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Thread: Bose Impresses

  1. #1
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    Bose Impresses

    NOT!

    Huikyong and I spent the entire week at the ISU World figure Skating Championships at the Staples Center. (The final show is this afternoon.)

    Staples is a great venue, though one of the big mistakes was installing a Bose sound system. It actually works fine for announcer's voices and really simple things like percussive effects, but as a music source:

    It has all the charm Bose is known for. It's shrill, it's strident, it's harsh, and it's full of distortion whenever called upon to reproduce a lot of musical sound at once. No wonder no quality musical act will use the house sound.

    There are four main clusters of Bose speakers flown from the rafters, each with three of the infamous Bose Tubes. When those things get overloaded it's like sound is coming out of the barrel of a plastic cannon. I covered my ears more than once to stop the noise. It had an edge sharper than an ice skate, so to speak.

    Last night we hurried home to watch the NBC two-hour broadcast of the women's finals we had just seen, complete with Kim Yu-Na's great performance. Interestingly, the sound feed was direct from the source rather than the house system, so it actually sounded much better at home than in the arena. When the feed switched over to Dick Button, Michele Kwan, and Bob Costas during the performance breaks, the sound went back to "live" in the house, and it was easy to tell just how bad it was.
    Out.

  2. #2
    Senior Señor boputnam's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Titanium Dome View Post
    ...as a music source ... it's harsh, and ... full of distortion whenever called upon to reproduce a lot of musical sound at once.
    When I've come across those, it's just as you say. The less they are called upon to do, the better. With increasingly complex source material - and increased gain - there is a intermodulation distortion that occurs. All those little drivers competing does not go well.

    Conversely, the folks at Renkus-Heinz have this stuff down to an art. Their IC R Digitally Steerable Array Systems are quite amazing. Very effective in highly resonant situations (airports, cathedrals, etc). I have not heard their recent entrant for SR, the IC Live, but suspect it makes the Bozo offering just so much toys...

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    Obviously the system was designed by a Muppett. Done correctly Bose will sound good. JBL will also sound bad if installed badly and I have seen that more often than not, doesn't mean that JBL is crap though .......

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    Quote Originally Posted by Allanvh5150 View Post
    Obviously the system was designed by a Muppett. Done correctly Bose will sound good. JBL will also sound bad if installed badly and I have seen that more often than not, doesn't mean that JBL is crap though .......
    Designed and installed by Bose itself to meet the venue's special needs:

    The new 21,000-capacity, $375 million state-of-the-art entertainment complex is completely lifeless acoustically. That means there's no natural echo or reverb in the room to distort the pure sound coming from the facility's sound system.

    ``We listened to it the other night and it's a smoker,'' said Tom Clelland, senior project manager for Bose Corp., which manufactured the system. ``It's always a big day when you fire up a system like that and we were delighted. It speaks with authority and it's clear and intelligible from every seat in the house. It rocked.''

    Staples' unconventional $1.5 million Bose system features four raised speaker clusters. A more traditional design revolving around a single central mounted speaker cluster was out of the question because it failed to address the safety glass that rings the ice during hockey games.

    That safety glass obstructs flying pucks - and the sound coming from flying fingers on flying fretboards.

    ``So, we used tiers of loudspeakers, each flown parallel with the safety partition,'' explained Staples Center spokesman Michael Roth

    . ``By placing one array on each side and at each end of the game boards, the sound is angled directly into the seats behind the glass. The system is designed to deliver sound to every person in the arena.''
    http://www.thefreelibrary.com/STAPLE......-a083624817

    If they don't know how to do it right, who does?
    Out.

  5. #5
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    Obviously they don't. I have used and installed Bose for many years and I am yet to see an installation that didn't sound good. Bose and indeed any speaker, do not work well inside, in a cluster. Maybe we do it slightly different downunder......

  6. #6
    Senior Member Audiobeer's Avatar
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    Bose is very well marketed. That's the limit of good things I can say about them.

  7. #7
    Senior Member BMWCCA's Avatar
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    They call it "pro" sound. I've heard local groups playing through these silly things. Sounded like AM radio played through a telephone.

    ". . . as you have no doubt noticed, no one told the 4345 that it can't work correctly so it does anyway."—Greg Timbers

  8. #8
    Dis Member mikebake's Avatar
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    I've hear MANY Bose installations; large civic theatre, large sports gym, large church.
    I'm not just bashing, I'm telling you they do not work well and are not up to the job. Waste of money given the alternatives.

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    Quote Originally Posted by mikebake View Post
    I've hear MANY Bose installations; large civic theatre, large sports gym, large church.
    I'm not just bashing, I'm telling you they do not work well and are not up to the job. Waste of money given the alternatives.
    And garanteed not to be installed correctly/innapropriately.

  10. #10
    Senior Member MikeBrewster77's Avatar
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    I have a pair of 301's sitting in a closet that I bought just to see what all the Bose hype was about. Any takers? I'll trade them for a pair of L100's, or L7s, or 43XX's, or L86's, or vitually any other JBL speaker, or $20 (but you pay shipping...)

    Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

  11. #11
    Dis Member mikebake's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Allanvh5150 View Post
    And garanteed not to be installed correctly/innapropriately.
    On the contrary.

  12. #12
    Senior Member Tom Brennan's Avatar
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    I've heard that Bose L1 line array system used as a hi-fi and IMO it sounded very good and certainly better than many of the "audiophile" speakers I've heard. Good tonality, low distortion, excellent clarity and excellent imaging too.

    Really. They ought'a market that thing at audiophiles. But even if Bose made the best speaker in the world most audiophiles would reject it, afterall rapping Bose is one of the ways you show the other kids you're in the club.

  13. #13
    Super Moderator jblnut's Avatar
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    100% agree....

    I've heard and posted about my experiences with Blowse in both a local nightclub and our local live theater group. For simple PA use (just spoken word) they are OK. As soon as music is fed into them the problems begin. It's downright embarassing how bad they sound compared to even a bottom of the line set of JBL EONs. A tower of 4" drivers and a car sub-bass tube do not a PA make...

    jblnut

    PS - I can't imagine how horrible that must have sounded on the scale of a 20,000 seat venue. It'll take weeks if not months to get that sound out of your head Ti .

  14. #14
    Dis Member mikebake's Avatar
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    In the gym they mostly do announcing and that is okay, but in the live music settings, they are quite limited in ability. Even set up right.
    Not sure about home use, I'm just talking about pro use.

  15. #15
    Senior Member BMWCCA's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tom Brennan View Post
    I've heard that Bose L1 line array system used as a hi-fi and IMO it sounded very good and certainly better than many of the "audiophile" speakers I've heard. Good tonality, low distortion, excellent clarity and excellent imaging too.
    But in actual use, an entire band will try to squeeze their "music" through one. I believe the intention was for each member to have his own "tube". Saves from having to manage FOH, with the expected results.
    ". . . as you have no doubt noticed, no one told the 4345 that it can't work correctly so it does anyway."—Greg Timbers

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