The Ohm Walsh, Bose 901 and other multidirectional speakers

The RIAA eq is usually a very simple passive circuit element (often just 2 resistors and 2 capacitors) and is designed to output flat response. The active eq Bose used ate up amplifier headroom as it required the amp to pump out lots of extra bass, plus it added noise and distortion.

 

Indeed - a big difference between the two.

 

I disagree, also, what about RIAA pre-emphasis applied during the master cutting ?......

 

well, in the bass region that represents a cut. Your 901s have a big lift there - to do that with power will normally add distortion and phase shift.

 

Hmm. The EQ box is probably not very transparent. I don't know. I owned 901s for a few years. I don't have anything particularly positive or negative to say about them. Except that I listened to them turned around backward.

 

You're barking up the wrong tree when you should be preaching to the choir, or something like that

Some folks think the RIAA curves are out dated and just plain awful, I don't have an opinion, since I haven't heard anything in the last 30 years that didn't have it in the 'chain' to compare with. So it's there, and I've heard some very nice recordings with it in use, there are very expensive Zanden phono preamps that let you mess with differant curves, but if the pre-emphasis is already applied it's not going to sound right , just different.

If someone gave me a new pair of 901's I'd have fun with them somewhere in the house, they aren't That bad, very pleasant with the right set-up and music that suits that sound , but I certainly wouldn't use them for my main rig.

 

I have to disagree again, maybe the bose equalizers made in the past were not very transparent BUT the LATEST bose equalizers have had a lot improvement done to them and they are.. VERY TRANSPARENT !... As for speaker set up, every room is different. You set up the speakers to please you ! Just because bose recommends speaker set up their way, doesn't mean everybody is going to like them set up that way !

 

[MOD: Personal attack toward fellow member deleted, as per forum rules.]

 

Well, these speakers are fully broken in now, and these ERRs are not leaving my living-room! Truly exciting presentation, and they match up beautifully with the Decware Torii Mk III amp, and Decware cabling.

Now that I have electrical power tamed in my system with the Power Plant Premier and some great cables, my next project is to get "the last digital front end I'll need." I'll be saving up and I'm thinking of the PS Audio Perfect Wave Transport/DAC duo.

 

These speakers and the Ohm Walshes are clearly a few notches above the Bose 901's. Had my listening room been larger, I would have given the Walshes some serious consideration ...

 

I think you don't need a larger room for these ERRs. They are pretty forgiving of rooms in general. The one benefit for a larger room is that you can put the speakers about a third of the way into the room from front and side walls and turn your listening room into a concert hall. Incredible depth! There are things happening in my front yard.

I've used Decware Radial predecessors in a smaller room of my house and I'm now using the Turning Point Audio HR-1s in my bedroom, and they sound great, but the depth is truncated somewhat. Still, imaging and sound-staging like no other speakers I've tried.

I've not heard 901s. I've heard 4.2s and 6.2s and 10.2s. All are nice enough for mid-fi but these ERRs are in my opinion more than a few notches above them.

 

I think the Bose 901's are probably fine to go with most mass market receivers and are clearly not good matches for Mac, AR, CJ and Krell ...

 

That's probably true. I don't think the Bose speakers I have heard would match well with those makes.

 

Use of an EQ system: I don't know Dr. Bose's precise reasons, but personally I believe the reason it's there is because he wanted to use multiple full range drivers to optimize the direct/reflecting philosophy he believes in, and that meant(?) using a common source of sound for the all frequencies the system emitted. And obviously a 4" driver, no matter how well built, is going to need some help in the uppermost treble and lower bass regions.

So the 901 speakers and their required equalizer should be thought of as a system, rather than as a pair of supposedly underperforming speakers that need outside help. So many audiophiles are obsessed with electronic perfection - e.g. "straight wire with gain" - rather than what actually sounds good, they lose sight of the fact there are many good reasons to manipulate a signal to help make sure what's heard at the listening position in an actual room, rather than an anechoic chamber, actually sounds like music (for example, using a well-designed loudness compensation circuit to make sure one's music sounds correct at lower listening levels - do a search on the Fletcher-Munson curves for more on this ).

BTW the RIAA curve was created for a practical reason, rather than say because someone back then was fond of the look of smiley/frowney EQ curves..........

 

The EQ was used because of the horrid frequency response without it. Now, I don't know how many prototypes were made and if a HF driver or drivers was part of original designs or not. The final product was very well thought out though. I can't say if the EQ was an afterthought or was part of the original concept. You see it would work out either way as the design could have had promise to be wide range enough without it initially but didn't end up as expected or it could have been implemented from the start with the idea that it just wouldn't work as hoped without it. What we do know is that the design used a large number of smaller drivers for a couple of reasons.

It made the overall size and shape of the loudspeaker smaller and less conventional. It allowed the use of varying degrees of sound radiating patterns. It allowed higher power handling capability. It allowed greater efficiency of a small enclosure. It lowered costs by keeping everything the same reducing parts count and increasing production volume of the drivers.

All that without even having a complete design. Once the basic concept was in place, the actual form of the product could take shape. At least that is the general order of things in other areas of design. Most designers don't work backwards from a visualization of a products aesthetic, but it has been done also. My guess is that he knew the device would work as far as creating an ambient sound and playing loud but needed a way to expand the range of the system without increasing its size. That might have also kept cost lower than adding a sub or making a larger enclosure and adding woofers and HF drivers. The EQ also has the benefit of allowing the speakers to be used in various rooms and positions without effecting its response as much as a system without adjustment. It certainly made it unique and I think that was a large part of its success.

On another topic, and it sounds like you are aware of it, the RIAA curve is not a curve at all when implemented. It is essentially flat on playback. That was it's whole purpose, to make full range Lp sound possible, not to "goose-up" the bass and treble of the system output. That is the job of the system tone control or EQ. Loudness contour to counteract the Fletcher-Munson curve is again something else entirely. It seems like you are just trying to defend the use of EQ in general but the applications are all very different and just because one works well doesn't mean that another does.
-Bill

 

I like to listen to music with friends. It's one of my real joys to share the music listening experience. I have very wide dispersion speakers (Mireage OMD-28) so everyone gets to hear a representative full-range sound. Speakers that sound wonderful in a sweet spot but poorer off axis just don't do it for me. As far is imaging is concerned, I generally don't hear the razor sharp image outlines when I listen to live music. I must admit that it's really cool to hear those spooky hyper-real images that some speakers/systems can produce, but it's not really representative of real, live music in my opinion.

I want a good full range, realistic sounding system whose sound I can share with friends. I'll happily sacrifice holographic imaging for a much wider "sweet spot".

DanG

 

One of the most overlooked things with these 901's is the interconnects and speaker cables. Cables are just as important with the 901's as speaker set up is ! I think more people would like these speakers if they would just use better cables with the 901's. In my system, the best cables I have found is Crimson R. M. Musiclink. These cables are a very good match with crossoverless speakers. The 901's are not going please everyone BUT they are sure not as bad as some of you make them out to be !....

[MOD: Some comments were deleted, as they broke specific forum rules.]

 

I gave up on Bose when I had my pair of 401's in the mid 90s at 22 years old when these started occuring:


- Wanted to know the sensitivity and other non published specs and I was told "there isn't any" and to trust my ears. WTF?

- My good friend bought some Mission bookshelves that absolutley blew the sound of the 401's away. How come I was hearing things with my favorite CD on his speakers and I didn't on these "world class" Bose?

- Bloated bass that was, through design of using corners & walls and angled woofers to maximize the output, supposed to be bloated.

- Where the hell was the tweeter? I can't hear it... are these things cutoff at 14Khz?

- It was obvious these 200W speakers were incredibly power hungry. Until I started feeding them some real power with an ancient Kenwood reciever the performance was always meh.

- Spring Clips. Even in the 90s, so called high end speakers (that cost me $600.00 Cdn) shouldn't be using cheap springclips.



To be fair, I'll list what I did like about the 401's


- They got me laid. My girlfriend loved them and so did most Chicks. Friends were very envious I had a pair of Bose floorstanders. Oh, the power of marketing!

- 4 ohm. You should have heard these puppies in the backseat of the car hooked up to a 2 Ch/100 W Concord amp and with the mids/tweetes, because of the cabinets triangular shape, blaring straight out the windows. The best they ever sounded was when I had them in the car.

- Unorthodox design. They may have sounded like sh.it but they did look kind of cool to all of us teenaged/early 20s audio noobs.


Anyhoo, here's a pic of the not-so-well-known Bose 401's. I even have pics from a 1994 camping trip with them sitting on a cardboard two-four beer cases because the ground was so muddy. Oh man I gotta find them and get them scanned for ***** & giggles.

 

We know that - such is the nature of a filter based on L-C-R. But the good ones get very close.

 

My friend's 501's sounded like they had nothing over 14k either.

 

I'm pretty sure active EQs also degrade the sound. That box in between the pre-amp and amp surely was not an audiophile piece of gear, as I would count audiophile. Again, I owned the 901 series III, so I had a lot of experience listening to these speakers. I'm not convinced the drivers themselves were that special. Anybody ever do a step response on one of them?

 

If your a man over 40 years old, your not going hear much above that anyway.....maybe 15k

 

[MOD: Personal attack against forum member deleted, as per forum rules.]

Back on track, has anyone heard these Hawthorne Audio Ref AMT's? Here's some great info on them, very interesting stuff, good lookin' too

http://www.martinloganowners.com/fo...ere-s-a-new-sheriff-in-town-and-it-s-not-a-ML

 

[MOD: Post deleted, as it broke specific forum rules.]

 

Speaker Height is also very important with these BOSE 901's. I tried the bose stands and did not like them at all ! In my room, the best height for my 901's was about 12 inches, using some plastic milk crates like these... http://www.duluthtrading.com/store/product/milk-crate-85055.aspx?src=T11WFSHP1