|
|
This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
|
|
Author
|
Topic: What happened to Bose speakers?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
|
posted 10-25-2004 05:02 AM
quote: Randy Stankey
When Bose builds a sound system it is designed with a scientist's point of view.
Ah Randy, my friend, I am afraid you have fallen for the Madison Avenue line of b/s that has been the Bose legacy. It was marketing genius, not the scientific genius of Professor Bose that is the hallmark of the Bose "system." It's very similar to the marketing genius of True cigarettes. One day the marketing people sat down with the guys at RJ Renolds and said, "the national obsession at the moment is filters on cigarettes....Can you come up with a filter that can be constructed to look very scientific, very unusual, but that can be manufactured very cheaply; it will be the central point of our marketing campaign." After a few misses, they came up with a simple plastic contraption that had "folded filter chambers" in it and when cross-sectioned, it looked something a kind of maze that the smoke had to pass through. Mind you, this little plastic gizmo had NOTHING to do with filtering smoke or anything else....the cigarette itself as well as the "filter" were designed for a marketing campaign. Thus True cigarettes were born. The marketing strategy came first; the filter was designed afterwards, not by the scientists but by the marketing department. Ads for True featured the famous filter cut opened, showing the "advanced folded filter chambers" (which, coincidentally and oddly enough, looked suspiciously similar to the cross sectioned views of the Bose 901s in their ads showing the "folded acoustic chambers"). The True ad also trumpeted the slogan underneath the cross sectioned filter: "The True Filter Chambers -- so advanced, it would take a scientist to explain it." Indeed it would, except what he would say after he stopped laughing would be, "Yes, and it's all a pile of b/s."
I was a young sound man for the LaBrie FM Stereo Network in NYC when the Bose 901s first came out. They were all the rage. All the reviews marveled at their "openness" and "fluidity"....all the hype words that "audiophiles" like to throw around when they don't want to admit that a piece of equipment just happens to catch their fancy and they don't really know why....perhaps it was just good marketing and a nice cross section of "acoustic chambers" that looks way cool, so they start spewing out gobbly-de-gook to make people think they know what they are talking about.
All I know is, I plunked down a cool $1200, which in those days was quite a high price for a pair of speakers. Thing is, I would go to my friend's apartment; he had a pair of KLH 6s, and whatever he played on them sounded wonderful to me, especially the warm, rich bottom end (thank you Mr. Kloss, also of MIT -- also a genius). So I unpacked my Bose 901 triangle jobs with all those folded chambers and eight small speakers facing the wall and one facing forward and I anticipated I would hear great sound, even better than my friend's KLH system. I played the same music I had heard on KLH 6s and I was much unimpressed....downright disappointed, in fact. And I tweaked them and twiddled with them and did everything I could and foolded with their special electronic equalizing box to no end. I even turned the boxes around to face me instead of the wall. No matter what, they had maddeningly wimpy bass and what's worse, the thing that impressed me in the showroom where I first heard them -- that so-called "airy," "fluid" quality -- I shortly came to undestand, that was really just sound bouncing all over the place because the speakers were aimed at the walls. What that gimmick turned out to do was to create a stereofield so smeared and so indistinct that most of the time you couldn't tell where in hell any of the instruments of the orchestra were located. You'd listen to this system for an hour or so and the listening fatigue they created made you constantly get up to futz with the controls, trying to get out of them what your ears were yearning to hear but couldn't. And the gimmick "electronic controller" they threw in which was supposed to "correct" what the speakers lacked, that also turned out to be a big zero. I longed for the round, in-your-gut bottom-end that a pair of KLH 6s seemed to effortlessly deliver.
Finally, I hooked up the 901s to a Phase Linear amp (350w RMS. per channel) and a Pultec parametric eq to try to coax a warmer, more robust bass response. I played the Dies Ire's massive kettle drum hits and cranked up the low end. No matter what a speaker design, to get bottom end, the system needs to MOVE AIR. These wussy little tv speakers mounted in this weird wedgie box MOVED NOTHING. I got nothing but anemic, thin crap out of them....so I turned the amp level up more and more until finally two or three of Professor Bose's shittly little tv speakers blew themselves to smithereens and smoke started coming out the back....filtered, no doubt, thru of one of the scientific acoustic chambers. I wouldn't give these things away to my worst enemy.
Not surprisingly, a few years later when Consumer Reports evaluated the Bose 901 system, their report echoed every one of my complaints. The speakers created a blurred, confusing stereo soundfield, they were so bass-shy as not to quality for 'Hi-Fi' and the bouncing sound off whatever walls happen to be in the listen room was a gimmick rather than any scientific leap in sound delivery. The Bose marketing firm, realizing this critique pretty much exposed the crux of their scam, took Consumer Reports to court demanding they retract the findings and recall that issue. Consumer Reports, noted for their impeccable impartiality, won the case. I offered my observations as a witness, but the case was so open and shut that I was never called -- much to my disappointment as I would have given them an earful, which is more than what the 901s gave me!
It just might be that theatre installers haven't gone with Bose's attempt to gain a share of the professional cinema market with their so-called theatre systems because, well, those freaky looking baby speakers just don't perform as well as conventional systems, and me thinks installers as savvy enough to know it.
Bose has continued to retain that which has been their distinguishing trading point from day one -- their odd looking, supposedly "sexy" looking speakers -- I give you their bass "cannon" as an example; evidently it doesn't fool theatre professionals. But they continue to sell to consumers who go for the sexy and who the marketing agencies find easy to catch with gimmicks and slogans. The only thing Bose hasn't done yet is stick the word DIGITAL on their products. At least not yet.
PS -- what did I do after I got rid of my 901 disasters? I did some research; I learned about bass coupling. I loved the KLH 6s so much, that I thought if two sounded so good, 8 would sound even better. I bought eight KLH 6s, four per channel and arranged them so the woofers coupled. The first thing I played thru them was Verdi's Requiem, the Dies Irae Sequence. I had my friends all gathered round to hear the new system for the first time. I cranked it up. Here come the kettle drum whacks....hold on to your gonads. Men sat there with their mouths opened in awe and amazement; women wept. What more could you possibly want from a sound system?! Oh, and as for moving air? I could get this system to blow out candles! How's THAT for a marketing campaign?
[ 10-29-2004, 07:24 AM: Message edited by: Frank Angel ]
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Steve Scott
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1300
From: Minneapolis, MN
Registered: Sep 2000
|
posted 10-25-2004 07:13 PM
They even have a Bose Store up here in the Mall of America (probably not the only location, though), where chumps will put down several thousand dollars thanks to the lack of any basis for comparison. When I worked at Best Buy, Bose was one of those products that couldn't be sold. They put in this really loud display for their Lifestyle system (it was so loud at the back of the store that the cashiers would complain :mad) and the only sales that it got used on were the ones where a "product specialist" from video would take a customer from listening to a 27" TV's speakers and show them the lifestyle system. They had the idea that people would love it so much that they'd apply for all the credit they could and have the thing installed. But the damn company never gave us any specs, never told us how the Lifestyle automatically calibrates itself (they just told us that it involved a set of headphones that 'pinged' the speakers).
The only people ever interested in Bose were those people that were already financial slaves to the brand or couldn't pronounce the name, but both groups assumed that Bose was the best brand for no apparent reason. The only sale I ever made on an Acoustimass system was to some guy who had absolutely no space for speakers. It was also the choice of a lot of the female customers (no sexism intended, that's just how it happened) because the speakers wouldn't interfere with their stuff already in the room or house in question. But usually the guys shopping with those ladies would hear the Bose systems, see the price, and go for floorstanding JBL's or Cerwin Vegas ![[thumbsup]](graemlins/thumbsup.gif) .
About the only speakers I condemned as much as Bose, yet still saw many get sold were these Jensen speakers that looked like house speakers from some redneck bar. They sounded god awful, but they went fast...
And just for fun, some of the mispronunciations...
Boss-ee
Boise
Boss
Bo-say
Boy-say
Booze... (yes, I actually heard these from customers, employees alike ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif) )
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
|
This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
Home
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
![[thumbsdown]](graemlins/thumbsdown.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic