Those bose speakers in the music section of Best Buy...

Just when you think they can't sell any more snake oil....

 

Yikes, that takes away my job

Ha, I dont think so!!

If you have a good live sound engineer (ahem, like moi), that comunicates with you, your vision will make it from your instrument to the audience.

With that Bose thing, you will be lucky if 1/1000th of your vision reaches the front row!!

 

I did not know how old is this thread. The last post was almost six months old when I posted.

And yes, I posted simply to show my frustrations at Bose.

 

I am the Soundman/MC for a Frank Sinatra/Neil Diamond tribute show next Wednesday and the Neil Diamond guy told me about that Bose thingamajig at the rehearsal. I just told him politely that I generally don't care for Bose equipment. Thanks for the link, now I know what he was referring to. Surely those things must feedback like crazy (for one thing) despite claims to the contrary on the site. They say the frequency response is only up to 'about' 15,000 kHz. $2000 US each too (average - they have three types)...sheesh.

 

At my local BB, the car audio section of the store drowns out the rest of the store with thumping bass, making it impossible to audition anything else in the store. I only go in to buy music or DVD's and then I leave promptly, it is a very unpleasant place to shop.

 

If anyone wants to check out that HSU Ventriloquist sub/sat system mentioned earlier in this thread, CompUSA sells it. I've only heard it in stereo mode but it sounded quite good for a tiny system like that.

BTW: Don't forget CompUSA has an entire A/V section now. Among the audio brands, they sell Onkyo, Harmon/Kardon and Sony receivers. And Infinity, JBL and Wharfedale speakers along with the HSU system and one separate HSU subwoofer.

Speaking of speaker sizes: someone over at the HTF said he was looking at buying some JBL E30s for a Pioneer VSX-1014 receiver (a rather powerful model) but wasn't sure about owning such large speakers. Large? A bookshelf with a 6.5" woofer?? Damn I must be getting old! (this is what I consider to be a large speaker: Boston A100)

 

Well Ed, I won't close this thread (sorry), but I CAN recommend an alternative.

I stopped my brother from getting a Bose Satellite system at BB just in the nick of time. It was the same old story:

Wife did not want "big speakers" in the living room
"Bose" to him meant "awesome, the best"
He thought they sounded great

Anyway, I took him over to a real audio store, and for the money, he got these:

http://www.definitivetech.com/loudspeakers/procinema/procinema.html

Granted, they are not for everybody, but the sound damn good for the price and size, and at least they sound good with MUSIC!!!! (Not ust HT)

 

We'll survive your dark decision, Jon...

He should get down on his knees and thank you sometime...

I've a friend in town who's been running an audio store for over 30 years...he has some fairly lively and potent 'small speakers'....not something you'd necessarily want for yourself, but in a pinch or small space(like an apartment)will do the job better than any of that crap Bose tries to sell everyone.

Still wish the CEO of Bose would lurk here and get so pissed he'd have to register and post just to defend that company's absurd nonsense they try to sell as 'great sound'.....what sucks, as Scott has pointed out, is that their marketing BS has been working only too well. To each their own.....

 

Can you imagine the shrieking feedback that would come out of those, being behind everybody rather than being in front, once they try to give it some volume?

"Now your band can sound just as bad as your 901 or Acoustimass equipped home system!"

 

Yuck!!

If you want it to sound like the speakers are behind the performer, use delay!!! Now there's a concept!!! Time alignment is a powerful tool! I recently worked on a show where we mixed live in 8.3 multichannel. Using delay, we changed the shape of our room, and re created Jazz at The Pawn Shop, exactly.

But who cares what I say, I aint no engineer, I are a roadie!

 

Bose knows how to make excellent speakers. From time to time they have even marketed some to the professional and consumer markets. But they really excel at marketing fair to poor products at high, "price fixed" prices. Of the hundreds of decent speaker companies to appear in the market over the past 35 years they are one of the few to survive. AR is Gone. Advent is gone. Dahlquist is gone. Allison is gone. KLH is gone. Yet the Bose everyone loves to hate is here to stay. Look for their automobile suspension system at your dealer any year now. (I kid you not).

Richard.

 

Are their traditional cabinet speakers as bad as the Acoustamess units?

 

I've only heard a couple. The 301 wasn't too bad of a bookshelf speaker--really not much different than any other average woofer/tweeter system. (At least it had midrange.)

But IMHO, the 901 (their flagship model for years) seemed a bit odd since it used nine smaller full-range drivers, EQed, to make a full-range system. And eight of them pointed to the rear. I remember when those were the pride of some of the audio salons around here. They just never sounded all that great to my ears.

 

They pretty much range from mediocre to downright horrendous. The 901 series I was pretty good in its day but that was a long time ago.

 

Thanks, the ones I have are not the 901 style (wedge shaped with drivers pointing to the rear, &c.). They are another model line called 'Interaudio' by BOSE and have a traditional box cabinet with 6" woofer and about a 3" tweeter. A friend brought his set of small Paradigms over and we A/Bd the two sets and the BOSE were quite a bit muddier, almost as if some of the midrange was missing. I bought them back in '89 and they served me well, but methinks they are the weak link in the system now.

 

901s

I used to have a pair of 901's. Set up properly, they sounded incredible.

 

I really like the Athena Speakers. I thinks the asb2 are great and very cheap too. The center channel is awesome too. But the athena sub is Lame. Jbl is a great sub.

 

Bose, KLH, SONY, Pioneer, POLK, Klipsch...none of that matters at Best Buy. I agree, the Bose speakers are a testament to quality marketing overshadowing reality. The sound is something to ponder rather than enjoy. However, no matter what speakers they would be using, my real problem with BB and the overhead music, is the volume it is played at. Two of our local BB stores play the music so very loud that it is literally difficult to carry on a conversation while in the music department. This is so bad that I will not go to BB anymore unless I CAN NOT find what want elsewhere. Having the music playing is a good idea, and does enhance the stores atmosphere, only when played as backround music...not front line attack music.

 

Audio Advisor had them on sale a few months ago...would have been a good surround system for me if I'd had the $$$.