Bose?? I just threw up a little in my mouth. :) It's funny as a hifi salesman, I get people of all sorts comming in to listen. One moment sticks out in my mind. We had a $15,000 pair of class A uberspeakers on display for demo hooked up with reference level electronics, and a customer came in with his girlfriend and listened to them. Without flinching he got up and said with a proud and slightly arrogant flair, "I'm more of a Bose kind of guy". I think it was to look good in front of his girlfriend thinking that he had the inside track on what true hifi was all about, and that he was more of a connesueir of fine high end products. We laughed for quite some time after he left.
It is amazing to me how good of a job Bose has done on advertising. They could tell people the sky was actually red, and I think a large percentage of people would believe it! The 901's were the only O.K. speaker that Bose made. In their time they were decent I suppose (not now), but most peoples ideas of Bose are the acoustimass 2" paper woofered little cubes that they now sell like double cheesburgers from McDonalds. It all comes from how much have you been exposed to, and how far have you really gotten into it. People come in all the time and ask for Bose, but it is only because they don't know any better. They've been baraged with commercials so much telling them that Bose is the best, that they just end up believing them. It's our job to educate them.
P.S. I have spoke with a Bose engineer at an audio convention. He said his major design constraint when engineering the Bose cubes was how to get decent sound pressure for a $4 manufacturing cost. $4!!! How did you think they got that huge advertising budget?
