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Boys to Bose

Snake Doctor

Active Member
There is an interesting article in the April issue of Sound & Vision about the Bose system. I was first introduced to Bose several years ago at a Bose store, they had a theater set up where they played a short movie with sound coming from all directions, and deep booming bass something like I had never experienced. There were these large speakers high on dark walls, the experience was amazing.

When the show was over a salesman came up front and talked about the great sound from Bose speakers as they continued to play, then (I am sure) at a give point, WA-La he removed the large looking speakers (they were dummies covering) these small unobtrusive speakers with a large sound and then uncovered the subwoofer, everyone was in awe. I would have bought the whole setup on the spot, but I was a poor boy and couldn't afford diddly.

Looking back that is when I started looking into sound, good sound, better sound. When I listen to them at one of the stores sometimes I wonder if I would have been as well off getting those Bose speakers and saving all of the time and money I have spent since. The answer has always been nope. But, if I found myself in a situation where I couldn't have and enjoy the system I have now, I think I would go there. In my humble opinion they beat the hell out of a sound bar. But, that is me.

How about you?
 
Just no.

Two issues, not deep bass and extreme dynamic compression are classic failures of their small cube style designs.
 
However, there are some amazing small systems out there from folk like kef, klipsch, paradigm and others which are fairly nice for their size.
 
There's always been speakers/components which try to be unnoticed in the living room, and sound bars are the latest thing to try to do that. They are fine for people who just want fairly reasonable sound quality, and I can see why someone wouldn't want to muck up their living space with more traditional audio/video stuff, since frankly a lot of it is generically ugly.
 
Absolutely not! Even if Bose made decent HT products for the exorbitant prices they ask, their proprietary connections and underwhelming feature set are severely limiting compared to the systems most of us on this forum enjoy.
 

This is one of two reasons there is no real dynamics from a Bose acoustimas system. They have lightbulbs in series with the drivers which convert the voltage into light and heat rather than pass it to the speaker drivers. This is a passive compressor / soft-limiter circuit, so the cones of the speakers won't get the power from the amp and it is dynamic, so as the power increases, more of it goes into the lightbulb. It is a neat trick to protect a speaker because it isn't violently apparent in the acoustic output and unlike fuses or circuit breakers, they don't completely cut out the sound when the voltage gets too high. But, they also make true fidelity impossible to achieve. Basically, once you get to a certain volume level in the room, it won't get any louder - and given that those tiny woofers and full-range drivers only handle about 10W to 45W, that means the max SPL in the room is significantly limited.

The other reason there are no dynamics in a normal sized room is the fact the speakers are so tiny and handle so little power.
 
I will also add, the demo you heard was, indeed, very impressive. They actually custom engineered the recording to sound good over their speakers in the room layout exactly as you saw it. They had hundreds of demo rooms around the world setup exactly the same, same size, same shape, same speaker placements, same speakers. Then they had some recordings made which sounded amazing over that setup and demoed them to potential customers - of course you were impressed.

If you had the ability to steal those recordings and play them over an incredible top-notch high end system setup perfectly in a perfect room you'd realize how severely tricked out the recordings were. They don't have any deep bass, they are equalized to sound great on the Bose speakers (but pretty bad on good speakers) and the dynamics are not nearly as punchy as they seemed on the demo system.

Also, some recordings are capable of seeming very impressive on nearly any set of speakers in any environment. Take Supertramp's "Cannonball" from the album Brother Where You Bound. At moderately high levels, that recording sound pretty darn amazing on damn near any speaker setup you can find, even a small Bluetooth speaker sounds pretty good with that recording. But, it doesn't get better and better as you play in better and better speakers. At a certain point, it starts seeming to sound worse the better speakers you play it over because it doesn't really have deep bass and the midrange is kinda sucked out. Even the dynamics are not as impressive on the perfect system as they are on small affordable systems.

So, be weary of the demo from a factory store.
 
I will also add, the demo you heard was, indeed, very impressive. They actually custom engineered the recording to sound good over their speakers in the room layout exactly as you saw it. They had hundreds of demo rooms around the world setup exactly the same, same size, same shape, same speaker placements, same speakers. Then they had some recordings made which sounded amazing over that setup and demoed them to potential customers - of course you were impressed.

Oh, I agree after I started reading and listening to better speakers, I stumbled on another store and theater. Flint you are 100% corrrect, it was the exact same set up with the same, speakers all in the same place, the sound was the same.....interesting. Kind of like watching a magician and knowing something is going on that you are not aware of.

That being said, I have to give those performances credit they started my path on to looking, listening, questioning and of course purchasing.
 
Take Supertramp's "Cannonball" from the album Brother Where You Bound.
Say that again, only with your best Henny Youngman impersonation.

For me, Supertramp ended when Roger Hodgson left; and ...Famous Last Words... - were exactly that!

Jeff
 
Say that again, only with your best Henny Youngman impersonation.

For me, Supertramp ended when Roger Hodgson left; and ...Famous Last Words... - were exactly that!

Jeff

I didn't say the music was great, I said the recording sounded great.
 
About 4 years ago I went to one of these Bose HT demo rooms, at an expensive mall in a Chicago suburb. I listened for a good while, trying to listen to what flaws I could find. First the surrounds, sound comes at you from various directions but it is diffuse not distinct. Second the bass is very one note and not deep like right around 50hz max. Third and the biggest fault by far, was when the movie got a lot of intense action. Coming mostly from the center channel, at a certain volume the center channel just seemed to give up the ghost. No harsh noises came out, it just seemed like the sound effects went into a black hole.

I mentioned it to one of the sales people when I came out, he just kinda nodded his head and didn't say anything. I think they are trained not to disagree with customers.

On the other hand if I knew nothing about audio/HT and my only basis for judging was the crappy speakers in my TV or a soundbar. I would probably think it was the best thing since sliced bread.
 
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