Bose Impresses

[Titanium Dome]

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: :barf:

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.

[boputnam]

...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 (http://www.renkus-heinz.com/loudspeakers/iconyx/index.html) are quite amazing. Very effective in highly resonant situations (airports, cathedrals, etc). I have not heard their recent entrant for SR, the IC Live (http://www.renkus-heinz.com/loudspeakers/iclive/index.html), but suspect it makes the Bozo offering just so much toys...

[Allanvh5150]

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 .......

[Titanium Dome]

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/STAPLES+CENTER:+HIGH-TECH+PRODUCTION+:+SOUNDING+OFF%3B+LOS+ANGELES+HAS. ..-a083624817

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

[Allanvh5150]

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......;)

[Audiobeer]

Bose is very well marketed. That's the limit of good things I can say about them.

[BMWCCA]

They call it "pro" sound. I've heard local groups playing through these silly things. Sounded like AM radio played through a telephone.

http://pro.bose.com/images/pro/banners/l1_page_header.jpg

[mikebake]

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.

[Allanvh5150]

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.:D

[MikeBrewster77]

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? ;)

[mikebake]

And garanteed not to be installed correctly/innapropriately.:D
On the contrary.

[Tom Brennan]

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.

[jblnut]

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 :).

[mikebake]

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.

[BMWCCA]

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.

[mikebake]

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.

[Oldmics]

I always thought B.O.S.E. was an acronym for

Buy Other Speaker Enclosures :p

Oldmics

[robertbartsch]

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.

[Tom Brennan]

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.


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. ;)

[jcrobso]

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: :barf:

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 at a Church that had BO$E system:barf:
I was sound person for a guest artist. We used his sound system that had two dual 15" EV speakers with horn. I feel that the EV speakers are OK, nothing great. But they still blew the BO$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

[Doc Mark]

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!!! ;):applaud::bouncy: Take care, and God Bless!

Every Good Wish,
Doc (of course, "your mileage may vary"...... but, I seriously doubt it!);)

[SEAWOLF97]

Bruce Springstein used 60 pairs of Bose 901s in the mid 1970s for venues of 10,000 or so.

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.

[jcrobso]

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.

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:barf:. John

[MikeBrewster77]

Wern't they the only company ever to successfully SUE Consumer Reports ?

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/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=466&invol=485

[robertbartsch]

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.

[JBL Dog]

Bose is very well marketed. That's the limit of good things I can say about them.

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.

:D

[mikebake]

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.

:D
Not for me and my buds. I had Magnepans, they had DQ-10's, JBL, Ar-10's, and a smattering of Pioneer, etc.

[JBL Dog]

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.

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

:D

[JBL 4645]

Dome I’m supremely disappointed in you. No pictures you forget to take pictures so we can all throw EGGS at the computer screen.:D

[jcrobso]

When I started working at the radio station I found out that they had some Bo$e 801 Pro speakers.:barf:
They are plastic versions of the 901 but with out the lone speaker on the front. They also sound like crap without EQ. 3 years ago the remote people brought one of them to me saying that one of the speaker was blow. I tested the speaker and found out the 2 of drivers were blown, I really hated to get replacements.:banghead:
Since I had to look inside to trace the wiring since the speakers are hooked up in a strange series-parallel configuration. What they looked like in the inside was appalling:biting: What a mess!
Two years ago the station wanted to get another remote setup, the remote dept. asked for MORE Bo$e speakers.:biting: I said NO WAY IN HELL!! I got 2 pairs of JBL SRX115s and two 18" subs for what one pair of Bo$e 801s would have cost. After the JBLs showed up I set up a shoot out JBL vs Bo$E!!! I set up the speakers in the door of the shop and aimed them down the hall. I had the remote people stand at the other end of the hall about 60' way. First I played the Bo$e for about 30 seconds, then I moved the speakon plug to the JBL and watch their jaws drop:jawdrop:. Needless to saw the remote dept uses the JBL most of the time now. John

[Allanvh5150]

When I started working at the radio station I found out that they had some Bo$e 801 Pro speakers.:barf:
They are plastic versions of the 901 but with out the lone speaker on the front. They also sound like crap without EQ. 3 years ago the remote people brought one of them to me saying that one of the speaker was blow. I tested the speaker and found out the 2 of drivers were blown, I really hated to get replacements.:banghead:
Since I had to look inside to trace the wiring since the speakers are hooked up in a strange series-parallel configuration. What they looked like in the inside was appalling:biting: What a mess!
Two years ago the station wanted to get another remote setup, the remote dept. asked for MORE Bo$e speakers.:biting: I said NO WAY IN HELL!! I got 2 pairs of JBL SRX115s and two 18" subs for what one pair of Bo$e 801s would have cost. After the JBLs showed up I set up a shoot out JBL vs Bo$E!!! I set up the speakers in the door of the shop and aimed them down the hall. I had the remote people stand at the other end of the hall about 60' way. First I played the Bo$e for about 30 seconds, then I moved the speakon plug to the JBL and watch their jaws drop:jawdrop:. Needless to saw the remote dept uses the JBL most of the time now. John

So you eset up all that JBL against an 801?.......priceless:D

[Tweak48]

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. :D

901's played loud (with enough power) and looked nice. Add a Phase Linear 400 and you had one hell of a headache machine!!!

Every once in a while I would lose a JBL sale to the camera shop down the street that sold Bose. By and large, the folks I knew that bought Bose grew up listening to Magnavox consoles of their parents, and thought Bose was a step up. It was.

On the other hand, my buds that grew up listening to their Dads Altec, AR, JBL, Warfedale systems never bought Bose when they became big kids; at least not the ones I kept in touch with.

[Mr. Widget]

Every once in a while I would lose a JBL sale to the camera shop down the street that sold Bose. By and large, the folks I knew that bought Bose grew up listening to Magnavox consoles of their parents, and thought Bose was a step up. It was.Interesting observation.

I remember those Magnavox consoles.:) I took one apart once and upgraded the speakers. The originals were a pair of 10 or 12" woofers that were really more like large mids and a pretty crappy horn tweeter that had no response above 10-12KHz. The sub enclosures were actually styrofoam tubs that looked like an ice chest once I pulled them out.

I think I'd have to agree, the Bose of that era was a step up. I suppose a Bose PA might be a step up from a Shure Vocal Master too, though that might be more of a personal choice sort of thing.


Widget

[Titanium Dome]

When I was nine our neighbors got a Magnavox console, which eventually prompted my parents to get a Magnavox console. That's where my love of audio began, lying on the floor at night in the dark with the volume very low while everyone was asleep. I listened to 90% classical at the time, and I still treasure those recordings these many years later.

In HS, it was Electrophonic gear with separate speakers that got me thinking components, and it was a trip to Toledo's Sound Masters that introduced me to JBLs, Kenwood, and Dual.

I was briefly tempted to get on the Bose bandwagon, but there was no way to go from JBLs to Bose for me. Apparently there still isn't. :p

[MikeBrewster77]

So do I - in fact, my grandparents still have one. It's a hideous green thing, but the sound (for what it is) isn't half bad. I just put one of several turntables I have in storage in it since the idler wheel and multiple springs on the original changer were shot. If nothing else, it makes grandma happy to be able to play her vinyl again.

That being said, I own a pair of Bose 301's that I bought for sh*t's and giggles, and though I'm not a "Bose basher" I certainly don't understand the hype. The soundstage is pure smoke and mirrors, and the bass is .... well, what bass? :o:

Truth be told, I'm not sure that grandma's Magnavox couldn't kick their asses in certain regards. ;)




I remember those Magnavox consoles.:)

Widget

[Hoerninger]

Could someone please post a picture of a Magnavox?
I would like to see one as I do not know it.
____________
Peter

[MikeBrewster77]

I'm having trouble getting any of the photos to embed, but a quick goodle image search of Magavox Console will give you a plethora of results of the different models:

http://images.google.com/images?ndsp=20&um=1&sa=3&q=Magnavox+console&btnG=Search+images

Best,
- Mike


Could someone please post a picture of a Magnavox?
I would like to see one as I do not know it.
____________
Peter

[Hoerninger]

... will give you a plethora of results of the different models:

Thank you!
It seems to be comparable with "Grundig Musiktruhe".
My Brother and I started with a Grundig stereo tube receiver - memory comes to mind. :)
____________
Peter

[Mr. Widget]

Magnavox was the original inventor of the moving coil loudspeaker in 1915 in Northern California. I am not sure if they invented the console stereo, but they seemed to be quite prevalent in that market with dozens of competing brands. Because of the size of the consoles they were able to create a rich mellow tone which was popular. The ideas of stereo imaging, detail articulation, and general tonal accuracy were not particularly sought after by their designers or customers.


Widget

[SEAWOLF97]

The ideas of stereo imaging, detail articulation, and general tonal accuracy were not particularly sought after by their designers or customers.
Widget

Magnavox
A prototype for the iPod ? The mPod ...:D

[MikeBrewster77]

The ideas of stereo imaging, detail articulation, and general tonal accuracy were not particularly sought after by their designers...


Wow - you've just perfectly summarized Bose's entire engineering philosophy in a single sentence. ;)