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Guest Americain

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Guest Americain

Hi all,

The new forum looks fantastic, great job by one and all concerned. I was a little surprised to see an all new look and feel to the place and yet no mention of Bose loudspeakers anywhere in the new website. I realize that Bose has it's detractors but I suppose they all have a few. Why has Bose been overlooked? The Bose 901 was/is an innovative design that turned the high fidelity world on it's ear nearly forty years ago. Like them or hate them, Bose is a classic New England audio manufacturer and it's absence from this site seems to me a glaring omission. I'll go into my bunker now as I await everyone's thoughts on this matter. Many thanks to all.

T

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I must say that I'm confused by this also. I've had great discussions about the 901, marketing techniques, the boutique shops, noise cancellation, etc. Why they dont publish frequency response and other technical data????

Interesting that the Bose 901 Series VI was selected as the top rated floor standing speaker by consumer reports!!!!! And I mean this year 2007!!! Why??

My friend's Dad had 901s back in the 70s and I remember them being loud but distorted high end...of course we played 8-tracks!!!!

All in all they at least deserve discussion...so come on...will anybody admit to having a pair? Or at least used to have a pair???

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I'm wondering too why Bose has not been included. I'm not a Bose owner, just someone looking for parity. There might be some lively dialog about them - at least the classic models like the 901, etc. There are some other NE classic brands here that haven't been posted in months and I wonder sometimes why they got here since they are quite obscure by comparison.

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Hi all,

The new forum looks fantastic, great job by one and all concerned. I was a little surprised to see an all new look and feel to the place and yet no mention of Bose loudspeakers anywhere in the new website. I realize that Bose has it's detractors but I suppose they all have a few. Why has Bose been overlooked? The Bose 901 was/is an innovative design that turned the high fidelity world on it's ear nearly forty years ago. Like them or hate them, Bose is a classic New England audio manufacturer and it's absence from this site seems to me a glaring omission. I'll go into my bunker now as I await everyone's thoughts on this matter. Many thanks to all.

T

Ok, I'll give it a shot... and you guys better not melt the forums down with the flame wars I've seen on Usenet regarding this brand. :rolleyes:

On a side note, I think there may be some well-known AR people at Bose. Is Tim Holl still there?

Since we're on the topic of adding other New England brands, which others have I missed?

Mark

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All in all they at least deserve discussion...so come on...will anybody admit to having a pair? Or at least used to have a pair???

How can you ask that when I've probably published at least a dozen detailed postings on on this site about my experiments with Bose 901s, how they work, what I think they do right, what I think they do wrong, and how I took steps to re-engineer and improve my own?

I think just as interesting as the 901 itself is why so many so called audiophiles dismiss Dr. Bose both as an innovative individual whose impeccable credentials are professor of acoustics and electrical engineering at MIT and his ideas even if they don't like his products. Who in this industry is more qualified to analyze problems and advance new ideas? IMO, this speaks directly to the irrationality of a mentality which focuses only on the most trivial while avoiding the real crux issues in every way possible. The marketplace as a whole is of a different opinion. Bose has grown from a one product company to a privately owned giant with over a billion dollars a year in sales. Could it be just sheer jealousy at his success?

BTW, although I don't know how production and sales volume figures tally with other models from other speaker manufacturers like AR3a, if all six series 901 are taken in aggregate, it's been in production and on the market for around 40 years in one form or another. I don't think any other single electroncs product even comes remotely close.

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How can you ask that when I've probably published at least a dozen detailed postings on on this site about my experiments with Bose 901s, how they work, what I think they do right, what I think they do wrong, and how I took steps to re-engineer and improve my own?

My sincere apologies... I'm new to this forum (born yesterday) and I had not read your other posts (BTW, nice job) before I posted. I'll try to find your other posts...I've only seen a couple.

Yes, I agree with the moderator...the Bose topics should not turn into a 'meltdown".

I was with a noise cancellation technology company and have some experiences with Bose. Since they are a market leader I'm interested in discussing their company strategies, engineer principles, market perceptions, controversies, etc. It's all part of the experience for me to see different perspectives.

Again, I am a neophyte so please enlighten me...Thanks!

Jethro

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Guest Americain
Ok, I'll give it a shot... and you guys better not melt the forums down with the flame wars I've seen on Usenet regarding this brand. :)

On a side note, I think there may be some well-known AR people at Bose. Is Tim Holl still there?

Since we're on the topic of adding other New England brands, which others have I missed?

Mark

I guess this sort of thing has happened before but for the life of me I can't see how someone could possibly get red-faced about something as benign as loudspeakers. I mean, I'm an AR man but I've always admired Bose and what they accomplished in the 1970's. The 901's were fascinating despite their peccadillos. I had a pianist/music teacher in high school and he got himself a pair of 901's in 1971. He swore by those speakers and nobody I know would question his perception of what a live piano sounded like. To him it was the closest thing to a live performance he'd ever experienced. He still owns those original 901's to this day and wouldn't give them up for anything. That to me is interesting.

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Bose? Over-priced, overrated, WAY over-hyped, and if you don't like how they sound you'd better not put it in print or they'll sue yer ass. :blink:

OTOH.... my second-hand Audi came with a Bose audio system and it sounds real nice. I'd never pay the extra cost to have a Bose system installed in a car and I'm sure there are plenty of car systems that sound nice. But on the road, with all the other noise and the less than ideal "listening position" it's not bad.

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Bose? Over-priced, overrated, WAY over-hyped, and if you don't like how they sound you'd better not put it in print or they'll sue yer ass. :blink:

Yes, I heard that Consumer Reports has some negative comments a few years back and got sued...Is that what you are referring too?

I found this:

"In 1981 the Bose Corporation sued Consumer Reports (CR) magazine for libel. CR reported in a review that the sound from the system that they reviewed "tended to wander about the room". The District Court found that CR "had published the false statement with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of its truth or falsity". The Court of Appeals reversed the trial court's ruling, and the United States Supreme Court affirmed in Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc., finding that CR's statement was made without actual malice, which was the standard in cases where the First Amendment was involved; and therefore was not libelous.[

The 901 got the top rated floor speaker this year...by consumer reports. I've written them to determine the testing crteria but have not heard back.

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Yes, I heard that Consumer Reports has some negative comments a few years back and got sued...Is that what you are referring too?

I found this:

"In 1981 the Bose Corporation sued Consumer Reports (CR) magazine for libel. CR reported in a review that the sound from the system that they reviewed "tended to wander about the room". The District Court found that CR "had published the false statement with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of its truth or falsity". The Court of Appeals reversed the trial court's ruling, and the United States Supreme Court affirmed in Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc., finding that CR's statement was made without actual malice, which was the standard in cases where the First Amendment was involved; and therefore was not libelous.[

The 901 got the top rated floor speaker this year...by consumer reports. I've written them to determine the testing crteria but have not heard back.

Hi there;

I do remember that lawsuit, just not the reversal.

I feel that if they published, in this past year, another review of a Bose speaker, that you have read all the testing data they will publish in that review issue.

Look for a letter to the editor in each issue, they may make a comment to you or other Bose inquiries.

Otherwise they do not have the money or manpower to write to you with what you are requesting.

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Hi there;

I do remember that lawsuit, just not the reversal.

I feel that if they published, in this past year, another review of a Bose speaker, that you have read all the testing data they will publish in that review issue.

Look for a letter to the editor in each issue, they may make a comment to you or other Bose inquiries.

Otherwise they do not have the money or manpower to write to you with what you are requesting.

Call me jaded if you like, I don't care. Having dealt with thousands of machines of all different kinds in my life I find it hard to see how anyone can get emotional over one, it is what is is, a collection of parts put together to perform some kind of function, usually with tradeoffs sacrificing in some areas to gain in others. This doesn't just include audio equipment like Bose 901 or AR3a but cars including some very fancy expensive ones. OK, I might get emotional if I had an F-16 to fly (I always wanted to be a fighter pilot but they told me no way if you don't have 20-20 vision.) Compared to an F-16 a Lamborghini is a child's toy as far as I am concerned.

So why all the emotion and flame wars over Bose 901, I've never understood it. It's a different engineering approach to solving a problem. That approach has some advantages and some disadvantages. And it was not the perfect execution of the concept, the engineering was flawed in ways I described, and its rationalization was not completely correct, its logic also flawed. For example, Bose said in his white paper (a very interesting read IMO) that he measured 89% reflected sound and 11% direct sound 16 feet from the performing stage of Boston Symphony Hall. How does this translate into a design which radiates 89% of its energy indirectly and 11% directly not to mention the obvious differences between the relationships of direct to indirect sound fields at Boston symphony Hall and the corresponding relationship created by his loudspeaker in a home listening room? This obvious contradiction does not necessarily invalidate the value of the concept (I found Villchur's thermodynamic explanation of his acoustic suspension speaker equally inappropriate but the value of his design was undiminished by it.)

It's been a long time since I heard Bose 901 without the changes I've made but I don't ever remember the apparant location of musical instruments wandering, certainly not to the degree they do with more conventional direct firing speakers. And that is still true even after my modifications but I don't care what speaker you have, if you are sitting directly in front of one of them, sound which is supposed to originate from a point centered between them won't. All I can say about it is that with this new arrangement, you have to move further off center than with other speakers for the positions to shift.

I think one reason Bose doesn't publish FR curves is that even within the limitations of his design, FR will change drastically from room to room and with positioning within a room. Therefore, such curves would be meaningless. This is true for any speaker but even more so for Bose 901. Because the speaker is intentionally designed to be integrated with the room's acoustics and those acoustics become part of the system, results are highly variable, unpredictable, and the best results require optimal placement and experimentation. Some rooms may be entirely unsuitable for them. One shortcoming in the design is that there are no adjustments which allow you to compensate for room acoustics except for overall FR. Neither the relative loudness nor the FR of the reflected sound can be adjusted independently of the front firing driver. At the time of their introduction, the cost of this would have made it prohibitive and even today, it is probably impractical beyond the ability of most people who would buy it to use that capability correctly. My own ultimate design will have no such limitations of course. BTW, it seems to me that most serious designs today take the exact opposite approach, trying to isolate the speaker from listening room acoustics. This is done by using drivers which have restricted dispersion, moving speakers away from the walls around them, and applying sound absorbing materials to the walls. As I see it, this is a hopeless task with limited possibilities for improvement at best. In any war against the room's acoustics, the engineer is bound to lose short of turning his room into an anechoic chamber. Therefore the clever engineer IMO tries to use the room's acoustics by understanding it and exploiting it to its best advantage. That's why I think Bose 901 for all its flaws and shortcomings is to be commended for being the only commercial effort where anyone even tried this approach. Its commercial success indicates that at least some in the market find their advantages outweigh their sortcomings.

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Ok, I'll give it a shot... and you guys better not melt the forums down with the flame wars I've seen on Usenet regarding this brand. :blink:

On a side note, I think there may be some well-known AR people at Bose. Is Tim Holl still there?

Since we're on the topic of adding other New England brands, which others have I missed?

Mark

Not New England, but I think worthy of inclusion are Vandersteen, and Spica.

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  • 5 weeks later...
Hi all,

The new forum looks fantastic, great job by one and all concerned. I was a little surprised to see an all new look and feel to the place and yet no mention of Bose loudspeakers anywhere in the new website. I realize that Bose has it's detractors but I suppose they all have a few. Why has Bose been overlooked? The Bose 901 was/is an innovative design that turned the high fidelity world on it's ear nearly forty years ago. Like them or hate them, Bose is a classic New England audio manufacturer and it's absence from this site seems to me a glaring omission. I'll go into my bunker now as I await everyone's thoughts on this matter. Many thanks to all.

T

I think there should be a Bose section. As you say, like them or hate them 901's were considered by many as the speaker to own in the 70's. I have an old Stereo Review from 1976 with the ad showing the "Super Bose" system that consisted of 2 sets of 901s with Bose's 250 watt power amplifier (1801?) I have some info I'd be willing to share if there is interest.

-T

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