It's too bad that Bose sound systems are terrible for almost every type of music that I like... It's almost like they forgot that there is an entire range of frequencies between the 'highs' and the 'lows.' ( Try the U2 album Zooropa on a Bose system - is Bono even on the record anymore? )
I thought I was the only one that had noticed this until I saw some genius in San Francisco with a bumper sticker that lambasted Bose for this.
Here's to you, Mr. Anti-Bose bumper-sticker-man. Slick marketing and exorbitant pricing haven't hoodwinked everyone.
Yeah, I hear you---They're muddy sounding in general. But the tech is pretty awesome--imagine flat panels with real surround sound. OTOH, the LCD? Who knows. And the case design is awful, considering the price point.
It's because they basically are just using a loudness EQ, and the rest can be chalked up to clever (and rigid) marketing. For example: try to walk into Best Buy and have them let you A/B test Bose speakers.
It seems like it's really popular to bash Bose, and I wonder why. I'm not an audiophile, and I think most of the systems I've heard sound good. Is it something that only those who really know what to listen for hear?
I think it's funny that one comment on this post says that Bose "forgot that there is an entire range of frequencies between the 'highs' and the 'lows'" and another one that says "No highs, no lows, must be Bose." How can both be true?
In my experience with Bose, they make great sounding equipment for the average user and they do this by making bass more prominent than it should be to "fool" users into thinking it's good. It's still better than a lot of stuff, and the size and tech innovations like the 3-2-1 system give it a cool factor as well. For the money, though, you can get a much better setup; but then again, being a seasoned sound man for local musicians as well as spending lots of time engineering audio, I'm a bit biased as to what good sound is.
Well in this instance, with the new TV, the high price is just there to balance the research costs and low amount of production. As they start to leverage the new technology and churn out more of these, the Bose TV (and others using these new techs) pricing should come down.
Bose does not strive to produce an accurate sound, they produce a unique sound, plus they have a marketing team that is probably second only to Apple.
Through careful marketing, Bose produces a product that is coveted by the semi-affluent consumer who also wants to signal to themselves and their friends 'I have arrived'.
Most people have never heard an accurate sound system, eg: a professionally engineered room. But they DO know that their plastic Akai system is NOT the pinnacle of sound. So, you get your first big signing bonus or job promotion and a new house. You've got a little disposable income and want to splurge a little. In comes Bose and their little magic speakers. You bring the system home, set it up, and the sound is RADICALLY different from anything you've heard before. It's way different than your little Akai system, and it seems as if the sound is careening off the walls (eq'ing towards the higher freqs, plus mutli directional speakers to achieve some reflections). This is WAY different( plus it wasn't cheap) therefore it MUST be good.
I have some background in audio (both in home theater and in sound studios). 'Good' sound can be somewhat in the ear of the listener, much like art can be in the eye of the beholder. And, not everybody wants Accurate, some people just want to put on a CD of their favorite artist and hear the sound in a way they didn't expect to, and Bose delivers that experience for people.
> I think it's funny that one comment on this post says that Bose "forgot that there is an entire range of frequencies between the 'highs' and the 'lows'" and another one that says "No highs, no lows, must be Bose." How can both be true?
Have a look at the frequency response graphs and associated comments here. Both statements turn out to be true.
Just when the prices of LCDs are dropping everyday, how can someone have audacity to sell something for 5K+? Granted they dont have 'bose' sound system but a Samsung TV + Bose speaker combo is lot cheaper.
I spent a couple years hanging out/mostly lurking on a speaker design mailing list, learning the basics of designing a decent speaker. Early on, I had wanted a Bose system after hearing them at a department store. The sound just had a pop to it that I liked, compared to some of the larger speaker/receiver systems that were often cheaper. So I thought to myself, "You're paying because they pack all that sound into those tiny speakers." But I was wrong, well sort of.
The Bose cube speaker/bass module combo is designed to play well into a large open space. For this it has to be loud, especially the bass, because it is more omnidirectional. On the other hand the treble has to overcome the background noise at a large store, where the detailed highest frequencies are likely to be obscured anyway. This is two strikes against spending manufacturing dollars towards reproducing higher frequencies. Unlike bass, treble above 10Khz falls of sharply when you get 30 degrees or so outside the field, which takes away from the "room filling" aspect. By doubling the volume (+10db) of the mid-high frequencies around 7Khz, you'll start sounding like you have a lot more punch and fill than the neighboring system designed for a normal quiet room.
Creating loud bass in an open space without upping the costs requires a similar compromise, but for different reasons. Playing a 30hz signal at X decibels requires a far heavier and more expensive amp than one that just needs to play down to than 80hz. 30hz also requires a much larger diameter speaker and/or a motor with a bulky magnet to play sufficiently loud. This, by Bose standards, would be a kludge - not the small, sleek, and sexy it markets. Woofers naturally have a peak resonance, typically from 25-80hz, and manufacturers usually try to dampen this with expensive stuff. Things like stiff cone materials instead of low quality paper, surrounds that effectively spring the cone back to center, and a heavy frame/basket. The Accoustimass bass module embraces a low cost design that produces lots of resonance around 80z so it can play loud at the expense of accuracy and frequency range. It sounds punchy but it can't recover from reverberating from one moment to articulate the next, so everything just sounds like it is booming close 80hz.
After building a couple speaker sets and trying various brands over the last 10+ years, I've found that it is always possible to buy a much better system than Bose for half the cost, sometimes less. I'd be willing to bet most people would reject the Bose in test between it and carefully selected components costing the same, and set up in a normal room. If your considering spending Bose kind of money look into subwoofers from HSU Research. It is not strange to spend half as much on the subwoofer as the remaining speakers combined, or even more. A cheap sub sticks out like a sore thumb, it should fill in and add depth to all the other speakers output, not just boom. Piano and deep voices benefit greatly without sounding muddled, definitely not things you think of normally as going boom.
For the surround speakers, if you want something smaller, the Klipsch Cinema-6 are a good bet. Paradigm speakers are expensive but sound light years ahead of anything Bose has ever made, and most people will never feel the urge to upgrade again with these. To amplify and tie everything together, a $400 or $500 Denon receiver provides some of the best bang for the buck in terms of clean amplification and a slightly better DSP chip than the competition, check out Model # AVR-1611 OR AVR-1911. The DSP setup uses a microphone to auto-calibrate the system to your room, and it works pretty darn well. If you want to get everything in a box for around a $1000, look into the Onkyo S9300-THX, which handily beat a $2000+ Bose system.
Finally, about this latest Bose system that uses an array of speakers with nanosecond timing to beam sound. Other companies like Yamaha have had similar products with many speakers attached to a single bar, that goes above or below the TV, for about $1000 ...
17 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 43.5 ms ] threadI thought I was the only one that had noticed this until I saw some genius in San Francisco with a bumper sticker that lambasted Bose for this.
Here's to you, Mr. Anti-Bose bumper-sticker-man. Slick marketing and exorbitant pricing haven't hoodwinked everyone.
"Bose Corporation (pronounced /ˈboʊz/)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose_Corporation
I think it's funny that one comment on this post says that Bose "forgot that there is an entire range of frequencies between the 'highs' and the 'lows'" and another one that says "No highs, no lows, must be Bose." How can both be true?
This is the key point.
In this case, "For the money" = $5,349 (yikes!)
Through careful marketing, Bose produces a product that is coveted by the semi-affluent consumer who also wants to signal to themselves and their friends 'I have arrived'.
Most people have never heard an accurate sound system, eg: a professionally engineered room. But they DO know that their plastic Akai system is NOT the pinnacle of sound. So, you get your first big signing bonus or job promotion and a new house. You've got a little disposable income and want to splurge a little. In comes Bose and their little magic speakers. You bring the system home, set it up, and the sound is RADICALLY different from anything you've heard before. It's way different than your little Akai system, and it seems as if the sound is careening off the walls (eq'ing towards the higher freqs, plus mutli directional speakers to achieve some reflections). This is WAY different( plus it wasn't cheap) therefore it MUST be good.
I have some background in audio (both in home theater and in sound studios). 'Good' sound can be somewhat in the ear of the listener, much like art can be in the eye of the beholder. And, not everybody wants Accurate, some people just want to put on a CD of their favorite artist and hear the sound in a way they didn't expect to, and Bose delivers that experience for people.
Have a look at the frequency response graphs and associated comments here. Both statements turn out to be true.
http://www.intellexual.net/bose.html
The Bose cube speaker/bass module combo is designed to play well into a large open space. For this it has to be loud, especially the bass, because it is more omnidirectional. On the other hand the treble has to overcome the background noise at a large store, where the detailed highest frequencies are likely to be obscured anyway. This is two strikes against spending manufacturing dollars towards reproducing higher frequencies. Unlike bass, treble above 10Khz falls of sharply when you get 30 degrees or so outside the field, which takes away from the "room filling" aspect. By doubling the volume (+10db) of the mid-high frequencies around 7Khz, you'll start sounding like you have a lot more punch and fill than the neighboring system designed for a normal quiet room.
Creating loud bass in an open space without upping the costs requires a similar compromise, but for different reasons. Playing a 30hz signal at X decibels requires a far heavier and more expensive amp than one that just needs to play down to than 80hz. 30hz also requires a much larger diameter speaker and/or a motor with a bulky magnet to play sufficiently loud. This, by Bose standards, would be a kludge - not the small, sleek, and sexy it markets. Woofers naturally have a peak resonance, typically from 25-80hz, and manufacturers usually try to dampen this with expensive stuff. Things like stiff cone materials instead of low quality paper, surrounds that effectively spring the cone back to center, and a heavy frame/basket. The Accoustimass bass module embraces a low cost design that produces lots of resonance around 80z so it can play loud at the expense of accuracy and frequency range. It sounds punchy but it can't recover from reverberating from one moment to articulate the next, so everything just sounds like it is booming close 80hz.
After building a couple speaker sets and trying various brands over the last 10+ years, I've found that it is always possible to buy a much better system than Bose for half the cost, sometimes less. I'd be willing to bet most people would reject the Bose in test between it and carefully selected components costing the same, and set up in a normal room. If your considering spending Bose kind of money look into subwoofers from HSU Research. It is not strange to spend half as much on the subwoofer as the remaining speakers combined, or even more. A cheap sub sticks out like a sore thumb, it should fill in and add depth to all the other speakers output, not just boom. Piano and deep voices benefit greatly without sounding muddled, definitely not things you think of normally as going boom.
For the surround speakers, if you want something smaller, the Klipsch Cinema-6 are a good bet. Paradigm speakers are expensive but sound light years ahead of anything Bose has ever made, and most people will never feel the urge to upgrade again with these. To amplify and tie everything together, a $400 or $500 Denon receiver provides some of the best bang for the buck in terms of clean amplification and a slightly better DSP chip than the competition, check out Model # AVR-1611 OR AVR-1911. The DSP setup uses a microphone to auto-calibrate the system to your room, and it works pretty darn well. If you want to get everything in a box for around a $1000, look into the Onkyo S9300-THX, which handily beat a $2000+ Bose system.
Finally, about this latest Bose system that uses an array of speakers with nanosecond timing to beam sound. Other companies like Yamaha have had similar products with many speakers attached to a single bar, that goes above or below the TV, for about $1000 ...