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RE: Bose 901 review?!

I'd posted in the Speaker section about my surprise that anyone would give the Bose 901 a fair-minded review. The audiophile community made up its collective mind forty years ago about this company and its flagship speaker. Not much seems to have changed since.

It seems the audio-buying public may have a more open mind, unencumbered by lab results and tech measurements and narrow convictions about what ought to happen when current is applied to a cone. They get dismissed as ignorant consumers. Is that necessarily so?

Bose got me started down the path of direct-reflected sound in the 1970s as a broke college student. I happen to like radiant sound or whatever you call it. In the 1990s I got some DefTech dipoles. Earlier this year I got a pair of Magnepan 3.6Rs. They're spectacular. But I would never have thought about them but for Bose.

From the sublime to the ridiculous: I still have the Bose Full Stack as my "B" system. Early-80s 601s stacked on top of early-70s 501s. They sound pretty great, actually. I've had many friends - civilians, not hi-fi geeks like us - say, 'those sound pretty good. What are they?'

I'd like to think I've got decent ears and taste. I've heard 901s properly set up and driven, and they're pretty compelling too. But then I read on various boards that "They cannot possibly work properly because of [techno-blah blah]." Well, bumblebees and hummingbirds can't fly, either, according to aerospace engineers who have studied their mechanics.

I've got the Audiophile-Approved Big Important Speakers now. I still like to listen to the Full Stack for something different. It's like hearing the voice of an old friend. Sometimes it's more relaxing to turn off all the competitive voices and just enjoy the sound. Apparently I'm not supposed to like them very much.

Look, I get it about some/ many Bose products. The cube/satellite system sounds (to me) like bees buzzing in the ceiling while a boom-truck idles out in the driveway. The Wave radio sounds surprisingly full and deep for a clock radio, but its pricetag gives me pause. It's definitely a marketing-driven lifestyle company. But people like their stuff.

And they do produce some speakers that can work really well, and that some fairly serious listeners like. Tastes differ. It's just strange and disconcerting to me that Bose 901s get the reaction they get from the sniffy crowd, forty years after their introduction. If they weren't any good, they would have gone out of production. No amount of marketing can salvage a turkey of a product for forty years. And I think that's what really makes the audiophile crowd nuts - that it still sells. Now, why is that?

=K

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  Kimber Kable  

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