s for my humble home 5.2.2 theater. I get lots of compliments on the sound.
I’ve had the Paradigm Monitor 90P’s as my mains for years. Huge speakers, but so impressive in my home theater system.
You're not an audiophile and that trash you were ruining cars with sounded like loud bassy garbage.
Once upon a time, I visited a Bose outlet store in NH USA. One product caught my attention, a 'bookshelf' stereo system. I read the price as $349.99, and thought that it was just a bit overpriced. I got closer, and then realized that the price was actually $3,499.99. Crikey, the speakers must have cones made of unicorn hymens. So I popped one of the speaker covers off, and while a sales clerk was leaping over furniture to reach me, I determined by inspection that the speaker cone was made of plain old paper (i.e. cardboard). Yeah... $3500 and cardboard speaker cones. Nutzoid. What a racket. Their customers must be empty headed.
Pretty much the same as Apple or Tesla. Yet they sell, and the companies skyrocketing. There IS a market there, based on mentally challanged, but deep pocketed customers.
"Unicorn hymens," bruuuhhhh... 🤣🤣🤣
paper cones arent inherently bad. all materials have a specific response. yes, paper is inexpensive, but it has a sound that many people enjoy. i will say that they tend to use very thin paper, so it doesnt last and it cannot take a lot of power.
@@OxBlitzkriegxO exactly. My Cornwalls have a paper 15" woofer.
@@emszabi Not so much Tesla, but with Apple the build quality, components, and manufacturing are actually quite high while Bose isn't. For some reason, these companies gained cultish followings irrespective of quality, features, innovation, etc.; whatever may be the case for that company. They know how to market and brand, I guess, to the group willing to overpay.
I remember going into a Bose brick and mortar store and sitting through one of their presentations where you going to a room and hear this phenomenal sound coming from these great looking speakers; and then what they do is lift those great looking speakers up in the air to show these little cubes which are actually producing the sound. Then, of course, a sales rep would try to sell you a $5,000 acoustimass system that, if I bought it, would replace the $2,000 system I already had that sounded terrific.
Now we know those rooms were actually heavily equalized and acoustically treated in order to get that sound. That means that what Bose could have done is to sell acoustic treatment packages along with their products.
Of course, that would kill their recall program, but I think it might have also advanced home audio appreciation in general; as a public would have finally discovered that the best way to improve the sound of their systems (whatever that system might have been) was to improve the sound of their listening spaces.
My wife and I went to one in Las Vegas. During the presentation she looks at me and says, that sounds like crap! I just laughed and we walked out.
I still remember, as a child, my jaw dropping from that cello coming from what was revealed as a tiny cube once the curtain was pulled away. It was a magical experience! Not a Bose fan now, although I do use their S1 for gigs, as it's quite light and has good features for me.
Except almost nobody is going to spend $15k plus to turn their living room into an audio studio, never mind putting up with how it would look and not having windows, maybe even having to add walls and doors they don’t want, now costing you more in the $30k plus range
I used to love Bose when I was selling hifi, why because they made the B&W Solid Sub Sat sound amazing which they were anyway.
I've had some Bose products over the years, 141s and 161s in my early experimental days, then a set of Acoustimass 3 on stands driven by a quality stereo receiver (they actually did decent imaging - ! - when carefully set up), and some 402s and MB4s as PA speakers. I have more serious speakers, but the Bose speakers are fun to play with every so often. Don't let anyone look down on a speaker for using paper cones; virtually all PA speakers currently made, even the high-end ones (JBL, Meyer, Nexo, Renkus, etc.) are using paper cones, because even though paper is not the strongest possible cone material, it has the highest tensile strength to weight ratio, and this produces the most efficient conversion of electrical signal to sound output.
Plus ir makes for lighter cones that move easier.
Haha... I actually do enjoy the mid/late-90s AMs. I wouldn't have ever claimed they have great imaging, though. It was definitely more about "big" sound, than being able to place sounds accurately in a panorama. Maybe I've never had them "carefully set up" though. :-)
As for paper cones, yes -- my Yamaha Club V PA tops have been absolute workhorses for y-e-a-r-s. Paper woofers. I'm actually building my own DIY speakers that are designed to look exactly like miniature Club Vs, shrunk down to 4" woofers. I selected Dayton Audio DS-115 4" paper cone drivers for those.
PA speakers are nothing like (or should be like) home audio loudspeakers!
I have a set of 301 Series IIIs that I loved until I got a set of Paradigm Atoms that were 2/3s the money and blew them away. But I think Bose noise cancelling is top notch.
301's were always a great speaker at the price point they sold
I met Amar Bose and his wife on a service call as a technician for his satellite tv system at his Hawaii house high up on a ridge looking down over Honolulu in 2004. It was between thanksgiving and Christmas. Very nice guy. I told him I owned a pair of the QC2 headphones for the long flight over the pacific. He then Told me about the noise canceling headphones idea he came up with in the 1970’s but had to wait until tech caught up to make it small enough to fit in portable headsets. But used it in helicopters for years waiting for the QC line to come to fruition. As I was leaving standing in their foyer his wife goes in that kind old lady voice “Amar did you give him his Christmas present yet”. I chimed in being on the clock we were not allowed to receive gifts. He said nonsense walk over to a closet by the front door opened it and stacked from floor to ceiling were boxes of the QC2 head phones. He reached in grabbed one turned and said here merry Christmas. Holding a $300 pair of brand new Bose QC2 headphones and being on the clock not allowed to take gifts I kindly said thank you and left with the box in hand.
And he was full of crap. The military came up with noise cancelling in 1954. Bose is about marketing.
@@ChefPHD Yup, in the 1950's Dr. Lawrence Fogel invented noise cancelling headphones for aviation Bose just made them commercially available although this story is 20 years old so it's likely he's misremembered some of the details
I actually own the Bose QC 2 earbuds : I didn't pay 300$ for them but I can say they have really good noise cancelling but a lousy microphone and tons of firmware bugs making them not suitable for daily phone calls. that last point alone, makes them good for flights only . barely worth half their Price.
Bose first products were power supplies for aircraft.
The headphones were one of their good products. But Sony do them better now.
When I was younger, and looking to build my audio system, I looked at Bose. I considered both the 901 and Acoustimass products. I ended up with Martin Logan Sequel II speakers. I paid more for the Martin Logans, but have never regretted that choice. If you buy the best, you’ll never regret that you settled for less.
It is now 2023. I am out of the game. I no longer know what’s good and what’s not. I still have those Martin Logans. They still sound great. 30 years later, and my ears can no longer hear the capability of those speakers, though those speakers are still reproducing sound as well as they ever did.
Ah yes....good memories of the 301's in college, as a bachelor, and through the first 5 years of marriage. When placed right, they sounded awesome for their size. They're long gone, have moved up in the home theater world with speakers, but man, did they ever serve me well when I had them.
I think I have a pair of 301s kicking around that I got somewhere that I don't remember. I used em for a good handful of years before retiring them. I don't think I paid much of anything for em. They also fit the room well looks wise when I was using them. We moved and now not so much so I don't even remember where exactly they are. 😂
@@goosenotmaverick1156 My sister and brother-in-law bought a pair of the floor standing 401's back in 1992. 32 years later, they still use them as their main speakers! IMO, those were exceptional Bose speakers..
I have a pair of 301 series ll, they are on a stand and sit vertically now. Still use them every day 45 years on.
@@Paulman50 that's amazing Paulman!
The Bose AM series are what I called "well-engineered" speakers. "Well-engineered" in that they were designed to appeal to a target market, and they did so very successfully. A casual inspection of two of the AM5 bass modules showed me that Bose did not waste any money on features that would not make a difference to the target market. The bass drivers used in the modules look cheap because, doh, they're in the bass module - who's going to be looking at them?
Several years ago, my aunt's Bose Lifestyle system failed, and while they were looking for a replacement, I lent them my retuned Mordaunt-Short speakers and a DIY subwoofer that IMO would run rings around one of the AM systems in terms of sonic accuracy. She couldn't wait to replace them with a new Bose system. Turns out that being able to get speakers and their stands off the floor and replace them with tiny hidden modules mounted near the roof was more important to her than sonic accuracy, and I think Bose realized that most of their target market probably thought the same way.
Great share!
That is exactly it. I grew up a huge Bose fan. I then learned "the truth" and replaced it all with Polk Audio RTi series bookshelf speakers. I swore off Bose forever, and realized it was all a sham, and they were the evil empire, etc etc etc.
Now, I just laugh about all of that. They are what they are, and you're spot-on here. They spent money in exactly the right places, and not one penny more than they had to. They developed a product that fit the needs of consumers like a well-worn glove. There were better products. There were cheaper products. There were cheaper, better products. But there were also a lot of truly satisfied Bose customers. What else do you want?
Yes, done very well. I remember when Bose created separated demo display areas in stores away from the retailers soundrooms, to focus on the marketing message and to lessen the chance of direct A/B comparisons with other brands. The AM5 rollout was also full of stage tricks, they created a light cloth covered frame to emulate a big speaker only to have a pair of AM5 upper modules sitting inside the cloth. Again away from anywhere direct comparisons were available. Later when the cubes and bass modules were incorporated into our sound rooms and displayed against their direct competing sub-sat systems, they were the blown away by just about everything else on the shelves...All smoke and mirrors. So sad. I recall my old soundrooms and having 301s, 501s, 601s comparing to other brands, and as a serious pro and enthusiast of good audio, those speakers actually did sound good, compared well to the other marquee brands we had in the rooms. Bose DOES know how to build good product. But the insane profit margins and ease of manufacturing of the acoustimass line just really completely diverted the company away from what we call ' hi-fi '..
How funny (as a first-generation AM5 owner) ! I love it 👍
OK, to be fair... I bought a set of Acoustimass 7 speakers when I was much younger. I wasn't yet old enough to move out on my own, so I was living at my parent's home, and had only my own bedroom. Big speakers weren't an option. But I loved audio, and was obsessed with home theater, and surround sound, etc.
I had an absolute ton of fun with those AM7s. So much, that recently I decided to build a shed out back, with a retro theme -- CRT projection TV, LaserDisc player, old computers and video game consoles ... that sort of thing. I'm going to put that Redline generation of Acoustimass speakers out there. Are they the best sounding speakers I could use? Not by a long shot! But they're pretty, they're fun, and they'll fit in well with 480i resolution video sources and Sound Blaster audio. :-)
Horses for courses. Nothing "sad" about it, except when people think they're getting something they aren't. If your expectations are aligned with reality, and the price is acceptable to you (whether that's because you can afford the mark-up, or you're getting something secondhand), then nobody's getting hurt.
Exactly what I wanted to say @socalav! Thanks for saving me a few minutes of typing! 😄
Many years ago, I talked to a Hi-Fi store (remember them?) sales guy who said that to be allowed to sell Bose gear, they had to set up a separate Bose demo area and they were not allowed to do A/B demos. Breach of these conditions could've had them cut off by Bose. Because some people were looking for these, they went along with it for a bit of extra cashflow which all businesses can do with.
I think Bose gear is a fashion statement first and audio product a (distant) second. I've never liked the whole Bose image with underwhelming product specs, overpricing and legal strongarm tactics.
@@sandman0123 Yes I had been told about the threats Bose had made. Our company really started emphasizing our anti product disparagement policy, salespeople were prevented from saying negative things about products, but it was mostly Bose that sent in secret shoppers. I was free to show something better but I couldn't say something was drek.
" I remember when Bose created separated demo display areas in stores away from the retailers soundrooms..."
Hi-fi manufacturers ALL disdain the idea of competitors speakers in the demo environment, they act as passive resonators and color the sound of the speaker you're listening to.
As a retired repair tech who worked for a music store, I used to have to work on the Bose 802 along with other products. I hated working on the 802 due to the way they were made. first, all 8 of the speakers were 1 ohm speakers wired in series with some extra crossover thrown in the mix. There was no cabinet back so each speaker had to be removed from the front making service difficult. If one speaker developed an intermittent voice coil all of the speakers would cut out. This made finding the bad one a pain since there was no back to remove. You couldn't just jump around the speakers to locate the bad one. You wound up pulling the speakers out the front until you figured out which one was bad. The crossover they used was stupidly designed. As I recall, for the boosted highs they had a small size crossover cap that jumpered across 6 of the speakers throwing all of the highs on 2 of the speakers. This meant that for those high notes, the amp was driving those speakers at a 2-ohm load instead of an 8-ohm load. They also used another cap across some of the speakers to further change the characteristics of the speaker system. Again no back to to remove in order to get to the crossover caps. If all of that was not enough you were to use their special Bose processer ( which was a preset equalizer) to make it all sound good.
I feel your pain, having to get a screwdriver in through the front speaker holes to undo the two screws holding in the crossover aka "Directivity control circuit" to find out what capacitor had rattled off of it!
simple, bose = 💩
The cabinets on those began life in 2 pieces. After they drivers were installed, the back was installed to the cabinet by a process called "Emma Bond" . It worked by having a gasket between the sections with metal flakes in it. The Emma Bond process generated microwaves that fused the 2 sections into one.
I want a pulsating spear!
When I used to go to symphony, I usually had pretty good seats. But one time, all that were available were WAY in the back, under the second balcony. When I was seated there, I finally understood what the 901 experience was all about -- it sounded EXACTLY like that. (My Magnepans, and then my Apogees, on the other hand, did a very good job of recreating 7th row center.)
Dreamed of getting "everything Bose" when I first heard the 901s back in the 70s, peer pressured into being the "best" ever. Fast forward to the 80s, joined the Navy. Got the Acoustimass AM5 at my base exchange when it first came out. Bose expanded their speaker models going into the 90s, got the 601s, 301s and a Bose center speaker for my 5.1 setup at the time along with a sub from another brand (forgot what) and a Pioneer A/V receiver. Now retired and along the way I have read and researched about other audio components and such and took off my blinders away from the overpriced Bose products. I now own a much "simpler" 7.1 setup for a fraction of the price of that old 5.1 Bose configuration. A refurbished Denon AVR S760H A/V receiver, Jamo Studio Series 803 5.0 system speakers, Polk bookshelves for heights and an F1 BIC America sub. I'm no audiophile but it sounds just fine to me. With emphasis on TO ME.
People HIGHLY underestimate the power and beauty of a good home theater system. I've had a denon 7.1 system from around 2015 I believe and it was great, I gifted to my uncle. Currently I use a Harmon kardon AVR 135, jbl bookshelf speakers, infinity center channel and jbl/Polk subwoofers, all driven off my fiio m11+. It sounds amazing, best setup for a small room, the soundstaging and emersion is incredible, every person I have ever showed my system is immediately blown away. You don't have to spend thousands to get the audiophile experience, it's just about matching the right gear to the right environment (:
@@POPDELUSION " it's just about matching the right gear to the right environment "
I would definitely agree with you on that in general, but if you want the "audiophile" experience, you'll be better served by dedicated 2 channel equipment. I have some of the best home theater components money can buy and they pale in comparison to good 2 channel gear set up properly, and don't cost anywhere near as much. Maybe if recordings were originally engineered for multi channel systems, it may be something worth looking into, but they're far and few between.
I have a pair of Bose 501 ser. 2. I got them cheep and refoamed the main speaker in each cabinet. I love the low end they provide. I also have a pair of Klipsch RP-600R II's as well. These bring out the mids and high's the Bose are lacking. Personally these two speakers together make for a great sound in my front room. So I have old and new speaker technology in my stereo system. By the way. I power my system with a Pioneer SA-7500 II amp from 1977. Works just fine for my listening pleasure.
I owned a pair of 901s series 3 that I had refurbished about 6 years ago. They sound pretty awesome. Maybe they are not as accurate as my jbl 4312s but the sound is pretty incredible. I can't speak for the modern Bose speakers.
Same here👍👍 ,here we go again...... Bose bashers 😒😒
@@Arch007 I think most who bash haven't really heard them. I have friends come over and all they want me to do is plug in the 901s, put a ACDC CD in the player and crank it up. Keep up the great videos!
@@dlangston2020 Most of my music is classic and jazz and they sound excellent.
Been using Bose products for over 40 years. Still using Bose in my home theatre and with some of my musical instruments (they sound great). I've never had a problem with any of them. I'm using 3 other, different types of speakers (all brand names) and the Bose sound still rules. If the price is in your budget; you like the sound and it makes you happy, buy it. Screw the reviews and enjoy YOUR sound.
Where were all these criticisms when we sold tons of Bose bookshelf speakers in the 1980s? Huge example of getting on the bus.
@@directcurrent5751 Exactly. I use other quality brands also. Buy within your budget and if you like the sound then own the purchase and be proud of it. Bose is still a good sound.
thats very nice and not at all the discussion here. the discussion here is does Bose use incredibly cheap electronics and charge luxury prices for their products, which they do. the discussion is also does Bose lie about their engineering and quality, which they do.
If you enjoy pissing away money then please have fun. You are one of millions of people who contributes to a shitty market and doesnt realize it, thats fine. But try to keep up with the conversation.
@Shorty_Lickens Nope. And nope. Along with the millions you mentioned, I've not paid high prices for Bose speakers. Take note that I did not lower myself to defending my point by being condescending and dismissive of your post which had nothing to do with my point.
I used to own Bose cinemate system and it sounded great specially if understand how sound travels in your room. No I didn't had room acoustics on my living room but I knew for the surround effect to work I needed strategically use the walls in my room . It was the most organized , better sounding sound system I ever owned.
I purchased two new pair of Bose 901 series IV speakers around 1981. I wired them to 4 ohms. Powered by a Pioneer SX-1080 and coupled with to a Technics 3300 turntable. Hung from the ceiling per Bose parameters in a hard 25 x 25 foot basement the four-speaker system continues to perform admirably especially when cranked in a party atmosphere. Mostly Classic '60's and '70's rock. Although other types of music play well also. Direct to Disc albums at high volumes are especially ear and mind blowing. Never clipping or failures. The only issue with the speakers is that I had to install new surrounds about ten years ago. Other than that this will continue to be my forever system.
Have you thought of using a DSP in place of the Bose EQ?
@@ikonix360 No, but I may do so. Thank you for the suggestion.
A quad setup! Have you looked into quad versions online that were made of the classic rock era before it crashed in the mid 70's? RUclips supports quad and other multichannel postings.
@@echodelta9 Never looked into it. Had friends that had quad systems when they were "popular." To my ears the sounds were distracting. Possibly look into it given current workaround technology. Thank you.
@@billfioretti3013
You're welcome.
Would allow you to use a powered sub if so desired crossed over about 80Hz which would remove the bass from the 901s which might clean up their sound a bit.
Given bass is non-directional, the sub or subs should fit right in and would actually give a more accurate concert type sound.
I used to have a pair of Bose 6.2 (like 301s on steroids). They were OK. The .2 series is probably the best series Bose ever made.
I eventually replaced them with a pair of vintage Dynaco A25XL. No comparison. I got rid of the 6.2. The A25XLs are magical with my old Pioneer SX720.
On the other hand, I use Bose's A20 noise-cancelling aviation headset at work. They are absolutely awesome. I was able to compare directly with other brands of aviation headsets and they are the absolute best in noise-cancelling and comfort.
I was big into home and car audio in the 90's and 2000's. We used to call it "No highs no lows Bose". Their marketing was a lot better than their sound quality or dynamic range.
I thought it was "No highs, no lows, must be Bose".
@billdang3953 Either way, Bose still sounds bad. :) Their newer motto was, "Hey guys, we have little satellite speakers your wife won't bitch about" lol
@@billdang3953 That's the one I remember.
I remember that slogan
Bose - Buy Other Stereo Equipment
No Highs? No Lows? It Must Be A Bose!!
Blows 😆
If it blows, it's Bose.
Buy
Other
Sound
Equipment.
I love my Acoustimass speakers! I have 2 sets which I use solely as surround rear speakers. Nothing better at this size...
I remember my parents finally getting a stereo of their dreams in the 1970s It was a set of Bose 901 series II speakers driven by a Pioneer reciever, they had a nice turn table and a flash cassette player to go with it.
I just remember it was the loudest and clearest stereo I heard for many years, though the sound stage was never one of its strong points. It did make me a bit fussy about audio though.
When looking for my own stereo and AV system components I did a lot of looking, that original system was a benchmark. Thing is I never ended up with Bose speakers, never even close. I heard lots of speakers that were worse but, there were always speakers that were better at a better price.
I bought a number of Bose speakers cheap, at rummage sales in recent years, for my cabin…I was amazed at how good they sound. At home…it’s Klipsch only, but in the log cabin, they rock.
I kind of feel the same way. Bose isn't nearly as good as many people pretend they are. But they also aren't nearly as bad as many people claim, either.
I kind of feel the same way, if only I could afford a rock, in this high real estate market.
@@BaltimoreAndOhioRR So they're.... really average? Below average? Saying two things that negate each other doesn't amount to 'a point'. But to be clear, Bose as a brand is inconsistent at best and seriously trash at worst. Sure they HAVE made SOME good things, and so has Behringer and a lot of other inconsistent brands that don't deserve to be lauded either. They're selling a mystique and a status symbol, not 'good sound'.
@@jamescarter3196 My point is, Bose is in an odd position. There are people who love them and will buy anything and everything they sell and think they are the best. Then there are idiots who go around making snarky comments to everyone mentioning Bose. (I hope those people know who they are).
Bose are not "that" bad. Yes, they're definitely overpriced. But too many people act like they're the worst speaker ever built. Some people, actually many people, like their sound. I equate it with photography. Some photography purists can only appreciate a photo that is as close to natural (and authentic) as possible, while many people think a picture that came from a camera that oversaturates a blue sky for example, actually LOOKS better, regardless of it's accuracy.
Their sound is not accurite and they dont reproduce the input exactly. But what they do produce sounds good to many people.
Also, some people think of Bose as 901's, others 601's, and some others the 321 surround systems. So you get varying emotions.
The bottom line is, as I was trying to say, is that Bose is NOT just an average speaker. They sound above average to many people, but quite below average to many other people. Some people like the accentuated mid-bass and the lack of "directioning" - scattered sound everywhere. Some people hate that and want an exactly accurite sound reproduction of the input media. And those people seem to be on a mission to tell the other people they are wrong.
That was my point.
(PS, when I talk about Bose, I generally refer to their older bookshelf and floor speakers, not the newer ventures they've branched into like surround sound, clock radios, headphones, car audio, docking stations, etc...)
I remember, back in the early 2000's being keen on getting an Acoustimass home theater system. I listened to a demo (in a normal room, not a specially setup one) and felt that it was....ok. Then I listened to a demo of the Energy Take 5.1.
At half the price (including a Yamaha surround receiver) it just flat out-performed the Bose system. It's what I ended up leaving with instead.
Thanks for sharing!
Yamaha is a solid brand for a lot of the stuff they make. Never much cared for Bose. Had too much good equipment growing up (my dad is an audio nerd) to hear the difference in a few moments (flat highs, flat lows - decent mids in MOST cases; their car stuff has been solid from the cars I've heard them in - though not the best, but not bad). Too expensive for me that sounded no where near how expensive they were/are (IMO). Not saying it was junk, but not for me.
In 1980, I bought my first decent stereo setup. The shop I was at had a set of Bose 301 bookshelf speakers to use for comparison to what they were selling. I bought a pair of Mission 700s, to go with my NAD receiver. The Missions were excellent, and I still have them!
When the Bose 901 came out at $900 a pair, my neighbor and some enterprising engineers reverse engineered the speakers and crossover network. I remember they built over 10 pair in his garage and the wood materials were the most expensive part. Speakers as I recall were $1.75 each.
👏👏👏👏👏, if that...$0.19 more likely...
Great History story. I remember selling Bose products. I never owned anything carrying a Bose label, but customers came in wanting them. I never lied about them. I just explained the differences as you went up the Bose price line and let the customer convince themselves with the volume control. One interesting thing I heard was when Amar was a professor at a prestigious university and he owned a speaker company. He had research done at a very low cost. College students worked cheap. I wonder if they got grades rather than patents.
Oh wow great conspiracy there!
In 1970 me & a friend went to a consumer products hi fi show & went to the Bose room & after the demonstration we asked if he could turn up the volume on them & he wouldn’t do it, so we went back after everybody left and turned on the tape he was playing , slowly turned up the volume & those things sounded like they were gonna explode! Just distorted all over the place-terrible
Not a bose fan , never been .
Which Bose system was it?
Yeah, had a pair of Series 2 that I picked up when stationed in Germany. 220 volt equalizer. When I turned up the volume quickly I got that same distortion. Never felt the same way again about the system.😢😢😢. Eventually just dumped the system unfortunately.
That's great! I'd have fed a guitar or drum recording into it and reamp'ed it with a solid stereo mic pair, except that portable DAT technology came along about a quarter century too late for that.
Go buy some "TUBE GEAR" and enjoy your Shure and 33 & aThird
I love their (older) QuietComfort 25 headphones. It's one of the most comfortable headphones you can buy and they sound surprisingly good too. I never checked out their follow-ups like the QC35 or QC45.
It's the only Bose product I ever owned, and they were awesome at the time when they came out (not many good nc headphones back then). I still use them to this day because as you said, they are super comfortable and sound okay.
I still have AM5 setup I bought from Costco in 1990. Works fine. QC2 ANC headphones was a game-changer for air travel, but terribly cheap materials. QC3 sounded even better, but the same junky build. When my QC2 broke beyond repair I replaced with QC30 wireless. They didn't sound as good nor cancel as much noise as the QC2, then the power switch broke one week past warranty and would not turn off (or disconnect) making them drain quick and useless. Bose offered 40% discount on replacement, which I applied to the neck-wrap "earbud" version of the ANC headphones (QC35?). Terrible HISS when in ANC. Exchanged them, same HISS, and they started falling apart within a year. A colleague bought the wired version (two of them) they hiss too, so it wasn't the Bluetooth. After that I was done with Bose.
Audiofools believe the stoopidest of things.
I got the QC35 II, and they are honestly.. not so geat. my Apple AirPods Pro deliver better sound quality and better noise cancelation... and the AirPods Pro don't come with ear pads that die within one year of usage. The AirPods also don't "crash" and require you do plug them into USB power to reset them.
I just got back from a trans-atlantic trip. The neck-wrap "quiet control" BT NC earbuds are now officially dead too. You can't press the switch hard enough to turn them off/on. There is no tactile "click" anymore. I'm officially 100% done with Bose, no trad-ins anymore. Fortunately, I brought my Galaxy Buds Pro as a backup (but they never sounded that good and the ANC is marginal). Time to shop around.
Back in the 1960’s and ‘70’s my father and his brother owned a midsized woodworking business located in Cambridge, MA. They were suppliers of speaker enclosures to Bose Corp. most notably the oddly shaped 901 cabinets. I worked there one summer between years of high school and built many 901 cabinets. It was such a simply designed enclosure, with just plywood on the 5 sides, but we did use some very nice walnut veneer over particle board on the top and bottoms. There was nothing fancy about those cabinets.
We would build and finish the cabinets, pack them up in the boxes that they would eventually be sold in, then truck them out to the Framingham plant to be completed. My understanding was that the appeal for the Bose was always around it’s direct reflecting design, and that the room becomes as important as the speakers in developing the full sound potential. I never forked out the money for a set, so couldn’t say if they were great sounding or not.
The only thing worse then a Bose speaker is a Bose fanboy. It's unbeliveable how many of them think they have the best thing on the market - and have NEVER even tried something else. I grew up listening to a pair of 601s (was playing music on them since I remember being alive, like age 4 or 5) and I worked at a hi-fi shop when Acoustimass 3 & 5 came out. Literally EVEYTHING ELSE in the shop sounded better, regardless of price - but we had some good brands there. Anyways. This is probably the best BOSE video out there. Well done.
The 601 was one of their better products. I have a pair of series ones and threes. 40 years later, they still work well.
I got my BSEE in 1990. One of my professors had been a contemporary of Amar Bose at M.I.T. I don't know what transpired between those guys back in the day, but he had a couple of lesson plans based around demonstrating scientifically how Bose was "Better Sound Through Marketing"
I have Bose 301 book shelves a friend gave me.
Hey, can you shed some light on the class of amplification in the great old receivers, amps, inter.-amps? Also satellite speakers and subwoofers combo’s. What ever happened to Carver equipment? Thanks
I had a pair of the orignial 901s but they represented a big drop in audio quality from my previous AR3as. But the effect was very cool, so I sucked in like many. A friend bought a pair and took them apart. He found the exact same nine speakers ($3.29 each) from a wholesale catalog and built the boxes to match so he had two pair. Cost less than $100. Identical sound as far as we could tell (McIntosh electronics, Thorens/SME table). Over the years, it has been hard to ignore all the store demo rooms with really crappy sound for thousands. Amar may have been a good physicist but couldn't tell a flute from a clarinet.
May I ask, did you have the dedicated EQ? There was period of time in the 70s that the Army PX stores were selling the speakers to serviceman WITHOUT the EQ, and many people later bought them 2nd hand the same way. Hooked up with enough power the 901s with the EQ sounded pretty damn good. As for the other comment made about the 901 drivers being in a catalog, the ones I am familiar with and trained on, at least series IV onward, were DEFINITELY NOT catalog bought. They were absolutely made by Bose, with the voice coil wire and the cylinder formers both made from aluminum, to prevent warping under high heat (both the formers and wire had the same coefficients of expansion and hence retained their shape) and the wire was flat edge wound as well for better heat dissipation.
@@socalav An EQ will make almost any speaker sound better.
@@socalav The EQ was necessary to compensate for the poor frequency response. Every Bose speaker I have heard sucks. The same for their headphones. Great sound cancelling but poor sound quality. I use the Bose while mowing the lawn to quiet the sound of the mower but for far better sound quality I use my Audio Technica M50X headphones.
@@nyobunknown6983 LOL Im partial to the Sony MDRV6, AKF240s Denon SHD950 and a bunch of others.. not sure what Bose speakers you have heard and where, but they did make some really decent ones for a while. My personal favs are the Bose 301 series II and III. They still sound good compared to a lot of others on the market today. For a low price entry level bookshelf they did really well.
That would be DR BOSE to you ? right..... further more and additionally his net worth is WAY more than yours I'd venture to speculate...HEH!! heh heh heh:) Now aren't you the "Better" man....
Around 1976, I bought a pair of Bose 901’s, and a Bose amp. It was ok, but no real wow factor. Later I listened to some JBL box speakers and I was amazed how good they sounded. Much later, I wanted a good sound system for my new TV. I listened to a myriad of small systems and sound bars, but nothing sounded that good. When I listed to the new Bose, it actually hurt my ears. I later learned that if speakers do that, it’s because there’s too much distortion. Then I discovered Axiom Audio from Canada. They have excellent sounding speakers and excellent customer service. I’m totally satisfied with my purchase, but I had to upgrade my subwoofer from them twice until I got one powerful enough for all of my movies. Another upgrade was a rather large center channel speaker. But once I discovered what it was I wanted, I doubt I could do better. Pairing them up with a Pioneer Elite receiver was a good match also.
I moved to Sacramento in 86. Started going to Faces Disco. The club used Bose 802's. Two3 302 bass speakers, Bose and the four 802's suspended about 8' high. Sounded pretty good but never loud or strong enough. They remodeled several years later. I did the sound install. I ran 14 gauge wires through the ceiling to the four corners of the dance floor. Providing the sound after playing with amp levels etc. comes out pretty flat, then you did a good job. Now the "dance floor disco EQ curve is a boost at 100hz, a small boost at 250hz, a small cut at 1k,, then boost 2k, 4k, & 8k to bring the cymbal energy alive and the 100 hz boosts the kick drum while cutting the 1k stops the singer from "screaming in your ear. The sound was not fatiguing and the eq made the music alive but not shrill at that volume for 5 hours a night.
They had a sound engineer from a rock club come and eq the system. Brought up the mid bass and vocals, made it really muddy and exposed this system's weaknesses and they sounded like shit. They ended up buying the system from a club that was closing. This system was TOO BIG for that club. Even playing at "normal" disco levels, the sound was so much stronger, you can now hear the dance music in the video room stepping all over their videos & music. Oops.
I recently found your channel and I have to tell you that I'm not into audio as much as I was in my youth but the level of research and knowledge that you impart with your storytelling is absolutely phenomenal and I've been watching all your old shows just to catch up! Cheers
Wow sorry about the real old ones haha. But there is some great stuff! You are going to surely enjoy what is coming next week...
Does he have any videos about quad receivers?
She said her stereo was 4 way.........
And I just love it in her room........
-the one and only Frank Zappa
All of my Bose speakers from the 80s still sound great. My main Left / Right are like a angled triangle, 301s for high rear and am5 for rear.
I enjoy those 301s!
Ah Bose... My granddad (the man behind a certain audio firm now widely associated with big blue wattmeters) knew him and eh, pretty much despised him. There were two people who could cause my grandfather to utter profanity in conversation - FDR, and Amar Bose. He considered referring to Bose as a snake oil salesman to be a slander against snake oil salesmen.
Great story!
your granddad was obviously wize man
Have had 301s for years. They sounded great then and still do now. Will always have them to love. Blew one tweeter service promptly under warranty.
For decades I played live music through my Bose L1M2 pa system, thousands of shows....
Being a pro musician I made my living off my ears.
It was the best sounding pa system Ive ever used and ever heard for solo live performance and I could play at lower levels and reach large crowds up to 500 people or so.
The thing I most loved is I heard what my audience heard as the pa system sat behind me, and the sound level was almost exactly the same at the stage and at the back of the venue, meaning everyone heard the same thing I was hearing on the stage.
Once I hooked into some dirty power at a venue and fried all of my pa components, Bose replaced the entire $3.600. pa system for less than $300. and it was wayyyy out of warranty. They also shipped out my new pa before I even had time to box up my old broken pa.
If I was still playing live shows I would still be using my Bose pa system.
On the other side of things, I absolutely hate their car audio products.
When I sold hifi in the early 1980's, a critic of their products once told me, "No highs no lows... it must be Bose."
After listening to the 901s back to back with some Snell Acoustics and Polk Audio systems we had in the store, I had to agree.
You've pegged it: it was hard to beat their combined marketing and legal strategies.
That's wy the 901s had a special equalizer and ports in the back to help generate the lows.
Bose always had a separate "bose only" listening room because they would loose the battle in a A/B listening to any half decent brand.
LOL. Polk Audio? You think that's HiFi? 🤣🤣😆 Polk Audio is basically the Great Value brand of speakers. Try Bowers & Wilkins, Focal, or Definitive Tech instead.
@@SergeantExtreme Yes. Polk Audio. I've listened to B&W and Focal. Nice speakers.
Your ignorance of Polk systems from the 1980's is hilarious.
@@SergeantExtreme In the end it's all about buying what you like and not what someone else thinks that sounds great.
All those "HiFi" brands claim to be the one closest to "true sound" but they all sound different.
It's like your favorite color, it's a matter of taste but some swear that the same color of paint from another overpriced brand is much better especially after watching it dry for a while.
Back in the '70s, after weeks of speaker shopping, I finally settled on the IMF TLS80. My dealer had a pair of Bose 901s set up in the same room, and just for the heck of it, I did A/B comparisons on them both. I figured the IMFs would sound a little better, since they were about twice the price. But, I was surprised how big the difference was. The IMFs were detailed and dynamic, while the Bose sounded mushy and smeared. Ever since then, I've had a strong dislike for Bose, and it reminded me of a comment I once heard: "No highs, no lows, must be Bose."
Later to become only highs and lows...
I bought a pair of Celestion speakers from a man whose wife insisted he get rid of them and have Bose instead because they took up less space. He was holding back the tears as he told me. The things we do for love.
I really like this history behind Bose. Could you do the same thing with Klipsch, JBL, etc?
We have some big Klipsch plans, maybe even some JBL
I still have my 301's from 1980. I did have to replace the foam, but they still sound good to me. Great video about Bose.
I still have my Bose Series II speakers that I bought in 1976. I don't use the Bose equalizer, I use the one in my receiver which has auto set-up. I also have the rear of the speakers facing forward. Works great. 👍👍
I am not a Bose fan, except for their QC headphones, but my university pub's sound system back in the early 80s had 12 Bose 901s and was powered by some massive Carver amps. I have to this day never listened to sound this loud with such clarity.
I also attended a live concert in a room that had dozens of 901s in a mid sized room. It was truly amazing. I know audiophiles make fun of Bose, but when properly set up they were formidable.
I have a set of 301s that I ran the line through a passive/active crossovers and into a set of 10" subs in a open multipass bandpass box to handle everything under 120Hz with a gradual taper up to 200Hz.
When setup in my room with a Yamaha RX770 it sounded amazing.
Love them too, except the ear cushions, they only last like 6 months, 12 if you're lucky
@@_BangDroid_ Mine lasted about 5 years, but I pretty much only use them for air travel. I replaced them a couple of years ago - good as new.
@@kenandbarbie-b6c I'm not sure how those 901's were configured, but it's now a common thing to stack speakers in what's called a "line array", and you can get surprisingly good sound out of not-so-good speakers that way.
Nothing beats a dedicated stereo loudspeakers and an integrated amplifier. Be it standmounters or floorstanders. Proper stereo imaging is the key. Not some multiple drivers placed in awkward position aimed to reflect, deflect and direct sound waves. Hoping to make the sound big for its size. It just doesn't sound good because our room varies a lot. That's why I sold all my bose smart speakers and went back to traditional good old stereo speakers and subwoofer.
or get a full range speaker and lose the sub
Absolutely.
@@BostonMike68 It depends on the budget. I can only afford loudspeakers that could go down to 50 hz. A subwoofer can provide a cheaper option to take care of the low frequencies to 20 hz. Of course if I have the disposable resources, I would go straight to full range ones.😉
@@BostonMike68 That's a myth. You can use subs with small speakers, but you get the best results when subs are used with full range speakers. Otherwise you are asking the sub to try and handle the frequencies the full range speaker are supposed to handle. Or you just have a hole in between the small speakers and the sub.
@@pinkypoohable that's true it's hard to find speakers that play that low. I built my own with 10" woofers that hit really low and a MTM with 6.5 mids and that doesn't start rolling off until 40 Hz but not to many people can build quality speakers so I am lucky but I agree it's just the timing the larger subwoofer moves slower . I'm actually building a diy sub mostly for movies and it has 2 voice coils so it moves faster but its going to cost me almost a $800 just to build it myself but it's going to be really hard to beat and I want it to get down to 22 Hz
I listened to various Bose products over the years. Their sound is big for the size, they are very good from this aspect. However they will never beat a proper bulky setup in the overall sound quality and impact.
The cube drivers are wired out of phase... that's why they have an apparent "larger" sound. They're basically dipole speakers, with really cheap parts.
I guess, you hit the nail on the coffin here. Bigger, bulkier setups sound better than the smaller Bose speakers. They are not meant to replace high-end HiFi setups. They are meant to sound really good in a small package. Regarding products in the same category, the Bose speakers are among the best in their respective class. Bose soundbars are really competitive in the overall soundbar space.
@@rvb_drolf3950
When compared to other systems of similar size, Bose tends to blow them out of the water.
I had the opportunity maybe two years ago to take a look at a wave radio with built in bass module as the add on CD changer wasn't working right.
It sounded very good for its size and would easily hold its own with radios of similar size, but it definitely would not replace my big stereo system primarily because the bass module isn't flat to 20Hz.
However, if all I had space for was a small radio, the wave radio is what I'd choose.
Still rocking my 901's in wood cabinet from the 90's in my Den, Bose 301 satellites and base module in my bedroom and Bose Smart 500 in my Living Room. Great company.
In the early 1990's I was receiving too many neighborhood complaints about my huge loudspeakers so I sold them and bought an Accoustimass 5 system. The speakers shorted out and back fed and blew up my Yamaha amplifier. I lost a lot of money there and will never go back to Bose. I finally brought my system back out of mothballs with Cerwin Vega loudspeakers. Millennials are blown away by the experience of feeling music.
My dad gave me his system he bought in 1970... a McIntosh set MC 2505 and MX114 and a set of the first Bose 901 speakers. I refurbed both McIntosh units and are now working in my current set up. The Bose speakers are still in storage. I don't have the interest to refoam the 18 speakers for average weird sound quality. I also don't have the heart to tell my dad I don't like them, as he is one of the original Bose lifetime customers to this day. Always getting the latest system, bless his heart!
"No highs, no lows .. it must be Bose! " Retired hifi guy here and that's what was said when Bose was brought up as a serious speaker. Bose was known for spending more on marketing/advertising than any other speaker manufacturer by a wide margin. Perceived performance due to marketing hype and many unscrupulous and likely paid for glowing reviews and write‐ups in every genre of magazine from Popular Mechanics to Playboy. Small full range drivers firing in all directions caused the sound to reflect back to the listener at different time delays and some in reverse phase from the original signal. Many people find this to feel like sound is coming from all around them and were easily impressed by this simple psycho-acoustic technique. It is soon found to be just not tonally accurate with a non defined stereo image when compared to quality designs from the likes of Thiel, that he mentioned, and most other quality speakers using the traditional design approach of front firing only stereo drivers. Our goal was to reduce unwanted and out of phase reflections and charged accordingly for proper wall treatments to absorb, diffuse, or a combo of both. This is the same technique used today for better 2 channel listening as well as full home theater walls built with different materials and thicknesses to the point of an entire room framed with an air gap between two walls (room built inside another room) for the best results . Fun times! Enjoy whatever sounds good to you, NOT what someone else says you will like ! 😊
Also BOSE = Buy Other Stereo Equipment.
Great advice!
Yes ,like all systems from that era, most of the so called 'Audiophile's' never new how to connect them.
Did Mr. Bose change the world of audio? Yes. Was the 901 an absolute masterpiece? Yes. Did they beat a set of monster floor speakers with 12+" woofers? Nope.
My thoughts exactly
no highs, no lows? must be bose!
@@RVecc Buy Other Stereo Equipment
Still have my 1980s JBLS. When I die maybe I'll have my ashes buried in them. 😁
@@RVeccit's why it came with that eq.
The Micro sound link in stereo mode hands down best portable versatile system I ever used. I snatch em up anytime I can
When I was a kid in the early 2000s, you were a baller if your parents had Bose speakers. I remember going in houses with 401's and Acoustimass Red Lines. Every restaurant had 151's and 32SE's outside. Good times.
I was a kid in the early 2000s and all I remembered was how tinny the Tahoe's Bose sound system sounded and how underpowering the wave radio was compared to my family's Klipsch home theater setup. Granted, we're comparing apples and oranges, however, I just remembered not being all that impressed with Bose products, especially when the wave radio was advertised as having sound as huge a large stereo (it doesn't.) I do love their headphones though.
I've got a ridiculously complicated chain feeding my Bose 901 Series V and an ideal placement facing an exposed brick wall. These speakers absorb endless amounts of power and really do show their best when using a muscular amp, even at low levels. I sort of Dr. Frankenstein'd my own monster amp with a vintage Sony STC 7000 feeding a vintage Crown MacroTech 1200 (which is astonishing in terms of clarity and control) for an easy 310 per channel into 8 ohms. I use a Pine Tree Audio passive single ended to balanced converter to handle the RCA out from the preamp to the XLR in on the amp. (Jensen transformers handle the conversion in that box and act as a natural Bessel filter.) I replaced the original active EQ with a DSP unit from Deer Creek Audio. (I A/B tested them when I received the DSP from Deer Creek and it definitely sounds better. Better clarity, better dynamics.) The 901s are not the last word in detail and resolution, but the sound stage and involvement is incredible. When no one else is home and you want to crank it up, they deliver smiles all day. I've been collecting and swapping gear for a long time, and I'd always been curious about the 901s, so when a nice set came along and I had the money in my pocket I went for it, just for fun. Now, they look so great in the living room that my wife won't consider approving any other speakers at this point, so the mission has been to make them sound as good as possible (and to put cool looking systems in other rooms!) Anyway, I really like your channel! I hope to visit the shop some time. All love from Chicago!
Wow, thanks for contributing all that! Hope to see you at Just Audio in the future!
Sounds like an awful lot of hammer to crack a very stubborn nutshell!
@@andygee8716 🤣
Back in the day, I installed a set of AM-3 Series II speakers in my BMW. The two satellites velcroed in place on top of the dash, and the sub strapped in the back seat with the seat belt. It sounded awesome! Before that, I drove around with a pair of Cerwin Vega AT-40s in the back seat (a little less practical, obviously).
Lol your crazy man, props for thinking outside the box. I also really like the old bose subwoofers. I own a few and they always surprise me with big sound from small package. In my area the old bose subs resell for 30 40 dollars I feel like they are worth more, so i never sold any of mine :) i have 4 total
This was actually the demise of my old Acoustimass system. The bass module did not last long in the hatchback of my old car, connected to a Sony 200W amp treating it like an actual subwoofer. ;-) After a couple weeks, it started making some unhappy noises, and then it stopped making noises at all.
I hated the Profit margin that Bose insisted on working on.
All R & D.
The sound was good at reproducing mid-range. Never quite found they had the high-end sound I was looking for, or the low end. A lot of money for a midrange speaker. Friends with the 901s and the 501s. Not impressed with the sound. My brother-in-law knew that I was the electronics guy in the family. They left it in my hands to pick out all the audio equipment for his New home.
After shopping, comparing, having everything shipped to his home and did the installation on my own. His wife was not happy the equipment. Telling me everything was big. Especially the speakers. They were shopping size not sound. Never made sense to me. They had plenty of room. Ended up with a Bose system, I don't know what they did with what I purchased for them. I believe in name brand only. High-wattage amplifiers, if the room is possible the bigger the speaker the better. I was using a total of 4 15in woofers, 2 horn 4×10 mid range. 8 tweeters.
Carver, Crown, Altec Lansing, JBL, Techniques, Teac, Pioneer. That was the equipment I was using.
Almost forgot. I was using a pair of Audio-Technica speakers when I didn't want to run the big equipment. They had 10in woofers that would be down-firing. A mid-range and a tweeter that were front-firing. I had to send a way for the stands as they were small. In height.
the vaginas always want invisible shoebox stereos....and warehouse stadium shoe closets...learn my wisdom sayeth the yoda
I was at BOSE for 12 years, retired now but what stories I have - I still use my BOSE Wave Radio as my alarm clock!
If you wanna e-mail us over some stories send to Sales@Just-Audio.com
@@LennyFlorentine Jesus you people are desperate.
I always thought of Bose as a 80% speaker, they cover 80% of the audio spectrum, which for 80% of the listening market is 100% enough. And there is nothing wrong with that, let the market dictate product design, in that way, Bose was very smart. Full disclosure, I don't like their sound myself, but respect the design work that went into them.
Yeah very much agreed! Thanks for sharing
They cover more like 30% of the audio spectrum. Psychoacoustic razzle dazzle.
Bose was the first Apple lol
@@mikel9656 Sony was the first Apple.
@@KentTeffeteller No, that doesn't make any sense when we're talking about companies that create gimmicky products of inconsistent quality that crap out after 4-5 years and rely on a false mystique to overcharge everybody for everything. Sony's products are a LITTLE more expensive, because they actually make high-quality stuff. Naming random tech firms based on 'bigness' isn't the point.
The ESS AMT1A was ground breaking. Heil air motion transformer (ribbon tweeter) was a pretty amazing design. It projected from the front and rear. ESS also used passive radiator in their main cabinets to increase the bass response which complemented the tweeter.
Yes the ESS AMT1'S
kicked ass. My cousin still has a pair.
A friend of mine has owned a pair since the mid 1970s. He recently replaced the drivers in each speaker. In his words the price for the new drivers was too good to pass up. They are about the nicest sounding speakers I have ever heard. To hear them being driven by a pair of McIntosh Mono Tube Amps is jaw dropping. Sadly he no longer has the Mac amps. His current sources and amplification really don't do justice to his AMT 1As. Those AMT 1As are so good they inspired me to get a smaller, more affordable pair of ESS, the RM II 6"
@@bburkie55 Awesome stuff. I used to work for ESS. They manufactured quite a few different flavors and they all sounded great!
I had a pair - great speakers.
I have the ESS AMT1B’s. Can’t even mention them in a BOSE video… AMT1B’s are some of the best sounding speakers ever made.
Hi. I'm an Australian 62 year old gay guy and DJ and an Audio/Visual Engineer. I started spinning at a club but before I did I was horified at the way it was set up. They were using an Amcron DC300 for the treble and an under powered amp for the bass. I said to the owner that this was a failure waiting to happen. I removed all the rubbish from the console and started on a re-install of the equipment. All the processors and amps were taken off of the rack and blown clean of dust using compressed air. I looked at both amps and replaced the fuse holder in the Amcron wondering how it had not shorted to ground. I vacuumed the DJ booth and started reinstalling from the start. First was the limiter which I just set to limit in real time with a quick fast attack and decay. I rewired the 15 inch JBLs to the Amcron from the electronic cross over and the 4 BOSE 802s to the other amp as well as wiring the active BOSE processor to the input of the other amp. Luckily, someone had used a terminal strip to connect them and after a phase check, I wired them back in for good.The BOSE processor was just a way to feed the upper frequencies to the 802s. Once I had checked it was all working, I killed the 25 and 30 HZ on the graphic because 60 HZ is where the bottom end started really. After a few tweaks and adjusting the processors and the graphic EQ it actually had some really good grunt.I ran it hard after finding a fan to keep the gear cool for about 2 hours. I screwed some clear PVC over the gear with a warning not to touch the settings. It sounded 40% better and the DJs were impressed. They asked me why the graphics 25 and 30 HZ faders were pulled right down. I said that the subs cannot reproduce those frequencies so all you're doing is wasting amplifier power. After a few more tweaks with a crowd there I checked the 802s for sound quality. Because these speakers have 8 tweeters per box I raised the upper frequencies just a bit, put the perspex back to stop prying fingers. I said to them that at the end of the night to turn the gain controls on both amps down first to stop spikes from blowing them out and to reverse it when powering up. BOSE speakers are the most ridiculous units ever made. They sound ok for highs but not full range. Cheers Andrew.
Thanks for sharing! Great story and info!
Nice story, good on yah , but how is telling us you're gay relevant.?
I’m 75 year old “Straight Guy” - I don’t give a rat’s patoui that you’re gay 🤠
I think the LBGTQ world would integrate quicker if they quit shining the spotlight on themselves.
@@davej9228 The reason I mentioned it was because of stereotypes. For example many people think that gay guys sit around all day talking about Kylie and Madonna. I love good sound and love improving a system and getting it up and running properly. I don't fit the standard of most engineers which is why I mentioned it. I've been fascinated by electronics since I was 4 years old. I got bitten by the electronics bug and haven't looked back. Cheers from OZ, Andrew
The small drivers in the 901 cost $.38 each. My company and Bose had a common vendor.
that much??!!!😂😂😂🎉🎉🎉 i estimated $0.19!!💩💩💩💩🙉🙉🙉🙉🙉
I can't recall the name of the company that made the series 1 and 2 drivers, but starting with series 3 all 901 drivers were produced in house in Framingham Ma.
@@66skateWas it Heppner Mfg. from Round Lake, IL?
@@jhans3278 The series 1 were made by CTS. They went to Rola during series 2 and to in house by the end of series 2.
I had Bose 301 Series 1 bookshelf speakers that I thought were the bomb back then. About a year later I bought a pair of Large Advent speakers which were the best sound-for-the-buck I'd ever heard. I had the Advents for years and years, even had to replace the woofers due to the foam degrading. Loved those Advent's. Can't say the same for the 301's.
I remember when I worked at Circuit City in 1997 we had a listening room that was only supposed to have Bose in it. I put a JBL Simply Cinema SCS120 system that blew the Bose out of the water in terms of both clarity and dynamic, it's key features being the larger satellites and self powered subwoofer. Our Bose rep found out, since the JBL out sold the Bose Acoustimass 100 series II by 5 to 1, and threatened to pull Bose from every Circuit City in the region and possibly the country if we didn't take the JBL out of the room. Since Bose didn't have a brick and mortar store, we dared them to do so. I Since CC eventually went belly up years afterward, not sure who truly won that, but it felt good to have both my store and my regional bosses back me up.
HA!
How I hated that store. All those red lanes angled to the front and someone coming down each one to hassle and follow you around before you even had a chance to look at anything. Thank heaven for internet advancements.
I've NEVER heard a consumer level Bose product that sounded musical. I did however utilize Bose Professional RoomMatch line array boxes and PowerMatch amps for a large commercial installation. That system is unbelievable even by today's standards. Even the reps for the competing systems who lost out made comments as to how impressed they were. One of them even stated that if Bose ever managed to get a firm grip on the Pro market that his company (one of the top three in the world of pro audio) would go broke.
Find a sound dock 10, it was an iphone dock that had similar transducers to that project. Closest thing to a home audio product around it.
Maybe 10 years ago I went into a Bose store in an outlet mall. I entered to win their home theater system and 09I listened to it. At first it sounded pretty good. As I listened longer it seemed there wasn't a lot of solid bass. I asked about connecting a sub to the system. They didn't have an output for one. The whole system was limited. I didn't win either.
You don't need an output for a sub. All you need is a sub that has speaker level inputs. This is actually the best way to go because it achieves the best integration between the speakers and the sub. The only instance where a sub output may be better is on the low frequency channel in a home theater system. There, specific information goes to the sub channel, but other than that, speaker level inputs are the way to go.
I had a 1976 bose spatial control receiver pretty powerful had a neat way of turning it on you would touch the name bose on the front it had conductive letters the bo and se were seprate they controlled a relay that would turn it on. It was made for the 901s you could use the spatial control to shift the sound to fit the room and had built in 901 EQ.
I bought a pair of Bose speakers on consignment. my plan was to accentuate my Polk Audio Monitor 10s. I
My Yamaha receiver did not allow me to adjust the volume of both speaker. I am not kidding, My Polks were so efficient that I had to put my ear next to the raised speaker before I could hear them. I brought them back for a prearranged buy back if l . The only speaker that came close was the Klipsh Heresy, but it lack the polks and l was unable to adjust the brassy tone. I bought my polks in 1982 and still used them until they were stolen. I am on your side mate, Bose should have cut their advertising budget abd instead buy decent sound designers and higher quality components. I fell for the hype like everyone else, but I would rather look at the Klipsh Chorus if l was to trade up, or graow some balls and build a pair of la Scalas.
There paper cone and then there are PAPER CONES. JB LANSINGS WERE USED IN THE FENDER SHOWMAN. SUPER SHOWMAN, FENDER BASSMAN, SUPER REVERB, AND TWIN REVERB. I BOUGHT 4, 12" JENSENS WHEN I MODIFIE MY BOX, BUT ONLY BECAUSE THEY HAD LIFETIME GUARANTIES. I WISH NOW THAT I HAD BOUGHT 2-15" D120 JBL'S. I AM NOT AWARE OF ANY MENTIONED FENDER AMPS THAT BLEW A CONE OR A SURROUND. I WAS THERE. BUT THEN THE MARSHALS CAME TO TOWN. . . . .
Awesome capture of what Bose was and is. I remember the sale tactics of Bose just as you described it. I am not a Bose fan. This started when they would not help me with my Nissan Maxima Bose stereo system which would produce a large shrieking noise every time I turned it on and their CD player would get very hot. I end up ditching the whole system for an Alpine.
Love your reviews, especially your knowledge of Audio equipment. If I ever come to your shop, I probably will spend hours drooling on just about every system you have there. Thank You for very informative videos.
Thanks! You should come by!
Could you do one on the Bose professional line?....just as controversial among musicians. I admit that I was a skeptic regarding their personal amplification systems until I actually tried one and found that they delivered as good as promised while being much more compact and lighter than other PA systems.
Oh nice really! I'll have to check em out
I really liked 901s when I heard them in 1980. A few years later my parents were looking to get a sound system professionally installed in their house that features a large open floor-plan (kitchen, living room, dining room). My dad was upset that the estimate came in at well over $5,000. I told him my opinion about Bose speakers and suggested he try out a pair of the shelf sized ones. One in the NE corner and one in the NW corner of the open area were more than enough to give great sound coverage to the whole open area. He was very happy with them and they are serving still 40+ years later. About 10 years ago my sister bought me one of their mini blur-tooth speakers and I'm still using it today.
Back in 1998, I was getting a huge bonus from work and decided to spend a couple grand of it on a stereo system. I walked into a place and was totally sold on the Bose Lifestyle surround system (add 1998 model number here). Thankfully, the bonus was delayed and I kept checking out other systems, but still really liked the Bose one. Then, this is back when there wasn't much on the Internet, someone gave me the best advice ever when it came to choosing a stereo system at the time.... bring your own CDs of what you like to listen to. Holy crap! Everything I played of my own sounded terrible on the Bose system. They had really cherry picked songs that sounded great on their system for their CD in their device, everything else sounded terrible. It wasn't just a little difference, everything other than the music Bose had picked out sounded terrible. I ended up getting a Yamaha system with Energy speakers for less money that sounded 100 times better than the Bose system. (Energy was great at the time, but went downhill shortly after.) So, while I don't hate Bose, I just don't think it is worth the money. (Just like Apple products.)
The funny thing is, in the Cardiff, Wales Bose store in 2015, I asked an employee to hear a twin-waveguide small Wave unit. He asked me which CD track I wanted him to put on out of the small selection, and I said "Hey Now, please" (the London Grammar song). I picked that track knowing that it had heavy sub-bass, and I could hear the distortion from the speaker drivers trying to play that bass and the midrange at the same time! So why they put that song on the CD I don't know!
you put apple and bose💩, in the same sentence!! shame on you....both are expensive and a rip off, but the apple "at least" works
@@lunam7249 Gee, Apple is finally going to switch to the much better Android RCS text messaging system, that came out in 2019, sometime later this year. So iPhone users will no longer have a problem sending large files and such to Android users. Yet, you Apple users think it was an Android problem, while it was just the opposite.
Apple is fashion-tech.
I had a love affair with the Bose AM5 back in the early 90's. I thought they were the best thing after listening to one at a friends place so had to run out and buy a set. I always thought wow how can such a small speaker system handle up to 200 watts (RMS) per channel as stated on the bass unit. It wasn't until I upgraded my amplifier to a unit at 100w per channel that I started noticing some kind of serious sound compression and the bass would flatten when I cranked the amp up. So I opened the bass unit, played some music and all of sudden this crazy light started emanating from the circuit. WTF? It was then I realised Bose deploys a current limiter to protect the speakers which obviously aren't rated up to 200w. In reality I was only really getting around 50-65 watts of power into the speakers (depending on the music) before the protection circuit would cut in. Love affair over. I ended up giving them away.
Interesting video. My perception of Bose is that their expertise really lies in marketing, certainly not in audio quality. Being an old guy who got into audio way back in the 70s, I've owned some pretty great gear over the years. Always avoided Bose and still do.
You are right about marketing, they don't seem to have real hi-fi systems anymore. I see lots of their small "fake stereo" powered speakers used by young generation needing more bass than anything else, the rest are systems made for surround. This might be their way to first serve the customers when they are very young and go from there, or follow example of the record labels who rather don't pay for high quality recording, studios and all that.
I went from passive monitors to active because they offer so much more for very low price like Adam Audio and similar. Amps are D class at this price point but they have some A/B for not much more.
My wife had a 99 Pathfinder with a factory installed Bose sound system. To this day, it was the best sounding audio I’ve ever heard in a vehicle.
Then you haven't heard anything else, sorry to say.
Then you have led a VERY sheltered life.
I knew the audiophools would show up whining about this post. Whiny betas
The main thing I've heard about Bose speakers from everyone was how great they were, albeit pricey. I finally had a chance to hear a home theatre system with Bose components and I must say, I was thoroughly unimpressed. I noticed even after calibration, the soundstage had a severe "sweet spot" and that drove me crazy. Plus, I noticed it couldn't produce accurate bass tones and the highs sounded rather strained. I guess I wasn't the target audience for Bose speakers because I want to believe I'm hearing actual instruments, not a recording, and Bose couldn't do that for me.
I was living in the UK back in the 70s, when I first heard the Bose 901 at Lasky's in London, one of the famous hifi stores at that time. Lasky's was on several floors, if my memory serves me well, i believe it was six or seven floors. The higher the floor the higher end the gear. Guess what floor the Bose 901 were on. If you guessed the ground floor, you would be right. No one in our group, took them seriously, they would only show up at parties, being used as midrange, for loud playing, accompanied by 15" or18" bass units, and various tweeter systems. At 21, I was designing tube amplifiers out of my head, I wasn't the only one in the group doing that type of thing, we were feeding off each others knowledge. In fact, most of us were often working on various equipment designs. At 17, I built my first Peerless 12" two way speaker kit, and have not looked back since, never buying loudspeakers my entire life, now pushing 70. Just in case you are wondering. Yes I am working on a desktop speaker, also a full range system design. The only thing I can reveal about the latter, is that the bottom end will be servo driven. Bose like everyone else is entitled to their slice of the market. I just never saw them as a valued proposition for me, or any of my group back then and now. Yes! I am an audiophile to the max!
Well. Although not a big Bosé fan, I bought a soundbar 900 and a sub 700. That is seriously magnificent sound wise. The app could be better, but that's software that could be updated
I remember being young and hearing a "vintage" Bose speaker and being amazed. Then I studied physics and became an acoustician and sound system tuner and I cant tolerate them or their methods in business practice. It was great in my opinion in the past and then it just went to the deep end, the cost does not justify the quality or performance. Great vid
I was always under the impression that Bose had the best sound in the industry. I heard some speakers that seemed to have great channel separation and sound bouncing. I always envied people who had their headphones, but I just couldn’t justify paying so much for their products.
This summer I was determined to treat myself. I went into a couple of Best Buy’s to demo their S1 Pro speakers against others. This time I was going to get the Bose, but the UE Hyperboom kicked its butt with sound quality AND separation for a fraction of the price. Not what I expected. Got the Hyperboom. Still Boseless.
If I may, you were "under the impression" because the Bose company's marketing department drove the company, not R & D or engineering. As mentioned in previous posts, cast a disparaging comment towards a Bose product and face a battery of Bose lawyers. The Emperor's New Clothes.
Go to any real home theater shops well if there is any still around Bose never compared to a lot of brands back in the day we had one about 49 minutes away can’t remember the models but Advent sounded better and had more impact then the Bose towers they had but that’s my opinion
I was fortunate to be able to get one of the last production sets of the 901VI's. I truly enjoy these speakers. I have an old Marantz 2265B receiver from the 70s, and they compliment each other perfectly. One of the best speaker investments I have ever made. Thanks for posting this information about Bose. Cheers!
I purchased a Panamera in 2014 and ticked the Bose option box. It was the worst mistake I ever made; the audio "dynamics" sounded impressive for a short while, until you really started listening. The low and high ends discrepancies became so mind-numbingly jarring, I couldn't live with the car anymore and sold it after 9 months.
I bought a Bose 901 Series IV in the 80s brand new and I am still using it until now after I refoam all the drivers. It is still sound like new to me. Bose 901s are hungry power. I used a Carver Power Amplifier of 200 watts per channel and a total of 400 watts. I also have few dbx equipment to make the sound clearer and better. I used my 901s for music and movies right now. With Panamax surge protection and voltage regulator makes a big difference and a Kimber Kable speaker wires for the 901s. I have no negative issues on this speaker even in the lowest volume when I listen at night.