BOSE = box only sound extra

[Dirk Diggler]

Lets come up with the best acronym for BOSE.

Here is my attempt.

Boxy old ****ty engineering

[deacongreg]

Andrew, I do have to say I agree with you to a degree. However, I do also agree with Silver Supra as well. While in high school, during my Stereo Review and High Fidelity reading days, I went to the Stereo Hi - Fi Show at the Statler Hilton Hotel. It was my first hi-fi show and the first time I heard those awesome AKG 1000 headphones!! (ear speakers really !!) I signed up for a contest. 2 months later I got a call from Bose saying I was the winner of a pair of BOSE 901 Series IV speakers. Anyone familiar with BOSE will know that this was there radical direct - reflecting flagship model. Needing proper placement for them to work optimallyfrom the back and side walls, this certainly was not a speaker that lent itself to the WAF. Not at all.

I still see the professional models still, at shows and concerts. Well, once set up, and with only 50 watts per channel coming from my Lafayette receiver (now Circuit City for you young ones), the sound was loud, expansive, soundstage was very good, and the speakers seemed to be able to take as much power as they wanted. I borrowed a Phase Linear 700 amp (300 watts X 2), and I could not believe how much sound they produced.

Where they the best, no. But I still think the design was interesting for what they where. I sold Bose in my early retail days along with the likes of Pioneer, Technics, Advent, Infinity (Arnie Nudell was there at this time), Boston Acoustics, Polk Audio, SAE, etc. And while Infinity and Advent were the class at that time where I was, Bose held its own pretty well.
And Andrew is right, we could not move on the pricing ever, and their were spiffs for the salespeople.
But why do we keep hating BOSE. There are some other companies I could mention right now whose speakers and receivers I felt at that time were even worse. And got good reviews. But from my experience, did not warrant a mention of their stuff. Maybe if someone in the high end industry followed there model, things would be better.
So, give BOSE a break. Like i said, there is worse stuff out there. Believe me!!

[Silver Supra]

I guess I don't understand the joy that people seem to get by trashing their products.

I've heard lots more expensive "highly regarded" equipment that sounded like **** to me.

When those manufacturers are discussed we hear things like "to each his own" and "everyone hears things differently". However BOSE is never given this same
type of out.

I'm not saying I like their equipment, nor would I buy any of it - but to create a thread
simply to start a bashing session seems like a waste of bandwidth to me.

Flame away.

[deacongreg]

I hear you. Its always been that way for as long as I`ve been into the high end. When I sold the main stream, or what is called the mass market gear, Pioneer, Sansui, JVC, Technics, Sherwood, Onkyo (yes), Sony, Aiwa, Bose was considered good stuff.

Its almost like there is a cloud people want to put on them. But you know what, it has not at all stopped them from moving forward. If they ever put their R + D department to produce a high end speaker, and it was good, I wonder what the talk would be then??

[MoosePond]

Originally Posted by Silver Supra

I guess I don't understand the joy that people seem to get by trashing their products.

I've heard lots more expensive "highly regarded" equipment that sounded like **** to me.

When those manufacturers are discussed we hear things like "to each his own" and "everyone hears things differently". However BOSE is never given this same
type of out.

I'm not saying I like their equipment, nor would I buy any of it - but to create a thread
simply to start a bashing session seems like a waste of bandwidth to me.

Flame away.

While I'd be one of the last to defend Bose based on their sonic accuracy or innovations, I'd have to agree with some others here that much of the bashing that they take is definitely over the edge and undeserved. Do they now (or have they ever) produced the most accurate loudspeakers in the world? Absolutely not. However, what they have accomplished is nearly 40 years of producing products that lots and lots of people buy (as evidenced by their $2 billion in annual sales - not bad for a privately-held company!) that, for the most part, are well-built and reliable (I believe that their field failure rate for their entire history is still somewhere down near 1%) as they instituted AQL quality assurance testing very early in their history. They've always spent a larger portion of their gross revenue on advertising and promotion than probably anyone else in the industry (something like 15%) and that has been a significant contributor to their success.

DISCLAIMER: I worked for Bose in the early 70s, both as a charter member of their outside sales team and, before that, as their first dealer outside of the US (as GM of an audio club in Germany).

[Robinson_A]

I think people get off on trashing Bose because they've made themselves easy targets. Like Tom Cruise, the second you say anything negative about them, at least in print, they sue you. At least that's what they've done in the past. They sued Consumer Reports some years ago over one of their reviews, which basically said that the claims made by Bose in their marketing were inflated and not in line with the product's actual performance, and so Bose took them to court and won.

From an editorial stand point Bose set a legal precedent that a writer or publication is NOT always entitled to their opinion which is quite dangerous. I've been told on more than one occasion to either not run a review or to change it because the manufacturer thought that I was wrong. We're not talking about a factual error here, we're talking about my opinion, in my room, using my gear. Obviously I didn't change a lick of my review and a lot of people were upset. It didn't come to any legal issues but still, to be told what to write by the manufacturer is over the line.

This is why I do not like Bose. But I have to agree, you can throw other brands into the mix as well.