The speakers were placed very close. They were loud, but did not sound very clear or detailed and the bass was terribly boomy and muffled.
However, I was at an Apple store the other day and decided to listen to their noise canceling headphones as well as the Companion series computer speakers. I really thought there was something about the sound that stood out and made it sound very good to my ears. I am not quite sure how to describe the sound, but it sounded very "full" and the voices stood out. What gives? Do they use some sort of special equalizer? I didnt spend too much time listening, and as much as I want to hate them after reading all the anti-bose statements , I really thought they sounded good to my ears.
Im not looking to start a flame war here or anything, but I am really curious. Anyone have a good explanation? Joined Sep 29, Posts Likes Check out this discussion. Uncle Erik Uncle Exotic. Joined Mar 18, Posts 22, Likes Why Bose Sucks Review Resources. This has links to the most popular resources explaining just how bad Bose is.
I don't know what experience you've had with other headphones, but after listening to and owning a variety of them, Bose headphones are terrible in comparison. I encourage everyone to listen to Bose and compare them to other headphones. The difference is not subtle. Joined Feb 8, Posts 83 Likes 0. See, I thought Bose sounded that good too, until I got a pair of real non-Bose headphones. It's all an illusion. Joined Jan 13, Posts 34, Likes Joined Aug 28, Posts 2, Likes Go pull up their PDF product data sheets.
See any measurements? Any real performance specs? Any idea why those don't exist? No problem. The AM-5—for all its acoustic shortcomings—showed the industry how to do it. This is an important subject to tackle, because there is a terrible misconception out in the audio enthusiast community that Bose is weak or deficient when it comes to hard-core audio engineering. Bose does not publicize its star engineers the way Hollywood touts a big-name actor or the way other speaker companies promote their celebrity designers, like Kevin Voecks or Andrew Jones.
It was the first speaker that used a vertical line of drivers, intentionally, in recognition of the interference effects of side-by-side drivers. Since then, all tower speakers from every company have been vertically-aligned. It used Allison-styled side-mounted inch woofers for uniform in-room bass response to achieve an honest in-room LF response of -3dB at 28Hz. It laughed at watts RMS per channel. It was an amazing technical tour-de-force in loudspeaker design at the time, a landmark product.
The chief designer and project manager for the AR9? Tim Holl. Snell Acoustics has certainly earned numerous audiophile accolades for a succession of brilliantly-designed speakers through the years.
Any number of Snell speakers are deservedly high on the list of any serious audio enthusiast as examples of some of the best-sounding speakers anywhere. David Smith. Smith is now at Bose and has been there for quite a while, many years. Bose even has a large anechoic chamber on premises, which most speaker companies do not.
Whether mechanical, electrical, acoustic, materials, transducer, certification or any other area of engineering, rest assured, Bose is at the very top of the heap. The is intentional. The process rules for the audiophile as much—if not more than—the actual sound itself.
But to non-enthusiasts—like the Bose customer—specs are unimportant. Those customers respond to the experience, not the specs. The process is not the issue. The final result as perceived by them is what counts. A good parallel to Bose is the way Apple markets their products. The process and specifications are not their marketing focus. And it sounds great—clear and lifelike. They described a great user experience, without mentioning a single specification, material or manufacturing method.
This is exactly what Bose does and why specifications are unimportant to their appeal. However, sometimes their tightly controlled marketing message would run afoul of a troublesome audio writer or critic and sparks would fly.
Bose was famous for its tightly-choreographed, dramatic, almost theatrical press events when introducing a new product. The AM-5 was particularly noteworthy in this regard. Bose knew the AM-5 was a winner. The bass module was hideaway in nature—so it was hidden away. All the sound that was thought to be coming from those floorstanders was in fact coming just from the cubes! It was one of the most memorable audio presentations in audio history. At another press event for a different product, the late Peter Mitchell—the brilliant, Boston-based researcher and engineer who founded the nationally-known Boston Audio Society—was so pointed and unyielding in his questioning as he pressed certain technical points that Bose clearly did not want to discuss that Mitchell was banned from all future Bose press events.
Mitchell, like all audiophiles, was a process guy. What was the process, how did it work, what are the specs, how was it made, what was the background research. The process. Remember, the process rules in the rolling green hills of Audiophilandia. Neither do its customers. Bose is an experience marketing company, not a process marketing company. That is simply an observation of the different paths successful companies can take. The AR line—despite great reviews in the magazines and strong customer demand—received poor support from the dealers themselves.
Bose wanted to avoid that at all costs. Soon, Bose was dictating to their dealers that they set up a separate Bose section of the store away from the other brands of products in order to give Bose equipment a proper demonstration. Bose felt they were dealing from a position of strength, since customer demand for Bose was very high and dealer profitability on the line was quite good.
Years later, Bose would do nearfield 5. Some dealers went along with Bose, but others willingly gave up the line. This was an effective way for all Bose dealers to be able to offer a discount on the unilateral pricing of the AM-5 and it ensured a level playing field for all the dealers. It was wildly successful. In , Bose introduced the Wave Radio. More than any other single Bose product, this was the item that made Bose a widespread household name, far more than just a speaker company.
Amar Bose had always wanted to do a really nice-sounding table radio. Hence, the Wave Radio was born. It was a clever design: The internal section of the unit was actually comprised by the labyrinthine paths and chambers of their Acoustimass system. One was a more robust, longer-excursion full-range driver that played the summed bass from both stereo channels as well as the mids and highs for the left stereo channel. The other driver was very similar to the one used in the AM-5 cube and played just the mids and highs for the right channel.
And it was going to be a clock radio also. It was a funny sight—there was a group of the very highest-level Bose executives, plus their head of Engineering, their head of Marketing and me with my Panasonic RC, sitting at a conference table, setting Alarm 1, then Alarm 2, then switching from Radio to Buzzer, then activating the Sleep timer and the Snooze timer.
One other inside tidbit—I had told a good friend that we were working on this nice radio model that had an alarm function. It is not uncommon to see very small six-inch speakers with the same sound quality as inch speakers from other manufacturers. The company believes that the output matters more than the size. According to Bose, it is easier to use high quality ingredients to improve user experience, than increase the size of the speakers.
Bose has patent rights on so many audio technologies and this partly informs the high price tags. Over the years, the company has produced so many new technologies to make their products better. Research is among the main philosophies that Dr. Amar Bose stands with. The company re-invests earnings in research to enable them to create better products and breakthroughs instead of using the same old technologies. Technologies such as noise cancellation have been around for a while.
However, it is Bose that developed the tech in a way that it is available in most speakers today. It took the company many years to develop the technology the way it is today, and this is why the company would feel they have the right to charge more. Bose also says that they pay their engineers well and that also goes to the price of their products.
With each new technology, you can expect a high price tag as the company has to spend so much money on research. Besides in-house research, the company also funds research in MIT. Amar Bose gives away his non-voting shares to MIT. The money goes towards funding research. Their motto is that research comes before the profits. They have sophisticated showrooms, and they can take sections of other showrooms to showcase their products.
The company also has a huge online presence where they create high quality ads to appeal to their clientele and beyond. They create a listening environment that ensures the customers get the satisfaction from the audio quality. To create an environment that enhances the listening experience, Bose has to spend a lot of money and this money ends up in the price tag. Bose has a reputation to produce high quality speakers just as Apple produces high quality smartphones.
Since the inception of Apple, the company has sold their products at a very high price. However, the company has a reputation for quality and improvement. The same way people wait of the next iPhone release is the same way others wait for the release of Bose speakers. Granted, the company will always charge high as they already have a reputation for quality.
Some audiophiles hate Bose speakers because they cannot see the technical specs, and they are not willing to pay a higher price. Bose has a number of critics, but the number of happy customers continues to swell. According to some of the audiophiles I have seen online, the company creates better sound quality artificially.
However, this is the same sound quality that makes people fall in love with Bose speakers. The company studies how the brain perceives audio and they try and create an experience that feels as natural as possible.
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