The Ohm Walsh, Bose 901 and other multidirectional speakers

You'd be really really surprised. A friend had these set up, with a very good 100W/ch amp, and they would quite pressurize his basement. Each speaker has a total cone area like maybe an 11" woofer, and very sophisticated porting to move a lot of air as well.

With drivers firing in various directions whilst simultaneously narrowing their dispersion, the 901s (like any speaker) had their own sonic signature. With the highs coming off the same cone as the bass, in theory there would be a lot of intermodulation. But in fact, they sounded pretty clean.

I worked for Jim Novak, he was a very nice guy, RIP. I'll absolutely "Echo" (ha ha) what you say about metal baskets resonating, especially stamped metal. You could do distortion sweeps of, for instance, 6" car door speakers and see several big peaks in distortion due to the resonance of the basket.

Now, are Bose 901s or Ohms or dipoles like Martin-Logan or Quad or Apogee etc etc ACCURATE? Well, since almost everything is mixed unipolar speakers, we must say NO from that point of view.

In some situations, they can sound nice, bringing out some facet of some recordings. But it's not what the mixer intended. Of course, that happens to some degree in ANY reproduction system, unless you're listening in the original mixing room.

I'll give a bit of a break to the DBX Soundfield, which was trying to throw more energy to off-axis listeners, and to the AR MGC-1 "Magic Speaker" which tried to control the energy dispersal into the room. It would be interesting to revisit those concepts using modern DSP and multiple amplifiers.
Bose really did take bass reflex and design the heck out of it. Their Acoustimass subs also use airflow well-again based on someone else's patent from like 1930.

 

Time Windows

I have heard Bose 901s on a number of occasions but I am more interested in people's opinions of the DCM Time Windows. They were considered a serious speaker in the 70s and weren't cheap. I read on some forums that many rate them well but I don't know if that's more nostalgia speaking or if the owners have no modern audiophile speakers as a basis of comparison.

Do they stand up to comparison with modern mid range offerings from Sonus Faber, ProAc or Magnepan for example? Has anyone done a comparison with modern, well regarded speakers? I'm not talking about Wilson Audio here, but a modern equivalent like the ProAc 1SC or the Sonus Faber Luito (not top of their line but a good performer).

I am trying to separate memories from reality. I realize that in 1977 901s and Time Windows were probably impressive to many of us (myself included) but I am talking about now. Do older high end speakers like the 901s or Time Windows compare to modern speakers favorably the way Quad ESLs do?

Scott

 

Where did you work with Jim? He was a great engineer.

 

I owned a pair of Sonab 116'S that had 6 tweeters all facing different directions absaloodle loved those speakers

 

...and I'm glad you did! Thanks for cutting so succinctly through all the anti-Bose BS.

My own experiences with the 901 have been very positive, from the Series IV's I owned in the seventies, to the Series VI's I bought in the fall of '09 and use for my main 2-channel speakers today. They may not be recording monitor accurate, but they weren't designed as recording monitors. They were designed to sound like live music. They are one of the ultimate "you-are-there" speakers.

 

I've been using Decware Radial speakers for a number of years. Their most recent model, the ERR, are stupendous!

 

Here's the Decware page for the ERR:

http://www.decware.com/newsite/ERR.html

 

I also have a pair of Turning Point Audio HR-1 speakers (in a different finish than this pictured) which are from the same excellent wordworker/designer. These incorporate a more conventioinal design speaker with an omni-directional driver at the top (hard to see in this photo; it is located at the top of the speaker and fires upward; there is a grille at the top with a 1" space between the speaker top and the grille; the top of the driver is visible through this gap.)

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These are excellent speakers, with both the conventional imaging of a sealed box and the depth and space of an omni-directional speaker. I do prefer the sound of the ERR speakers however; I've really become addicted to the radial dispersion sound.

 

EW. That's almost 2 octaves of low bass just GONE.

 

I have been going to the CES shows for many years now and I agree with you, the BOSE 901's are right up there among the finest sounding speakers on the market today. They have been many improvements to these 901's over the years, the latest 901's use different speaker drivers now so they are not using the same speaker drivers they used in their 1988 series 6's any more. These new speaker driver cones are made of.. part paper and part metal and the surrounds feels like they are made of some kind of cloth like they used in their series 1 and 2. From what BOSE told me they have been a lot improvements to the latest 901's and their BOSE equalizer that just came out about 7 months ago.

 

The German Physiks were very engaging. Full review here:

http://www.tonepublications.com/review/sound-without-boundaries/

Quite a bit better than Bose 901's and quite a bit more money.

 

havent heard them, but Shahinian's are reported to be excellent sounding.

i have heard the AR MGC-1 and they are fantastic.

 

Two things:

Two octaves??? How do you arrive at that?

When I had my Bose 901s, I measured solid bass down to ~36hz.

 

36Hz is not that impressive. It may be impressive for their size. But for the 901's on their special stands and given the footprint, it is not convincing enough for me to get 901's instead of a pair of bipolar towers with built in powered sub.

 

But remember, there are nine of them for a cone area roughly equal to a 12" woofer. Plus, being ported, you don't get the wild excursions of sealed systems, so distortion will remain low. I never had a pair, but my girlfriend's dad did, a pair of IV's driven by one of those gigantic Heathkit solid-state monsters. And he LOVED sound effects records. Steam locomotives, fog horns, thunderstorms, etc. Hanging from the ceiling, they rocked, literally. They would actually start swaying when he cranked it. They did not have genuine true low bass, as in pipe organ bass, but what was there was clean and tight and substantial. They did not image well, as you had all those different time arrivals, nor did they have a good tingly top end. All the equalization in the world isn't going to make up for a slow rise time. But what they did, they did well, and were quite impressive for the day.

 

I have original Gallo Reference speakers in space cages that I have set up as fully omipolar. I had them setup like this:



but I took the lower bass balls and turned it facing the front wall, according to Gallo recommendations. This greatly expended the sound-stage and improved imaging. Tweeter is omipolar as it is. Placement is a bit tricky but in the end improvement in overall realism is well worth it. I also had/have planar speakers such as Apogees and Stax, imaging is also very good do to bipolar radiating nature.

 

One octave below 60 is 30 Hz, one octave below that is 15 Hz. When you have rolloff like that, you're losing the frequency range of 20 hz-60 hz, which is almost two octaves worth of low bass.

 

Not even close. They were a cool design and a decent sounding speaker for their time. one of my favorites mentioned by the OP here. They required some space around them to perform best (like most speakers actually, but more so). They have a spacious soundstage, which is their most interesting trait. They are not nearly as resolving as modern speakers or even the better speakers of the time.
-Bill

 

The Allison Six's sounded very nice in the store...I almost bought them. In hindsight, they were the best bookshelf speakers for the money imo.

The only Bose that I thought sounded good were the 301's. The 501's and 901's were unimpressive, with a lack of detail, and I don't recall imaging being that great either.

 

The 360 degree tweeter is an excellent sound design.

 

"From what BOSE told me"... is all I have ta' hear !!!

 

Probably sufficient for most music in most rooms. The problem with that extension is it requires significant equalization from the magic box to achieve it and this is not without issues.

 

Older Speakers

"Not even close. They were a cool design and a decent sounding speaker for their time. one of my favorites mentioned by the OP here. They required some space around them to perform best (like most speakers actually, but more so). They have a spacious soundstage, which is their most interesting trait. They are not nearly as resolving as modern speakers or even the better speakers of the time."

++++++++++++++++++++

Bill thanks for your detailed reply.

The older speakers that I have seen had small and ordinary internal wiring along with drive units that were not high performance. I see that many high end speakers today use high quality internal wire that is soldered to the terminals rather than terminated with wire clips. It also looks as though, on average, older speakers didn't use very good drive units for the woofer and tweeters (and midrange, if applicable). Speaker connectors looked cheap and most people didn't use quality speaker cables. If anything, speaker cables were an after thought for most people.

The insides of the Time Windows that I have seen online look to have average parts and wiring which probably limited their ability to resolve details.

Scott

 

If you go and look at July's Issue of Stereophile , they reviewed the Audience ClairAudient 2+2 speakers and the writer made comments about the "possible audible benefits of having only one type and size of speaker driver, and no passive-crossovers". I agree with his comments and I sure find this to be true with the BOSE 901's !......

 

I don't know why people are so freaked out by the use of an active equalizer like BOSE 901 uses. All the PURIST vinyl fans don't mind the RIAA equalizer built into every phono preamp.