Bose 901
" . . . during this presentation, they took a pair of bare electrical wire ( similar to what you would find on a coffee maker ) with an ac plug on one end, connected and plugged the 901’s into the ac outlet. They left the 901’s plugged in for 1 minute, with a sound, I will never forget. . . ." How long did it take to realize that they sounded best plugged into the wall? :-) :-) |
From a poster...... i miss my 901s life was so much simpler then Similar Products Used: altec vott,jbl l200b ,dahlquist dq10,magnepan mg3,acoustat,norman labs,allison,b&w,B&O,vandersteen 2c,ads,ar model 9,infinity kappa rs 9,infinity rs2b,plenty of others also and yes i have proof of all these speakers go to flickr look up angelzxr4ti@yahoo.com |
From a poster..... .. i miss my 901s life was so much simpler then Similar Products Used: altec vott,jbl l200b ,dahlquist dq10,magnepan mg3,acoustat,norman labs,allison,b&w,B&O,vandersteen 2c,ads,ar model 9,infinity kappa rs 9,infinity rs2b,plenty of others also and yes i have proof of all these speakers go to flickr look up angelzxr4ti@yahoo.com |
Terrible ? Really ? I am sure, many here, who are downplaying the 901s, never heard them, set up optimally, with upgraded cables, to and from the eq, with the proper ss amp, to drive them, and, did not know, or understand, what dynamics, and scale, meant, as someone above, spoke about, and things, the 901s, did / do, well. And, a wall of sound.....a stage, for orchestra, or a big band....absolutely.....Are they a compromising speaker ? Yes....what isn't ? Tell us, 901 haters, what speaker, have you heard, or, do you own, that does not, have compromises ? |
Putting the past into perspective, the 901's were not the most 'sophisticated' speakers I've owned, no. Steve59 is dead to rights as to Where We Were When....*G* In a 'not so large' space, set up with reasonable care (when you weren't 'twisted' beyond recognition *L*), and driven with Something that didn't turn to toast when 'cranked'.... They were just plain Fun.👍👌😜 A relatively reasonable place to Begin.....one's 'audio odyssey'... ...and here we are Now. ;) Happy Listening, to whatever strokes your neurons. *S* |
Reading all the posts so far, I’m struck by the level of vitriol some manage to work up, simply over a speaker that they personally happen to not care for. Perhaps the marketplace success of the 901 challenges their own notion that if what they like is right, everything (and everyone) else must be wrong. I think many audiophiles just prefer their "audiophile" sound sterile and hyper-detailed, rather than a sound that more closely resembles that of live music. Also, it’s amazing how much misinformation still remains about a product that was in production for 48 years or so. In the end, it’s really all subjective, anyway. Personally, I value a speaker that puts a smile on my face more highly than one that pushes all the audiophile buttons. |
Back in 1973 I had a choice used 901s with stands and a special wood base to bring the to ear level. Or JBL 100s.the Bose were $350 the JBLs $525 So I bought the Bose drove them with Sony Str 7065 rated at 70wpc and Technics Sl1350 with Shure v15 cart. I LOVED THEM,no trouble driving them ,16 " from the wall.Sounded great with all kinds of music from classical to ELP,to Michael Jackson. Afterwards I hooked them up to a bigger EQ.never had a problem with them.,There wrapped up and need all the speakers surrounds redone.I had 301s and 201s for surrounds on rear wall,were great surrounds set up. |
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jdmccall56 Now, my post was not vitriolic. If you will re-read it, I point out that we are STILL laughing. They were a riot! Someone posted a query as to what we might have heard that was better. Well, let's start with anything Magnepan made or makes for the best and then go down to pretty much any box speaker--maybe leave Cerwin-Vega out, but really, Radio Shack's old Minimus 7's are spectacular in comparison. No vitriol, just laughing at the success of marketing and incessant blather over reality. Kind of reminds me of today's politics, but we won't go there, OK? Cheers! |
@mrdecibel Sorry, not sure what you mean by "plugging speakers into an electrical outlet." Possibly you could provide more explanation with that. I am not good at guessing what that means. Minimus 7 was kind of a joke, but pretty much any hand-held transistor radio from 1960 sounds better than anything bose makes today or ever made, IMO. Sorry if you disagree, but that is what makes the world work and what brought customers to my shop back then. Cheers! |
I'm not calling anyone out personally for being vitriolic. That was just my overall takeaway from the thread: much vitriol among the naysayers. It's one thing to say you prefer one speaker to another or that it sounds better in your opinion. But it's then quite another to empirically state that "speaker a is better than speaker b". It begs the questions: With what amp, with what music, in what room...and better in what regard...and so on and so forth. Maggies are good speakers but they have glaring weaknesses, IMO. Bose 901's are also good speakers and have glaring weaknesses. But I can tolerate the 901's weaknesses much better than I can the Magnepan's. I prize dynamics, powerful bass and lower mids, effortlessness and unfettered sound -sound not tied to a speaker. The 901's give me lots of all these. Maggies, not so much. But really, with me it always comes down to the "big goofy grin" factor. Whatever speaker can put one on my face wins! Klipsch Cornwalls can do that and so can Bose 901's. |
richopp, if you do not understand plugging a speaker into an electrical outlet, instead of an output stage of an amplifier ( using an ac plug, instead of spades or banana plugs at the amp end ), I do not know what to tell you. Comparing an old transistor radio, and stating the superiority, of a properly set up, properly driven set of 901s, shows me a few things about you. I will not go into those details, as I do not want my post to be deleted by the Audiogon police. Enjoy ! |
Congrats to the winner of the most ridiculous unaudiophile reply. This is the dark side of our hobby From...rchop or something like that. 10:30pmThe most hilarious experience ever in my shop when I tried them. We laughed so hard I still remember it. Successful? Sure, at marketing and taking out really "cool" ads. These were the days of Hugh Hefner's TV show where pipes, smoking jackets, jazz on the stereo, and scantily-clad ladies discussing Heidegger and the politics of sex were successful, too. It was a period in time where the company, which continues its ways, presented itself as based on total science--I think they had guys in white coats in some of their print ads--to cover the ridiculous products they tried to sell. Never has there been a worse-sounding speaker MASQUERADING as a great scientific achievement. Well, I take that back. Some of today's charlatans charge infinitely more for their hoo-doo, and they get it just like bose did back then. Evidently, some of their stuff is once again popular for some reason. I would not waste any of my time seeking to hear anything they made back then or today. But hey, have at it if you wish. The world is a big place full of many people. Cheers--and still laughing! |
I have a pair of the final series with a pair of Foster external tweeters and Klipsch 12 inch subs. I’m driving them with monoblock VTA Amps and they sound pretty amazing. My previous set up was AR MGC’s with an SAE solid state amp. Yes I’m a child of the 70’s and early 80’s audio. I’m quite satisfied with my 901s. |
Back in 1982 I listened to 901 Series IV, I believe. Fun speakers! College dorm rooms. Mine were Boston Acoustics A70s. The 901s took up very little space, played to loud volumes, and did a nice job rendering detail without fatigue. Bass was tight, not boomy or overblown. AC/DC “Back In Black” was a favorite, from an Empire 2000Z cart. Billy Joel “Glass Houses” was fun. Michael Jackson “Off The Wall” and Thriller at loud volumes sounded pretty amazing! i wouldn’t mind having a pair today! Great bang for the buck, if you’re careful! I would not reform; I would use butyl rubber surrounds. |
I bought a new pair of Bose 901s back in 1972. I and many of my friends loved them. I bought Magnepan MGIIAs about ten years later. The Maggies became my main speakers, but I kept the 901s. The 901s did wonderfully as surround sound speakers in my first HT rig. The 901s are still playing in the basement party room at my son's house. |
bdp24 3-6-2020 Very true, Eric. In addition, the difference in time between the arrival at the listener's ears of the directly heard sound and the reflected sound is so vastly different in a concert hall vs. in a home listening room that the reflected sounds will be perceived entirely differently in the two cases. Best regards, -- Al |
Right. Which is a problem by the way, and not a plus. Picking a Bose apart by audiophile standards is shooting ducks in a barrel- and a frozen barrel at that. Anyone one week beyond audio-noob can see they’re all so flawed the biggest problem is where to start? So many flaws, so little time! Which it turns out is a feature, not a bug! Bose was never made for audiophiles. Bose was and is made for audiowives. The first and probably still only speaker company to go after the women in the market. Women don’t want anything to do with speakers that dominate a room, dictate where you sit, or any of that. So Bose made relatively small speakers on cute little stands and you could even put them behind a sofa because who cares, the sound is gonna bounce off the wall all the same in the end. In fact behind a sofa, drapes, whatever, so much the better as another design goal is a diffuse all over sound. That’s why later on when he got even better at it the speakers got even smaller, little cubes you hardly even see em, and with a sub that isn’t even really a sub because little 3"cubes don’t have bass heck they barely have midrange but that’s not the point, they disappear, that’s the point! Bose Wave radio, same thing, women love that warm bass heavy top end rolled off sound. Heck even a lot of guys do. Just not any real honest to goodness audiophile guys. Who Bose could not care less about- the big money is in the mass market. Which Bose is. Bose in other words is the Rolex of speakers. Everyone who knows very little knows they’re the best. Only those with real inside knowledge know the truth: far from it. Not even close. That’s when you know you have a really, really good marketing department. |
Amar Bose set out to make a speaker that reproduced the sound of an orchestra playing in a concert hall where the majority of the sound reaching the listener is reflected. When you hear acoustic music being played in a hall the pinpoint imaging many audiophiles get all goose bumpy over is nonexistent. I have only listened to them in loud rock and roll settings where they did ok but weren't amazing. I have a friend who is a concertgoer who maintains that a properly setup pair of 901's does indeed do a better job of simulating a concert hall than any other two channel experience. Surround recordings played on a multichannel system are superior, in creating the reverberant field, than any two channel system can come close to, thereby making the whole "direct/reflecting" thing irrelevant today. Dr. Bose has a Ph.D in electrical engineering,. He's not an idiot. I am not a huge fan of their tiny little home systems but have owned three cars with Bose engineered systems in them and they all sounded way better than the modest option price would suggest. |
One of the better hi-fi theorists (perhaps Peter Moncrieff in IAR) opined that the only way for the 901 to work as Dr. Bose intended was with a recording made in an anechoic chamber (or outdoors, I suppose). The sound captured by the recording mics would be only the direct sound of the instruments and voices, no reflections or room sound. Such a recording then played back on the 901 could at least have a chance of working, though as Al correctly points out, the arrival time of reflections off the walls and ceiling in a small listening room are much closer in time to the direct sound than are the reflections in a concert hall. J. Gordon Holt was of the opinion that the real answer was to capture the direct sound with one set of mics, the hall ambiance with another, the two on different sets of recorder channels. The direct sound channels would then be played back on the front loudspeakers, the ambiance channels on rear speakers. |
The Bose 901 does not satisfy audiophiles but it is one of the most successful speaker designs of all time and it is funny how the audiophile snobs hear who consider themselves objective experienced experts, authorities, and scholars fail to comprehend they’re own failure to accurately define, determine, and assess performance of the 901. |
Thanks for the link. Its right in line with what I've been saying! " J. Gordon Holt, founding editor of our high-end sister publication Stereophile, noted in a 1971 commentary that the 901 “produces a more realistic semblance of natural ambience than any other speaker system, but we would characterize it as unexceptional in all other respects.” My own mentor, Harry Pearson, Jr., told me in the early 1980s that he bought a pair of first-generation 901s after reading the positive reviews in the mainstream audio press and was so disappointed that it prompted him to found The Absolute Sound as an alternative voice." and "few factors beyond Bose’s own advertising contributed more to the speaker’s huge commercial success." The one guy who liked it was the tech obsessed Julian Hirsch, the man who ruined Stereo Review (and countless budding audiophiles) with his incessant measurement uber alles dogma. Yes Julian Hirsch, the man who thinks all wire is the same so long as its thick enough. Time has not been kind to his views. Stereo Review, RIP. Even though he loved it, he still had to admit: "Electrically, the Bose 901 is rather inefficient, and the 18 dB of bass boost supplied by the equalizer requires huge reserves of amplifier power if loud low-frequency passages are to be played. To a lesser degree, the same problem exists at the very high frequencies." So its equalized to the max, and yet we're supposed to believe "The active equalizer introduces no perceptible distortion." He then goes on to measure its distortion. Right. J. Gordon Holt founded Stereophile on the idea of listening as the ultimate performance criteria. Harry Pearson advanced that ball even further down the field. Neither of them was a fan. To say the least. The one most famous writer to actually like them is also the one whose professional position, which he pushed month after month his whole career, was that listening doesn't really count for all that much. |
