In my case, I'm talking about the typical install jobs; panarray, tube subs, and such.
Yeah, a bunch of 4 inch drivers is just what the physics doctor ordered; not.
In my case, I'm talking about the typical install jobs; panarray, tube subs, and such.
Yeah, a bunch of 4 inch drivers is just what the physics doctor ordered; not.
I always thought B.O.S.E. was an acronym for
Buy Other Speaker Enclosures
Oldmics
Bruce Springstein used 60 pairs of Bose 901s in the mid 1970s for venues of 10,000 or so.
Anyway, it was the worst sound system I have ever heard before or after. To me, they sound like 1,000 small 1960s style transistor radios set up to bounce sound off the walls.
I went into a Bose store about 6 months ago. Apparently, according to the salesmen, they don't publish ANY stats on their systems such as watts, THD, IMD, driver sensativity, frequency response, etc. - NOTHING. The reason I was given for this decision was that the Company believes stats are not meaningful when compared to their competition because they have superior breathe-taking technology.
I guess this superior technology includes putting a 4 inch driver behind a plastic folded horn with etreme equalization for sub-bass frequencies.
As a testiment to their fantastic marketing consider that they can sell plastic table radios for $600. If that is not a complete snow job on the consummer, I'll buy one.
Originally Posted by robertbartsch
Yeah, a real audiophile shells out $150-300 for a Tivoli. There's an outfit with a real racket, overpriced "upscale" table radios for audiophiles, they're right on target. I'm doing fine with a Sony from Best Buy.
One night I was in a used record store and noticed that the background music sounded pretty decent. I looked around and lo and behold they had small Bose 2-ways placed around the store. Of course once I realized the speakers were Bose I no longer thought the sound was good.
I was at a Church that had BO$E systemNOT!
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.
I was sound person for a guest artist. We used his sound system that had two dual 15" EV speakers with horn. I feel that the EV speakers are OK, nothing great. But they still blew the BO$E system away!!!
In reality most of the speakers on the market will blow BO$E away!
Bo$e works under the slogan "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance baffle them with BS". John
Greetings, Friends,
Well...hummmm... It's fun to see the barbs tossed back and forth in the infamous Bose controversy! However, I can only relate, first hand, what I've experienced, first hand. Back in the day, our band traveled all over the US, coast to coast, border to border, for a period of five years, eleven months of each year. For the early years, we used a regular JBL, or Altec PA, and though we bitched about having to schelp them around every 6-8 weeks, and pack and unpack them from our trailer for every gig, both sytems sounded wonderful, dynamic, honest, and was very capable of allowing everyone that came to see us, also hear us! This was good.
But, after so many years on the road, the bandleader, and a few of the others, decided it might be better to go with a Bose system, as that was the newest, latest, greatest thing that many other road bands were beginning to use. We stored the JBL's and Altec's, and acquired four Bose cabinets, two on each side of the stage. Man, were they light and easy to carry/stash in the trailer!! That part of it was almost magic. BUT, we soon found that, no matter what venue we played, after switching to Bose, folks in the back seemed to tune us out, and we could easily see that, where they had been into the band and listening before, they were tuning us out, or ignoring us, now!! Hummmmm.......??? It didn't take us long to figure out what was happening. When listening to us from any distance, at all, the old adage, "no highs, no lows, must be Bose", turned out to be absolutely correct!! From the back of any room, no matter WHAT we tried, those Bose speakers sounded weak, anemic, and lifeless! In desparation, we added a huge subwoofer, and a bank of super tweeters on each side. It was better, but still never of the quality nor dynamic abilities of our old JBL's, or the Altec's. We had sound men from all over the US try to make that system actually sound decent, and guess what? Not a single one of them could do it!!! That's the simple truth of it, my Friends, with no embellishment, and no exaggeration. For tiny venues, where projection, dynamics, and a life-like quality are not that important..... "maybe" Bose would work. For anything else, a good JBL or Altec system simply leaves Bose in the dust, with no muss, no fuss, and no having to tweak the holy moly out of it to make it work!! Those are the facts, as we experienced them, and there are hundreds of professional sound men, many from Las Vegas, Reno, and Lake Tahoe, that were frustrated in their efforts to make our Bose system perform up to our expectations and needs. With JBL and Altec, it was easy to do; with Bose, it proved impossible.
The funny thing is that, our band broke into seperate groups after that. Some who liked the Bose, simply because they were easy to carry, went one way - those who wanted (and did) go back to JBL, or Altec, went another. Guess which bands sounded better, Friends????? I'll give you a hint: the groups that chose to use a system beginning with a "J", ending with an "L", and having a "B" in the middle, and the ones that chose to return to Altec!!!Take care, and God Bless!
Every Good Wish,
Doc (of course, "your mileage may vary"...... but, I seriously doubt it!)
The only thing that can never be taken away from you, is your honor. Cherish it, in yourself, and in others.
He sounds nasal, flat and jerky on my JBL's too...Oh wait..mebbe your problem was Brucie in combo with the Bose ? nasty.
I have had Bose floorstanders , veneer, 2 8 LF's & 4 HF's ....sounded OK, but not good enough to keep, rather crappy construction, drivers looked CHEAP.
Wern't they the only company ever to successfully SUE Consumer Reports ?
Anyway...they are pushing hard in Asia, ads all over Saigon , their only competition is a home grown brand called "Calli" ....local music is all vocals, so I guess that highs & lows really don't matter.
Some kind of happiness is measured out in miles
Bo$e did NOT like some of the words that were used in the CR description of how the speakers sounded. CR was very nice compared to how some of us describe the Bo$e products. John
They won the initial round, but the Supreme Court (yes, it actually got that far) overturned the lower court's ruling.
I guess sometimes truth does prevail
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/script...=466&invol=485
I stayed at a bed and breakfast with the wife last summer. They had a pair of 901s mounted at ceiling height with NO Bose equalization box. Apparently, the owner bought the Inn and did not realize they needed an equalization box.
Anyway, except for the Brucie concert, they were the worst sounding system I have heard.
Apparently, room placement and equalization for the 901s are critical for any form of Hi-Fi. The speaker boxes are supposed to be at ear level and away from a wall at least three feet. I think some of the many drivers are fired rearward to bounce sound waves off the back wall into the listening area.
The Bose store I visited recently was selling the 901s. They had them mounted incorrectly - flat against a wall. Anyway, they taught the sales people to steer customers away from the 901s and towards the five channel plastic systems with the 4" sub bass woofers that sell for $5K.
I asked the sales guy why I should not buy a $600 full sound Bose table radio instead of the five channel system selling for $5K. They were baffled by this question.
I bought a set of Bose 901's a few weeks ago with the intention of flipping them. I listened to them daily before I sold them. They were tolerable. Controlling the bass was a challenge. I found myself adjusting it for every different style of music I was playing. I'm not sure what the big fascination was with the Bose 901 in the 70's. They were the speaker of choice if you could afford them.
Not for me and my buds. I had Magnepans, they had DQ-10's, JBL, Ar-10's, and a smattering of Pioneer, etc.I'm not sure what the big fascination was with the Bose 901 in the 70's. They were the speaker of choice if you could afford them.
Oh yeah, the Bose 901's sound worse than you can imagine without the EQ. I'm amazed how many systems are being sold without the EQ on eBay.
This article explains the do's and dont's of buying Bose 901's
http://www.epinions.com/content_4691894404
Dome I’m supremely disappointed in you. No pictures you forget to take pictures so we can all throw EGGS at the computer screen.
When I started working at the radio station I found out that they had some Bo$e 801 Pro speakers.
They are plastic versions of the 901 but with out the lone speaker on the front. They also sound like crap without EQ. 3 years ago the remote people brought one of them to me saying that one of the speaker was blow. I tested the speaker and found out the 2 of drivers were blown, I really hated to get replacements.
Since I had to look inside to trace the wiring since the speakers are hooked up in a strange series-parallel configuration. What they looked like in the inside was appallingWhat a mess!
Two years ago the station wanted to get another remote setup, the remote dept. asked for MORE Bo$e speakers.. Needless to saw the remote dept uses the JBL most of the time now. John
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