Bose- wow.

So, I know it's the "cool thing to do" to bash Bose. I never really had much of an opinion. All I ever saw them advertise was they made big sound in a small package. But somehow people decided they made the best gear ever. Whatever, don't care a lot one way or the other. Clearly not the best ever. But folk can buy what they like.

Well, I hadn't really heard their stuff in many, many years. Tonight I was at Target waiting to "get my - prescription filled". No sign of Mr. Jimmy, but they did have a Bose Home Theater demo set up. This thing was like $600. I don't think that's the top of their line, but not chump change either. So I figured, what the heck. I'll give it a spin.

Oh. Wow. That... sounds like ass. Good God. $600? Sounds like $60. The bass was so boomy and peaky I could hardly stand it. I didn't make it through the whole demo. It was literally painful. No "bass" you could actually feel, just nasty one note badness. I had no idea.

Do people really plunk down that kind of money for that? I'm listening to my Sansui QR4500 as I write this. Building a Home Theater set up and using it to drive the mains and rears. Right now hooked up to a pair of AR5s I'm restoring for a friend. This is so many light years ahead of what I heard at Target I can't begin to describe the vast difference. All the gear I'm listening to right now was about $350 plus some hours of my time to get it in working order. Man. I kinda feel sorry for folks who have never heard how good audio can be.

People put a hell of a lot of faith in the brand name more than anything else.

"It's Bose, so it obviously sounds good" "It's Monster, so it obviously works better" "It's Dewalt, so it's obviously the best tool"

Till my cobbled together stereo sounds better, my 10 dollar cable works just as well as their 60 dollar one, and my "E36 M3ty" Ryobi tools work just as well and cost half as much.

Same here. All my friends have bose systems, and then I blow them away with my pieced together, yardsale-acquired home theater setup. Heck, I think my E30 has a better stereo than most Bose home theater systems...

Don't even get me started on the little clock radios they sold. Those sounded like E36 M3!

I haven't priced Bose speakers (or any other) in years, since my system is also assembled from a variety of old bits (none of it Bose) that seem to work well together. From memory, 600 bucks would buy near the low-end of the Bose line, with their better systems easily topping the $1000 mark.

I think Bose has done an exceptional job of transitioning from a small-volume manufacturer with a good reputation to a mass market manufacturer that can still get a good price for a so-so product. It's probably a smart business move in this day of digitally mundane audio, since all the audiophiles are either dead or deaf.

Regarding Monster cables, somewhere I read about a guy that had his audiophile buddies over for a comparison challenge. They couldn't tell which speakers were hooked up with Monster speaker wire and those that were connected with coat hanger wire.

That seems to be the business model of a lot of industries. Build a better product, get a name for said good product, engineering and research get replaced by marketing and accounting and soon they are just another generic business fighting for the middle of the pack.

I usually study the restaurant industry for this phenomena, but I did first notice it in electronics back in the 70s.

Playing on the good name only lasts so long.

Bruce

Grizz wrote: People put a hell of a lot of faith in the brand name more than anything else. "It's Bose, so it obviously sounds good" "It's Monster, so it obviously works better" "It's Dewalt, so it's obviously the best tool" Till my cobbled together stereo sounds better, my 10 dollar cable works just as well as their 60 dollar one, and my "E36 M3ty" Ryobi tools work just as well and cost half as much.

I think Ryobi has come on in leaps and bounds the last few years. I think they bought up skil, maybe?

Joey

No highs, no lows? Must be Bose.

Bose: Buy Our E36 M3ty Equipment

A couple or three decades ago, I went to a local higher end stereo shop, and listened to my first Compact Disc player. I had run it through whatever speakers happened to be selected at that time, and was profoundly impressed. Later, I took a friend to the same store, and he selected Bose speakers, since that was what he had.

I have never bought anything with a Bose label.

There's a reason I steer all of my friends away from Bose stuff and into something decent. Given the price point for Bose stuff, it's usually not all that hard, either.

There is the one time I blew the woofer in a Wave Radio in the Bose store. AC/DC was cranked a little too loud, and the sales guy just said "Well, another one bites the dust." True story.

I have a Bose stereo in my ms3. I don't hate it, but it's not spectacular. I think the engineering behind bose is sort of neat, but the materials they use and the overall construction quality and their idea of "tuning" leaves much to be desired.

I've got some Bose bookshelf speakers that sound pretty good, but I wouldn't touch their home theater systems.

Come to think of it, is there brand with those little cube speakers that sounds good?

Otto Maddox wrote: I've got some Bose bookshelf speakers that sound pretty good, but I wouldn't touch their home theater systems. Come to think of it, is there brand with those little cube speakers that sounds good?

Gallo's sound halfway decent for how small they are.

I also have/had (don't know if my brother took them or not) a set of ADS' that are pretty tiny and sound good, but those are actually just small bookshelf speakers.

Otto Maddox wrote: I've got some Bose bookshelf speakers that sound pretty good, but I wouldn't touch their home theater systems. Come to think of it, is there brand with those little cube speakers that sounds good?

Polk somewhat recently released something like that. Think it was called "Blackstone?"

Of course, they're pretty big for "little cubes."

In reply to 92CelicaHalfTrac:

I've got a Polk home theater system. They have some cheap ones now, but mine is one of the older more expensive models. The speakers are two or three times bigger than a Bose cube. It sounds good for home theater. It sucks for music. There is no midrange. I just don't think it can be done - a subwoofer, tweeters, and maybe a 1-2" midrange speaker just isn't going to sound full.

I dunno....I have some commercial grade bose satellites I picked up cheap when a local mall store was closing. Mixed with the Sony (ugh) 10" sub and JBL center speaker running through a Sherwood Amp it sounds pretty decent.

I like their headphones.

I'm that guy who has a Bose home theater speaker system. SWMBO was sold on the name. We only use it for movies, not music. I knew I could get better for less, but sometimes it's easier to pick your battles. I more often than not watch movies using wireless headphones and not the Bose speakers anyway.

Otto Maddox wrote: Come to think of it, is there brand with those little cube speakers that sounds good?

I've been impressed by Klipsch's ProMedia computer speakers. Their bookshelf and floor-standing speakers are excellent, but out of my price range.

901's sounded great, the AM5 sub/satellite setup sounded good for a small package, and nothing recent from them has impressed me at all....

I've investigated building something similar to the Bose satellite/sub and trying to make it sound good. I always abandon it. I think it could be done, but coming up with a small driver that can go low enough to cross to a "sub" woofer is tricky. My main speakers are a pair of AR LST2s. The magnet on the midrange is bigger than a Bose cube. Just the magnet. Bose has a convenient way around that- they don't do it. There's a huge hole in the upper-bass and the box isn't a subwoofer at all. It's just a woofer- and not a very nice sounding one at that. And it crosses over well above any threshold that allows you to discern directionality. A subwoofer should cross at like 80 Hz and be invisible. There’s just bass. You can’t tell where it’s coming from. I didn’t measure it, of course, but that Bose block had to crossover at damn near 200 Hz. “Ah, bad bass. Where is it coming from? Oh, right there. Exactly where it sounds like it’s coming from.”

Like I said, if you look at what they actuall advertise, they just say it sounds big for as small as it is. The demo at target compared it to the sound from the stock TV speakers. That's just a fine thing to make, advertise and sell. The thing that, I don't know, baffles me is the perception that they they're the best thing available. Small? Yes. Better sounding than most TVs? Yes. Best audio available? Um, not just no, but Noooooooo!

As a guy who writes a lot of marketing copy, I'd love to know how they did it exactly. I've never seen them advertise that they're the best, or even good. Just surprisingly big sounding for very small speakers. But somehow they sold it in a way that led people to the conclusion that they're better than anything else you can get. Good job, Mr. Bose Marketing Director. You should teach a seminar for the rest of us.

i'm no audiophile, but i liked the factory bose systems in my rsx and ms3 just fine. the sideways hat, bass bumping kids didn't much care for them, but i don't think that's their target market anyways

93EXCivic wrote: I like their headphones.

Ding.

Well, the thing with Bose is that they ARE very intelligent engineers, but they take a completley non-standardised approach to problem solving in the products they make.

Basically, they're actively rejecting many common conventions of acoustic and aerospace engineering, and creating their own standard.

The marketing department is very well integrated with this approach. Let me tell you of some of the things the marketing department does:

They 'police' retail outlets that sell their products, making sure contractual agreements about how products are displayed and advertised as are followed to the letter. They secret-shop frequently to insure compliance.

What kind of things do they make them do? Bose products are never allowed to go on sale without permission, including open-box and scratch/dent. Bose products are usually required to be on an endcap or in a display configuration that prevents them being directly compared to any other product being carried. There's a few others that escape me, but knowing their engineering approach, this marketing approach makes sense;

~make your own standard and enforce it.

Got a Bose 5.1 system a few years ago and it sounds great after nearly 20 hours of tweaking and managing settings.