Samg, I guess the first thing i should do is define the term i'm talking about. What Bose tries to pass itself off as is a Hi-Fi (as in High Fidelity)System.
Fidelity is the degree to which an electronic device (as a record player, radio, or television) accurately reproduces its effect (as sound or picture)
It is not. It does not reproduce music or movie sound accurately. How can you tell? Not in a best buy or Circuit Setup. You dont know what the source material is. You dont know how its being amped. Basically You are at their mercy as to what you are hearing and how it will sound in another (as in your) room. Even in the bose store, (if your ears can take the volume) You still listen to their material and their(behind the scenes) setup. In my shop, i have the setup where you can see it. Bring your own Cd's. (or Vinyl if you have it) and listen. I dont Crank the volume. (Classic sign of a bad salesman). I let my customers listen as long as they care too. (one guy spent 9, countem 9 hours listening to a pair of speakers). You will never get that in a bose or Circuit store. Whatever the case Bose is just not a Hi fi setup. When you listen to a Hi Fi system, It should sound as though you were at a live performance. Bose will never do that.

Just my 2 cents

P.s. Bose lifestyle system $3500.00

1 Energy Take 5.2 5 speakers w/ sub 699.00
1 Denon AVR 2803 Surround Rec 549.00
1 denon dvd 1600 349.00
Wiring and interconnects 150.00

Blows the Bose system away and leave $$$ in the pocket.

Bose "Better living Thru marketing"

emdawgz and phs... thank you.

That's the best job I've seen on explaining why bose sounds bad. Again, it's not that I'm necessarily "pro"-Bose, but I'm not "anti-"bose. Next time I go looking for speakers, I'm definately going to talk to some local custom installers and not limit myself to Best Buy/Circuit City. I've also now have some specific systems to listen to.

Thanks to all.
SamG

PS. My home theater is a 4 year old Sony "Theater-in-a-box" (receiver, sub, and 5 speakers) that I'm happy with. I don't do a lot of high end listening-- sat, off air tv, and dvd (usually Disney movies thanks to my 5 year old). Of course, I think the whole system cost less than most of the speakers you guys have suggested. :) I'm just waiting until my wife and I finish the basement and I can try and build a true home theater room.

Samg

Something to think about:

Due to acoustic coupling, when there are several sets of speakers in the same area (such as a dealer's showroom), the not-in-use speakers also move enough to, if not be outright audible, at least color (influence) the sound that is being played by the active speakers.

So, when you're listening to a pair (or more) of speakers, you're also hearing (at least the effects of) the other speakers in the room. A speaker selector that shorts the unused outputs does reduce this motion somewhat, like a dynamic brake, due to the back-EMF.

However, the most important thing to remember is that the speaker-room interface is probably the most audio-determinant of all; more than expensive interconnects, sound-isolation feet, power-line conditioners, etc.

Simply repositioning your speakers will have perhaps the greatest effect on the audio quality of your system. You must experiment. A system-in-a-box seems, at least to me, to be a "lazy" way to buy a system.

The point is that every speaker sounds different in every room. The ONLY way to know how a speaker will sound in your room is to listen to it in your room, period. That's why dealers who really care (and you know who you are) will allow in-your-home auditioning.

I got lucky. My speakers sound much better in my room than they did where I got them. Of course, I was familiar with them, and they have had a decent reputation for a while. (And I have plenty of power to push them.)

JMHO < - - - - (disclaimer)

Larry
www.fineelectricco.com
My system

BOSE
CRAP
POOP
S^&T
$11.99 (cost of replacement driver from motorola, your $3500.00 cubes)

Hello i guess im not welcome here

ILOVE BOSE...

Everyones welcome here... even cynical people like me.

Explain your love though...

Is it because you wear hearing aids??

Is it because you are a retail salesperson and have won one of the many wonderful contests Bose sponsors like free trips to the Pikes Peak Race where winners get to drive some $200,000.00 car on the track... or made thousands of dollars in spiffs?? (consumers beware that a lot of the money you spend on Bose pays for extravagance behind the scenes... hence the reason for the obvious retail push toward this product)

Is it because you work for Bose and are a beneficiary of the monies generated from fooling the public into thinking that the speakers sound good??

Or are you just one of the people who were fooled??

Anyway (see above note on cynicism), I'm just messing with you... to each their own... mines just not Bose.

In the 1990's I was invited to just another manufacturers new product launch or so i thought little did i know my life was about to be changed forever on that day.Mike Duck an ex Currys salesman and new Bose rep invited me to see the Bose new range of systems the first launch in the UK of the lifestyle systems.As the show started the Bose logo lit up and shined like the Disney logo on the big screen. Sound came from everywhere and the projectors flashed images. An american in a white suit prayed near a Bose bass module first blocking and unblocking the port to show the bass came from there and not the cubes.I woke up in Kansass muttering "theres no brand like Bose,theres no brand like Bose"
since then i pray three times a day towards The Mountain ,Frammington and do not believe that there are other brands of speakers .its just an evil lie against the one true brand and the prophet Amar G Bose (praise to him)

Ahh,

Just fooled...

Sounds more like brainwashed...

By the way, the "Bass" coming out of that port is actually a muddled together version of all frequencies from mid to high bass to low midrange (Yes, Toto, there is NO low bass in a Bose system...although, wouldn't it be fun to have enough money and time to sit around trying to create low bass from a 4" driver moving air through a colon). The vocals and other ranges are all attempting to come from a 1 1/2 inch driver which in most circles is known as a "tweeter" (and as AVDude found... not a good one at that).

I will say that an attitude like ILOVE BOSE's in the retail world will make him a lot of money!

SamG ... I went by BestBuy today to pick up some DVD's and just for the heck of it listened to some of the speakers they had ... Except for the KLH's they had, every other speaker sounded better than the Bose's ... IMHO

"Necessity Is Not The Mother Of Invention.
The light bulb wasn't invented because the world demanded light. For most people in the mid-1800s, gas lights and candles were sufficient tools to carve through the darkness. It was curiosity, not necessity, that led to the light bulb. And virtually every invention, innovation and revolutionary new idea has been born the same way.

The passion for discovery that has guided so many great minds, guides us at Bose. The products we create, and the technologies that spawn them, are the result of individuals looking for a better way, questioning the existing answers, staring at the light of a single flame and working to see beyond it. "

So says Bose so it must be true if you dont believe chant it until you do

"Yes, Toto, there is NO low bass in a Bose system...although,
wouldn't it be fun to have enough money and time
to sit around trying to create low bass from a 4" driver moving air through a colon"

LMAO.....RHM.....try my wife's red beans and rice sometime! You'll find out four things:

It's easy to create the same bass, using your own 4" driver (stomach) and colon (colon)

It's fun and tastes good (at least going down)

It's WAY cheaper (about $8.00 to make a pot big enough to feed 12 peaople)

It STILL sounds like s@#t!

he...he....he

"Conventional loudspeakers are large and inefficient. They require a big cabinet to re-create deep bass, and a large amplifier to play it loudly. Could there be a better way? This question led Dr. Amar Bose and a senior Bose research engineer, Dr. William R. Short, to analyze ways of transferring sound from a speaker to the air in a room. They discovered that by using the properties of a device called an "acoustic waveguide," a wide range of frequencies could be produced from a remarkably small enclosure.

The new technology developed by Drs. Bose and Short radically challenged the tenets of loudspeaker design that had existed for decades. Its effectiveness can be understood by comparison to other waveguide applications -- such as a pipe organ or a flute. An organ can fill a cathedral with sound using only a small amount of air. With only a thin breath from the musician, a flute can be heard throughout a concert hall. However, in these waveguide applications, only single notes are produced by each organ pipe or by keying on the flute. To produce many notes requires multiple pipes, or many keys.

The acoustic waveguide speaker technology developed by Drs. Bose and Short fills a room with sound covering a wide range of frequencies -- all from a single waveguide. This discovery is so revolutionary, it jointly won the two researchers the prestigious Inventor of the Year award from Intellectual Property Owners, Inc.

Acoustic waveguide speaker technology is the basis for radically new kinds of sound systems and loudspeakers, such as the phenomenally successful Bose Wave® radio. It is also the foundation of the popular Bose Acoustic Wave® music system, and the Bose Acoustic Wave® Cannon™ System II for professional sound applications. In each of these, a remarkable amount -- and quality -- of sound is delivered from small-size equipment. "

PRAISE BE TO Dr.William.R.Short for he has been in the presence of the blessed one.

Was that a fart or am I in the Bose labs testing room?

seriously though...

look into Anthony Gallo Acoustics @ www.roundsound.com or morel sound spots at http://www.morelhifi.com/

for small "cute" systems, these trounce the bose, and for fractions of the price...plus you can hook up a real surround receiver to them, and get real dolby digital, dts, etc.... out of them....

avdude
site admin
www.integrationpros.com

I just have to chime in on this one. I have never worked for Bose, have never sold Bose. However, I think that the company very carefully engineers it's products to PLEASE PEOPLE.

Some of that pleasure is the reflected sound, some of that pleasure is the tailored frequency response of the woofer, some of that pleasure is the delight that owners get from pointing out the tiny speakers are making all the sound. Some of the pleasure might come from the fact that "normal", "average" Bose owners don't listen loud. Bose systems incorporate active loudness compensation that EVERY OTHER manufacturer insists on making switchable. Thus only Bose sound rich at low volumes WITHOUT switching any tone controls. The EQ is switched completely out at louder volumes. This is just plain smart, IMHO.

Making jokes about the speaker company that sells more product than all the others combined is simply sour grapes. If Bose was publicly held (it's not) we could actually look up what percentage of money is spent on marketing. My bet is that they spend less in percentage terms than the rest of the industry. I think people buy Bose, because Bose does a good job at making them happy.

Bose products are manufactured with cheap parts, because Bose MASS PRODUCES them. Believe me, I could source anyone's tweeter overseas for a dollar or two in the quantities Bose builds. Criticizing a company that employs hundreds of engineers for engineering so well that replacement parts are cheap is "cheap talk". I have the product development experience to shut that one down fast!

The company's success has never been with audiophile's. Amar Bose was and probably still is, a maverick engineer who builds products that, whether you love 'em or hate 'em, look different, sound different and have a history of pleasing millions.

Audiophile's center themselves in the array of their speakers, listen loudly, fiendishly adjust eq, tone, speaker alignment etc. I know, because I am one. No Bose engineer would ever suppose that a "normal", "average" music lover would want to torture themselves this way. So they design systems that reflect much of the sound (anathema to THX and most audiophiles - not me, I own Magnepans) but effectively nulls placement problems, actively compensate for the Loudness compensation curve so that Bose owners don't have to fiddle with buttons on their remotes when listening to music and develops a reasonable volume when the song is good enough to crank up.

Those who would say that they want to save their customers from Bose are holy men on a holy crusade. And like all warriors of god, they will no doubt succeed with some.

However, I worry about the happiness of some of those they "save". Will they really enjoy the sweetspot of a set of audiophile xxx's? Will they really learn to switch from Dolby Pro Logic to Stereo? Will they learn to turn off the Loudness EQ when they listen loudly? So many rules for the non-Bose buyer...

Am I advocating that those of us who are not Bose dealers should give up and tell anyone who asks for Bose to go elsewhere?

No, I am not. I urge you to find out why your potential client likes Bose, and to respect a competitor who is very, very able. Don't criticize Bose for success, learn from it and learn how to specify systems that exceed the expectations of a Bose owner on his fifth Bose system.

I've done it with a dozen brands and you can too!

Best Regards,

-Eric

Eric Johnson
www.hometheaterpro.com

Phone 1-800-247-7001



This message was edited by Eric Johnson on 07/08/03 01:40.