Bose 901 sound test by TonePub?

Well, clearly constructive gear criticism is the equivalent of questioning one's manhood. The last thing we need is for a bunch of grown men to come down with an eating disorder. Frankly, my life revolves around the status of my audio gear and I'd much rather believe that it's the greatest of all-time than to consider the views and experiences of others (and risk a mental health problem).

 

I am presuming that the product will be found to be overpriced for what it is. There is good reason for this presumption. So yeah, I'm interested in the consumer's welfare.

And btw, I'm not doing the review. If I were, then I'm confident I could "flip the switch" and leave my bias aside. I have no doubt that TonePub will provide a professional review that is up to the standards he sets.

 

I haven't unpacked the speakers yet, so I really can't say. I haven't heard 901's in years. I've never trashed anyone else's product in print, so I won't do it to Bose either. If the speakers are God awful, I'll send them back. More than likely the truth is somewhere in between. There's plenty of competition at that price, so we'll see how they shake out. We've certainly heard a lot of things at that price, some really good some not so good, some just different.

Bose won't be treated any less fairly than any other hifi mfr we've dealt with.

 

I'm sure the phrase 'doppler distortion' will be featured prominently....

 

I'm looking forward to Jeff's review. There could be some interesting surprises. I remember listening to early 901s when I was in college and thinking they were superb. I've heard the commercial versions used by bands in live performances more recently, and they played loud and took a lot of punishment (I can't really comment on suitability for home audio use based on the live performance experiences). No reason to trash 'em before you even hear 'em.

 

It will interesting to hear what an unbiased review will turn up.
He seems to tell it like it is in real world terms.
I have owned 3 pairs of Bose speakers in the past.
I liked them at the time but of course they were the mid 70's versions .
Two pair of 901's driven by Phase Linear 400's and a pair of 301's.

 

I remember buying my first stereo in the late '70's at 18yrs of age, I spent many hours at two different audio shops. Shop 1 a Technics 70 watt integrated amp. I picked ESS amt 10b's (Heil transformer) over JBL Century 100's. Better dynamics and bass. Shop 2 using a Kenwood 70W integrated amp. Chose ESS amt 10b's over Bose 901's. I bought the Kenwood, ESS speakers, Dual tt, Shure V15 and a Kenwood cassette deck-all for about $1400. Brother had 901's he bought while in the service and thought they were the end of the road because of all the hype. He soon heard a real pair of dynamic rockin' speakers. Case closed in my opinion.

 

Can't wait. I know Jeff will be fair!

 

Most people I knew in the Air Force did not have them properly set up. The 501s sounded better.

 

I hope they'll be on the cover. Displace Vitus.

 

I don't think it's fair that audio reviewers cop flak for publishing reviews that don't trash gear and instead are often criticised for praising everything. No matter how bad something is, you can be sure that someone else would hold the opposite view so I really believe that the worst comment that can be fairly made against a reviewed item would be to say something like ' whilst not bad, I feel that for the same money you can buy better'.

The absolute worst review will be no review at all so those looking forward to popcorn hour may be disappointed.

I think it's a noble thing for a respected audiophile publication to seriously review a pair of Bose speakers because I, like most audiophiles, am not a fan of Bose at all and like to criticise the company as much as any audiophile but then I think that I've never actually heard a pair of Bose speakers so that's a pretty ignorant point of view really.

Having said that, does anyone actually think that Bose markets themselves to audiophiles anyway? Let's face it, they are a hugely successful company because they know who their potential customers are and that's not audiophiles. Bose are quite content to target their products at the other 99% of the population and very cleverly, realised a long time ago that by making gear that looks good and is not too intrusive and therefore very pleasing to women, more than half the battle was won on that point alone.

Now I'm going to go back and listen to my very large and ugly but great sounding DIY Klipsch clones!

 

What finish did you get? Got the stands too?

 

I used to argue bitterly with the editor and publisher at Video Review magazine in the 1980s, where I was technical editor. They insisted that if we published a bad review, there was always X percent of readers who would go out and buy it anyway, just to try to prove us wrong; I insisted that we had to worry about the 90% of readers who might run out and buy it if they didn't know any better. They won that argument, because I was only a staff writer.

The reality is, some publishers (not Tonepub) are deathly afraid of losing advertising money from a negative article or review. As one example, the owner of Video magazine, Jay Rosenfeld, once told me he lost about $50,000 in ads from a story I co-wrote on "laser rot" in the late 1980s. He didn't mind running the piece -- which was honest, factual, and even interviewed the Pioneer laserdisc execs involved -- but he did remind me of losing the ad income five or six times in the years that followed.

 

I rarely write a negative review but that's because I try to seek out things that look interesting to me or I have heard are great and I want to use. Sometimes a product doesn't wind up being as good as I had hoped and I have to write a less than positive thing about it. Some people that see far more products, like Cnet, write more negative things. I don't see enough things a year that I can afford to be a but picky. Though I see the good and the bad in Blu-ray players now, that is certain.

I hate when people accuse writers of never writing a bad review since I know often you can go months and months only using great things.

 

This thread needs more rampant speculation. Seriously though, it seems there are 4 things you shouldn't talk about on this forum: Religion, politics, your position on abortion and the sonic merits of the Bose 901.

 

All this *before* the review!

 

My current speakers are 901's, which I've had for over two years. They replaced B&W 703's, that replaced klipschorns. The 901's sound much better ("better" being purely subjective) in my current room than either previous pair did. And that's pretty much the end of the story as far as I'm concerned. What else matters?

 

I gotta cynically wonder how many of the Bose-trashers around here have actually HEARD their products very much.

My experience with 901s, 501s, and Acoustimass systems was that they were NOT junk and NOT terrible. I spent a lot of enjoyable time listening on those at friends' houses. Overpriced? Maybe so; I can't recall what the competitors would have been back then.

Now the Bose 301 and the aftermarket car audio system...meh. THOSE sounded kinda hollow or something.

Acoustimass reviews tend to note a response hole between the subwoofer and the satellites. But what the critical posters here forget is that
- Acoustimass is a LIFESTYLE product, and it is just STUPID to compare it to a conventional speaker. They are for people who DON'T WANT a conventional speaker!
- Everyone and their brother and sister have followed the small speaker form factor, and now beyond to "sound bars" :thumbsdn:
- You can't always obviously hear this hole because your ears get used to it. For movies at a friends, my experience was that voices were very clear and explosions went BOOM! and that purpose was served surprisingly well.

The Wave Radios...never heard 'em, so can't comment. The headphones I heard recently, and they had very clear sound and good noise canceling. I would never get them because that's a lot bigger than I want to carry on a plane, but they certainly were not junk. And even B&W is copying this form factor now.

Does Bose overhype their products? Yeah? Compared to what-the myriad flimsy claims in dozens of cable ads I read?

It makes me curious why there is so much hate for Bose. I guess it is very much like the hatred of some for Apple "ruining the music business" or whatever.

 

45 posts before the speakers have even been reviewed! This is like a new, anticipated, music release after all. For the record I have heard sold and listened to the 901's with an excellent front end and well regarded amplification and I remember they sounded great at some things and ordinary in other aspects (we are talking 20 years ago) but were never the go to speakers. Obviously very popular, but no one is saying how unattractive the design is generally regarded as being.

 

Very boomy, no mono button, no balance button. The Bose guys have some very odd philosophies in the way they design their products. But the overall design is very clean and attractive; I think that sells the product as much as anything.

A couple of times, I've test-driven cars that had Bose speaker systems and was totally appalled by how bad the cars sounded. I complained to one salesman about it, and he kind of sighed and said, "yeah, I have a customer who's a recording engineer and he hated it, too. But the car itself drives great!" Which it did. But I wound up bailing and getting a Lexus instead. (Mark Levinson sound system, which was fine: had balance controls, tone controls, and so on, and produced perfectly acceptable music.)

Oh, I can hear it. It's pretty much in the 150Hz-350Hz area, or thereabouts -- upper bass/lower mids. There's a real suck-out there. Certain voices and instruments get lost in there, it's not pleasant. Play a sweep tone sometime, and tell me what happens. There's a price you pay for those tiny drivers, and it's not just in dollars. One major principle of physics you can't get around is, you gotta love a lotta air to reproduce sound. And this is much harder to do with little dinky drivers.

Two different things. Apple is often at or near the top of the performance list by many, many magazine critics and web pundits, especially for construction quality, speed, reliability, and usefulness. I can recall several times in the past where no less than PC Magazine has said (about Macbook laptops) "this is the best Windows laptop in the world." They loved the Apple machines for fit and finish, design, functionality, and speed -- all the things you want in a laptop, all relating to quality. I can't think of anybody who recommends Bose speakers for sound quality.

They're very small, attractive, and pretty easy to set up, so they do have that going for them. But I think there are dozens of inexpensive speaker systems out there that perform just as well for less money -- but aren't as tiny or as "cool" looking. Plus they might require more set up, like better stands, careful room positioning, and so on.

I use the original Bose Computer Speakers on a couple of my machines (not my main system), and they're fine for that. They look nice, they blend in, they don't suck too much, they weren't pricey. I use them just to tell me "yes, there's sound there," and they function well in that capacity. They're certainly better than any built-in computer monitor speaker I've ever heard. But for music?

 

You're joking, right? The high dollar cables aren't marketed 24/7 toward the lowest common denominator. Additionally, you might want to bless us with the flimsy claims and for each one, there will be many from Bose to counter.

Apparently, most of us are apathetic toward mainstream, universally accepted scams. It's all around us. Should those who know a little bit more than "Joe consumer" simply stay in their bubbles, stick their collective noses in the air, and snicker and sneer? Well, that's what many do, but some here understand that ANYONE is capable of fighting through noise and appreciating authenticity- whether it's food, audio gear, or anything else marketed to us.

 

Haha. This is thread #2. The original was closed. I personally don't believe that TonePub will review the 901s. I would be wrong to hope for a fair and balanced review that shed light on the truth behind Bose. If the 901s were review worthy, then Stereophile and Absolute Sound would have been there already. There is a reason they don't review this stuff and it isn't because they are elitists.

 

I think it's pretty funny that you guys are crabby on another thread because we're reviewing a $60k phono stage, and you're crabby on this thread because we want to review Bose 901's.

Who know's these things might be half way decent. Or not. That's what investigation is all about..

 

That is what investigation is all about. We all agree on that. Part of the dispute derives from the challenge to long held beliefs. If you ran a foodie magazine that began shredding popular brands and exposing them for what they are, then you'd have a real revolt going. Try telling people that Heinz Ketchup is among the worst things one can possibly put on their food. I mean, it's gotta be pretty nasty food if you're gonna cover up the taste with processed gunk. Try exposing Hershey's for what they are. Start telling people that there is no aromatic chocolate worth consuming in a Hershey's kiss and then see how far you get.

Some of us are going to empathize with where I'm coming from, but they're in the choir already. The others will do what they do and relegate this viewpoint to "snobbery".

 

Jeff, I look forward to your unbiased review.