Bose -- weird or not?

[MusicEuphony]

I had always been told Bose was a good company with nice products that were expensive, and had believed it until I was about 16 and checked some of their stuff out at various stores (circuit city, fry's, and the like). Their sound seems really sort of different and in no way sounded even close to flat (though I get that that's not the point). Each time, the system sounded alright, though sort of spacy and unnatural, and each time when I turned off the subwoofer, those little cubes stood out as no good.

Since then I've read various horrible things online about bose and their speakers. I've even been given links to sites selling the same cubes bose uses for $10 each. They won't release any of their freq. response charts or any sort of real specs on their equipment, which seems a bit strange also.

[chema]

no comment about any other product but my mom gave me one of those expensive alarm clock small radio deals and it's a great alarm clock, wakes me up every morning, but (and this is in no way an original idea) i've been using it to check mixes in the studio as sort of the boom box test (very convenient line in) and it kicks ass (different than auratones or whatever little speakers you may like), but it's totally useful for that, it is in no way flat, the low end is super exagerated, and yes, weird, but if anything is floppy or unbalanced in there, it tells you in no uncertain terms, so they're not entirely bad, but absolutely overhyped i agree.

[Randy]

to me the Bose stuff sounds like the Waves S1 plugin pushed to the absurd. the S1 does a phase treatment to the bass that gives "dimension" to the low end. Sorta like mid-side decoding I guess. Boom boxes have it- Sony boxes have "Mega Bass"

Sea Sickness.

I scraped the "B" off my boom box so now it says "Mega ass."

[matt250321]

yea i never really understood how those new bose PA systems worked... The way their website hypes it, it sounds like some new miracle machine. They claim that the sound doesnt getter quieter the farther you are from the system. I highly doubt they changed the laws of physics here... I mean I only had 2 physics class so far but I know that you can't just change how sound waves work. I mean that would be pretty cool, but um yea, I dont think they did that Its funny how their website claims all this stuff but there is no technical data to back it up. kind of amusing. But hey who knows, I've never heard one of those things and they could be amazing...i just doubt it.

[thunderboy]

matt250321 -

The Bose PA thingy is based on line array theory. Normally, when you double your distance from a noise source, you see a 6dB drop. With a line array, it's a 3dB drop.
Whether or not a 3' long array of Bose drivers can provide the same effect as a 30' V-Dosc cluster...no idea.

jt

[Scodiddly]

The line-array effect does work, but you have to be within maybe 30 feet and not above or below the ends of the column. And bass is done with a little baby subwoofer, which is a point source instead of a line source and so falls off quickly with distance.

The biggest problem with the Bose column things is that they're over $2k each... and you're supposed to have one for every member of the band. Definitely not good value for a PA system.

[jajjguy]

guys, guys. i'm as much of an audio snob as you, but i challenge any of you to show me a boombox with the same dimensions as the bose wave radio that can fill a large room as well without cranking the volume. also, note that it's really loved by (and marketed toward) classical and jazz listeners. i really think it's pretty good, for, say, listening to the messiah on the radio in the kitchen while you make your holiday fruitcake or whatever. so let's take it as it's meant.

i agree that their straight stereo speakers are poop.

i have heard the line array PA speakers, and they're really pretty good. less rock n roll, more high-fi. also, they should only be used for standard PA apps, like amping-up miced things or keyboards. they say they can be used also as as a guitar or bass amp, but they really don't sound so good that way (no PA does).

[SKEETER]

Originally, noone could touch Bose. When the 901s came out, there was nothing on earth that could remotely compare to them for sound, The idea was to have as much reflected sounds as direct sound in order to have a more natural concert hall sound. I have a pair of 301s in my living room. I prefer.
Bose is still way ahead of the game as far as R and D goes, but I think perhaps they have forgotten that most people are more into practicality now, and that the audiophile craze has kind of petered out considering that the advent of digital sound has pretty much fullfilled the quest for "perfect audio" with a hollow victory.
I like a lot of Bose stuff, but I would still rather have an old pair of radio shack towers and a old Marantz blue face receiver than any of the more recent gear. For some reason, receivers now have shitty bass response. It almost sounds like they are intentionall making the bass weak so people will have to go out and buy subwoofers.
I do like the early Bose Acoustamass setups. I thought years ago that companies should start making a separate bass module and smaller cabs that hung on walls and reflected sound.

[Zeppelin4Life]

Bose gear is marketed bullshit with big pricetags. the products are not bad, but the prices and eveything else are. never again

[SKEETER]

Bose has a set of very expensive headphones that phase cancel all outside noise, and they work amazingly well. They were originally designed for those that work around aircraft to use for hearing protection. I have tried a pair of them out in a Bose store, and they do indeed perfrom magic.
Just before Christimas I was in a store somewhere (I forget which store) and seen a pair of headphones that claimed to do the exact same thing that the Bose cans do. They were 50 bucks. I bet Bose is real happy about that.

[andyg666]

They have those cool noise cancelling headphones. But for $300....pass. If Bose sounds so good how come they're not in studios?

The reason Bose is not studio-grade stuff is because it has a sound--period. We want our studio monitors to be as transparent as possible, right? So Bose is designed to sound "good" (even though we think it sounds crappy) which automatically makes it bad for the studio. shortly after i graduated audio school Bose sent me an e-mail offering me a job interview... i am SO glad i was not ready to move up to Boston at that time cuz i probably would have taken it and contributed to the destruction of good music everywhere!!

[ape32]

I have very fond memories of playing and seeing shows at Canal Street Tavern in Dayton, OH, which had 6 or so Bose 901s arrayed all over the club. They did shows for everyone from Taj Mahal to smaller touring and local rock bands. I used to play there with a rock band and it worked great, run as a vocals-only PA.

What I likes about it was the vocals could be made out clearly anywhere in the place and there was no nasty horn-blare, which is what I fight constantly at the club I mix at now.

[andrew embassy]

Anybody hear about Bose's suspension system for cars? Apparently it's the same concept with the noise-cancelling headphones, except instead of negating noise, you're negating bumps in the road...

http://www.bose.com/controller;jsession ... esults.jsp

[SKEETER]

APE do you know a guy named Ron Dunn that plays around that area?

[SKEETER]

If Bose has developed a phase cancelling system for cars, I imagine it is quite complex, it would have to be designed so that it allows some frequencies to pass, such as those of emergency vehicles.