 
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
|
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
24.149.197.165
In Reply to: If you want to call thin and brittle, excessive treble energy, grainy midrange and artificial bass "right"...then posted by RGA on August 11, 2006 at 20:45:00:
When was the last time you had your hearing checked by an audiometrist? My was flat to 10khz, the limit of the test.BTW, I met your Guru and he told me he regularly attends live rock concerts. He took his son to the Bolshoi only four days after going to one. At the time he said it, it made me wonder if his ears had stopped ringing by the time he'd gone to the ballet. Would you buy equipment from someone who abuses his hearing so badly on a regular basis? I wouldn't....especially now that I've had a chance to hear it for myself.
I'm not particularly fond of the muffled slightly muted sound I hear from most tube amplifiers. I don't call that warm and musical, I call it distorted.
Follow Ups:
Dear Soundmind,Mine is flat till past 15kHz and I can still hear 19kHz, because I have always worn strong hearing protection when I go to live Rock concerts, and in any case it is not the frequency range of your hearing that determines whether you can hear the difference or appreciate better against worse, it is something more complex in our sensory system.
Let me tell you a small anecdote, when I was still in sunny Denmark running my shop there, I used to have a customer who was about 80 years old, he was a former first cellist from the main Danish symphony orchestra.
He has long since passed away, but he was very hard of hearing and wore a hearing aid in each ear and you had to speak quite loudly for him to hear you properly, so you would have thought that good equipment would be wasted on him? No so, because his ability hear better from worse and to distinguish between and remember the sound of different pieces of equipment and cables was extraordinary and this despite the fact that he had to hear everything through hearing aids.
I have had a number of experiences like this with different people and they have made me question much of the auditory theory that we base much of the central audio parameters on.
Interesting, is it not?
Sincerely,
Peter Qvortrup
nt
Best Regards,
Chris redmond.
.
nt
Best Regards,
Chris redmond.
... prozac is taken as a treatment for a serious and disturbing illness.Your statement just shows your level of ignorance.
I have had my hearing tested and I hear to 16hz still with no problems. But then I don't often go to live rock concerts. It really depends WHERE you are sitting. Sarah McLachlan at GM Place in Vancouver was not that loud but I was well back - Tina Turner third row was extremely loud -- which is why you put ear plugs in to protect your hearing.Peter knows more about classical music and attends the actual events of a variety of music -- moreso than anyone on this board I would bet and he certainly has the largest collection of anyone on this board. So he knows the music, he has the recordings, he goes to more live events and everyone who buys his complete systems and have owned most of the other stuff the likes of YOU recommend LEAVE that stuff and end up with his -- NOT the other way around. That speaks the only volume that is necessary.
Music energy offers next to nothing above 15khz and most all tube amps MEASURE flat well beyond 15khz -- so your roll-off comments are pure fictitious drivel -- but you are easily biased - you hear what you ASSUME before you walk in.
You're a strange guy because you recommend Magnepan to someone looking for Rock speakers -- have you actually ever heard Magnepan? With recommendations like that it is clear you're hearing is seriously problematic -- and before the Maggie fans jump on me - it was the MMG which even a truthful Maggie fan would not actually recommend for Metallica at high levels.
You are very good at doging the questions to you -- when asked what is the best speaker currently available -- you have no answer -- yo go on a rant about the state of the industry blah blah...but sir -- give me SPECIFIC system that is CURRENTLY in a store that is the BEST available here and now -- and I shall audition it against the AN.
I have heard every big name SS amp that is supposedly (not rolled off and measures as "good as SS amps can get" Bryston, Krell, YBA, Levinson, MF, Odyssy Halcro, and your favorites like Crown and Hafler).
You simply have one argument in your entire arsenal -- your speakers are best nobody else makes a good speaker -- but the only way you can PROVE that is for you to show us -- for all to see. You say iditic things like the AR 9 is flat to 20hz -- REALLY? That is funny since I have the ORIGINAL AR 9 manual and spec sheet - 28hz - 3db so where did you 20hz? At least Audio Note porved John Atkinson and Stereophile were WRONG on the SET page and had peoaple eat crow -- what about you? I mean I have 50 golden chickens in my home and the Loch Ness Monster too so let's see and more importantly hear or even SEE the measurements of your Bose modified world beating as ood as it gets loudspeakers.
The difference is that Peter knows more about classical music than anyone on these boards -- and it's a good thing that he ALSO goes to live rock and other forms of music too -- it means he's a worldly person who understands other music art forms and is not some narrow minded prig.
"The difference is that Peter knows more about classical music than anyone on these boards"Whether he does or not is debatable, he certainly hasn't proven it on the Music Lane board. I don't think I've seen him post there even once. Whether or not he can even still hear most of it given the way he abused his hearing by going to live rock concerts is another issue altogether. There's little doubt that such exposure runs a grave risk of almost certain short and long term damage to hearing.
"You're a strange guy because you recommend Magnepan to someone looking for Rock speakers "
I don't ever remember recommending Magnepan speakers to anyone...and I'm sure I never recommended them to anyone looking for playing rock since it is well known they can't play very loud and have no low end of their own. And given their special requirements for room placement, they are not suitable for most rooms. Where did I ever recommend them for rock? I did acknowledge that panel speakers in general and bi polar panels in particular have entirely different radiating patterns than direct firing box speakers and this is IMO a major reason they sound different, not their presumably lower harmonic distortion.
"Music energy offers next to nothing above 15khz and most all tube amps MEASURE flat well beyond 15khz -- so your roll-off comments are pure fictitious drivel"
Yes...at one watt into a resistive load.
"You are very good at doging the questions to you -- when asked what is the best speaker currently available -- you have no answer -"
How would I know, I haven't wasted my life listening to every new variant of every speaker design coming down the pike in decades. Of the ones I heard recently, the only one I even liked was the Opera Tibaldi which because of its 4 indirect firing tweeters sounded closest to my own speakers. Still I wouldn't trade. If I had to guess when money was no object....I'd look at Ravel Utima Salon, TOTL Van Schweikert, and TOTL Wilson but they aren't worth the price. I'd sooner build my own. BTW, after hearing A/N TOTL, they aren't even on my radar screen. And to be perfectly honest, it looks like I'm about to acquire another pair of AR9s.
"You say iditic things like the AR 9 is flat to 20hz"
I said AFTER it's equalized, it is...and lower, and with very low harmonic distortion which is also very important. That's one advantage of an acoustic suspension speaker operating at critical damping, you can easily extend its bass response linearly if you want to and have sufficient electrical power. That's how Bose did it with 901 although It doesn't appear the system was designed for critical damping, it may be underdamped but thats a separate issue.
"At least Audio Note porved John Atkinson and Stereophile were WRONG on the SET page and had peoaple eat crow"
Proving John Atkinson wrong doesnt' buy much favor with me. I'm still waiting for him to give me a plausible explanation as to how he reconciles the necessity to equalize recordings he makes to within 0.1db yet won't make even the slightest attempt to equalize recordings he listens to. I have a hunch I shouldn't be holding my breath waiting for an answer because it's going to be a very long time coming.
I have heard the AR 9 and it is pretty much a sure bet that if you think that speaker is great then we won't agree on much -- you talk about treble roll-off the E with SET versus the AR 9 with Brystons -- man you are biased - the AN rig had more treble energy by a considerable amount and deeper less distorted low end DESPITE not being a sealed cabinet. The AR 9 was completely reconditioned so let's not go there. Though maybe you do agree -- I would definitely want to add tweeters too.It was better than the raved about speakers inspired by it in the NHT 3.3(which was a metal tweeter ringing nails on chalkboard experience joke that thankfully nobody bought - if the did they'd still be selling em) and the abysmal Snell B-Minor. But then any speaker using any side firing woofer is complete garbage IME -- which is why nobody bought them -- if they did these companies would not have ALL dropped the speakers from production or completely gone out of business and sold their name to some dumpy receiver makers. And what did they make instead of these big side firing non integrated sounding boom and sizzlers? Puny standmounts with subs and glorified EQ systems.
Magnepan
Ahh it was in a thread of complicated music where the person wanted it for electronic music -- I am not sure if you read it right but even complicated music -- the MMG? I have heard both the 1.6 and 3.6 and they doesn't do complicated music (I mean hacking off front to back staging and limited strained dynamics is not exactly doing complex music well -- though I understand why so many are tricked because it stretches the left to right sound out so that it "seems" like a big stage is being created -- well in fact it is being created -- they present a large artificial soundstage (being a Bose 901 enthusiest I know you like an 8 foot piano to sound like a 40foot one but neither is remotely what is on the recording and everything is always exagerrated. (I understand that appeal - but...) All the room reflecting speakers I have heard have all stunk up the joint. It's all good in theory - the folks at Mirage have lots of white papers and big buck engineers -- now if they could ever get anything ever remotely correct I'd be happy - so would all those companies trying and not selling as many speakers as AN does. Adding a sub does not help -- that implies that rock recordings have a ton of deep bass which they do not often possess. So that sufggestion which I read a lot is because these subs are being bought to handle 80hz -- which just shows how truly WEAK the panels are
As for music knowledge - well posting on the asylum is hardly indicative of that. I don't post there either. Largely because it is like arguing the grammy's -- it is opinion based with zero provable facts as to what is "the best" in terms of music. Movies and literature and poetry are easier to make credible arguments based on literary theory -- even then it is still opinion based -- many people think Lord of the Rings is good writing *shrug*. Music is even further problematic as to what is good and what is not good. The arguement is "if I like it then it is great and if I don't then it is no good" -- Rubbish. (Though it should not be surprising it is the same for the music replay systems).Peter probably owns every good classical recording that has ever been produced. He's up over 30,000 and he is unafraid to play any of it on any medium on his gear. Unlike the folks at most of the companies who don't even bother listening -- the computer picks the drivers and the machine and the 8 year old girl in China bolts it all together for $30.00 and it is then shipped to you for $3k.
I have only heard one wilson -- the Sophia -- it is the best measuring speaker from them - It makes the J look like a steal. Once again all you got is your "I've got "golden egg laying chickens" at home arguments.
I have speakers that were designed by George Ferrenzo who has made a flat 20hz - 50khz speaker with 72 drivers and an eq that creates perfectly flat sound wherever you sit in the entire room with under .0005% THD across the whole band up to 200 decibals with perfect power response and 110db sensitivitiy. George lucas agrees. Gee anybody can say this kind of rubbish when they never produce the facts to back it up. Just like the kid's who did their homework but forgot it at home. Oh but of course they just forgot their homework and naturally they did it. You blame everyone for being tinkerers -- which is laughable since that is EXACTLY the enitirety of your speaker creation -- you took someone elses speakers and you stick some drivers on it -- played around with someone elses EQ -- what a joke.
When I went into Herr Peter's room his $400,000 sound system was playing shit rock crapola. After I heard the miserable job it did trying pathetically to reproduce the Baldwin grand Marian McPartland had recorded on the CD which I brought with me, he played a vinyl of Bing Crosby from the 1940s. The whole experience sucked...which didn't surprise me at all. It was typical of the entire VTV experience...which made my day. Ah to be home again with audio equipment which can actually make some recordings sound like music....and recordings of music actually worth listening to.By the way, my augmented AR9s can and do put out substantially more high freqency energy that the factory configuration. With three additional tweeters and the AR tweeter cut back to contribute less than 10% of the total energy above 6 khz the sound is considerably different than anyone elses AR9. The majority is radiated into the rest of the room...the way most actual musical instruments do. I suggest you take a look at a real piano and think about how it gets sound from the strings to your ears. They you may begin to understand why A/N speakers are hopeless trying to reproduce the sound of one.
you are giving me a chuckle I'll give you that. Every manufacturer today is GARBAGE according to you because ALL they do is "tinker" - no real science blah blah blah -- you've said it a hundred times. Then what you give the world is a speaker or two you bought from either defunk no hoper makers or well Bose. Then your brilliant scientific superiority "complex" has you BUYING some off the shelf tweeter and playing with the crossovers for a few years so you can get the sound you LIKE but for which you can't demonstrate is what is on the actual recording. So you take a cd rendition of a piano which may sound thing and bright and you build your system to alter it to sound the way you think it ought to sound like.There is a big reason why AN demos all kinds of music and all kinds of recordings and that is to demonstrate that just because you always thought recording X was a good one -- does not in fact make it so. Too often systems are tailored to certain music which in no way should be the case - other than for preference. Bose worked because it enlarged sounds and had a "cool" facotor. It is totally innacurate to reproducing the recording -- though it may and has dono a nice job at enlarging a piano. Piano is the first thing I test for. Which is not to say piano always sounds good - the recording will influence that a lot. Since 95% of all music was recorded on TWO WAY direct radiating loudspeakers (and another 4.9% on some other direct radiating loudspeaker) -- your tinkerings are merely tailoring the disc to what you LIKE and not what was "meant to be" or what is on the recording.
I think I know why all speaker makers sound bad to you -- you have a system that completely artificially constructs the recording to what you think is correct -- and I also know why you are far too chicken to ever let anyone listen to your tinkering -- if someone else tinkers they are idiots -- but of course when the great lonely Soundmind tinkers it is sheer masterpiece of art and design.
A legend in your own mind. Good day.
Another guy who doesn't know what direct radiating means, must have learned from HT magazines.A GREAT many recording have been monitored on speakers that were not direct radiators or were only direct radiating in the woofer.
"Every manufacturer today is GARBAGE according to you because ALL they do is "tinker" - no real science "Actually it's because all they do is tweak paradymes, ideas which have reached their limit and must fail because they do not take into account the way actual musical instruments generate sound. The difference between what they do and what musical instruments do is too great in some very important respects for them to convincingly create the same sound.
"Then your brilliant scientific superiority "complex" has you BUYING some off the shelf tweeter and playing with the crossovers for a few years so you can get the sound you LIKE but for which you can't demonstrate is what is on the actual recording..."
The difference between me and what people who work for manufacturers do is that they are trained WHAT to think, I was trained HOW to think. And I come up with different answers than they do. I don't mindlessly run down the same rut they've gone in for decades as they look for some small variant just to be different so they'll have something their marketers can advertise. I don't work to get the sound I "like" I strive to make my recordings sound like the musical instruments I hear including the ones I own. How many audiophiles own, play, and can compare real insturments to what they listen to recordings on? How many insturments do the manufacturers have in their factories, their laboratories to test their speakers against?
"Then what you give the world is a speaker or two..."
I don't give the world anything in the way of audio equipment. I am not in the business of making, marketing, or selling audio equipment. I'm just giving my opinion as a hobbyist. Do you see an M, R, or P next to my moniker? I have NEVER sold a piece of audio gear in my life...not even a used tape recroder, phonograph or radio at a garage sale.
"There is a big reason why AN demos all kinds of music and all kinds of recordings and that is to demonstrate that just because you always thought recording X was a good one"
The demonstration of A/N equipment at the VTV show I heard couldn't convince anyone of anything meaningful, either in the room PQ was in or his room next door. Most amazing was that I did not see even one other so called audiophile bother to bring even a single disc with them to audition relying instead on whatever those demonstrating equipment brought with them presumably to show their equipment at its best. As I have said to the ire of many people here, the only way to judge audio equipment for accuracy is by using well made recordings of acoustical instruments playing serious music which means classical music and jazz and you MUST have listened to a lot of the real thing to have that sound constantly drummed into your head so you know what you are comparing the reproduction to. All other "processed" sound tells me nothing about the equipment. Rock won't do it. Neither will 1940s Bing Crosby records. Whether pandering to what he thought the typical show visitor would want to hear, his own preferences, or having something to hide about the real capabilities and limitations of his equipment, his presentation was of no value to me in judging his technology.
"Bose worked because it enlarged sounds and had a "cool" facotor"
Regardless of its other limitations and I have given my critical opinion of what they are, Bose 901 gained mass appeal becuse it played recordings in a way that the music didn't seem to be coming out of a box. That's one very important characteristic of real music, it doesn't sound like it's coming out of a box. So far, over 99.9% of the speaker manufacturers who have ever put product on the market haven't figured out how to overcome that obvious flaw in their designs.
"I think I know why all speaker makers sound bad to you..."
Well if you would have said its because no matter what they charge, what they claim, or what accolades they get in magazines, what comes out of their products doesn't sound like music to me, you'd have been right.
"I also know why you are far too chicken to ever let anyone listen to your tinkering -"
If you are in the neighborhood, let me know. You can listen to my speakers at one end of the room, and my piano at the other and we can talk about where the sound is different so I can work on minimizing it too. Then when that's discussed, we'll compare their sounds to violins and violas. Who knows, by then I might have a cello too.
has helped me to better understand some of your vantage points. Thanks for taking the time to respond to it in the manner that you did. It seems that we have quite a few things in common but have taken slightly different approaches. Best wishes to you, good listening and i mean that with all the respect in the world. Sean
>
the founding premise of The Absolute Sound as stated by Harry Pearson back in the spring of 1973 with these comments:As I have said to the ire of many people here, the only way to judge audio equipment for accuracy is by using well made recordings of acoustical instruments playing serious music which means classical music and jazz and you MUST have listened to a lot of the real thing to have that sound constantly drummed into your head so you know what you are comparing the reproduction to.
To the ire of many people here? Certainly not anyone who follows either TAS or Stereophile, similarly founded on similar principles. One difference, however, might be that many of us do not necessarily limit ourselves solely to such music. Listening should be varied and fun. I've heard "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by Charlie Daniels on HP's big Alon system for example. I've never heard it so clear before!
rw
"One difference, however, might be that many of us do not necessarily limit ourselves solely to such music"I also listen to other kinds of music. With over 6000 recordings, I've got plenty to choose from.
"I've heard "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by Charlie Daniels on HP's big Alon system for example. I've never heard it so clear before!"
My sympathies.
but it was fun nevertheless. It was actually part of a Clearaudio collection. Despite the obvious multi-tracking (like your coveted DG recordings), it was exceptionally clean.rw
"...the only way to judge audio equipment for accuracy is by using well made recordings of acoustical instruments playing serious music which means classical music and jazz and you MUST have listened to a lot of the real thing to have that sound constantly drummed into your head so you know what you are comparing the reproduction to."
Agree, strongly. My own system generally falls short of this measure, but it's the best I can do considering budget and living space restrictions.
"All other "processed" sound tells me nothing about the equipment. Rock won't do it. Neither will 1940s Bing Crosby records." Also agree, strongly. Especially rock n roll, which generally sounds nothing like the same from recording to live performance. Thank goodness.
I don't know why this pisses people off when you post it here, but it does.
_______________________________
Just an Infinite Rider on the Big Dogma
"And I come up with different answers than they do." Sounds just like something Peter would say -- the difference is you merely have theory -- people have to put it into practice -- mirage is great on paper and all the other indirect firng speakers I have ever heard -- but none of them resemble music - no matter how many science (err engineering) papers they write."As I have said to the ire of many people here, the only way to judge audio equipment for accuracy is by using well made recordings of acoustical instruments playing serious music which means classical music and jazz and you MUST have listened to a lot of the real thing to have that sound constantly drummed into your head so you know what you are comparing the reproduction to."
But you can;t know how it was recorded -- AN's article on comparison by contrast makes far more sense than what you are proposing. I have access to a variety of instruments and compared live acoustic instruments in the same room with the speakers -- this is not overly hard. One does not need to own them to have access to them. I don't see the relevance of this since what is on the recording "processed" by the recording equipment and created using a two way speaker that no one knows of from another country and then being bought and played in your room is hardly going to be a perfect match.
"Rock won't do it. Neither will 1940s Bing Crosby records. Whether pandering to what he thought the typical show visitor would want to hear, his own preferences, or having something to hide about the real capabilities and limitations of his equipment, his presentation was of no value to me in judging his technology."
I understand why you view rock the way you do -- but there is a different dynamic landscape of sound that some of those recording generate that many speakers cannot get remotely correct that are classed as "beloved" high end loudspeakers (stats for example). And the PROOF of this is that if the Rock recordings were so truly bad and so compressed then they ought to be the easiest things to get bang on right. Not all rock is amplified either. Though yes some speakers are geared for rock and so I can see the opposite argument you make -- if you're buying it for classical then rock is of no help to you. I prefer more ambitious speakers that will do it all.
As for what Peter is listening to - well he seems to listen to pretty much everything -- it is about the music first and he will play "anything" on his equipment and that is also true of the dealers selling it. They can put any recording from any genre without fear -- that is well as you point out not common. The fact that Peter put a 1940 recording of anyone should tell you that. And he did it for reviewers too in the link at bottom from the 1910s.
Next time I'm in NY I'll let you know.
I think your main problem on these boards is that all you can do is complain but you offer no real solution to the problems. Who are you complaining to -- Consumers? I listen live, I listen to what is out there and I make a decision. If you want to blame the manufacturers then go after the manufacturers that have the BIG dollars and the big clout and get THEM to do something or throw your hat into the ring and prove them wrong.
Unfortunately the Bose 901 sounds like a box to me especially when it attempt to hit any sort of midlow note. The thing is a wonky sounding artificial speaker. And well everything gets great reviews including the 901 -- wasn't it Hirsch who said it was the best speaker ever made at the time? It's dynamically inept versus say the K-horn -- and dynamics are so hugely important -- one reason inefficient speakers tend to sound like constipated dreck. Everyone is so concerned with frequency response and for a flute solo that;s all nice and fine but on big brass horns and quiet to loud power passages (crescendos) a speaker needs to have balls...I'll sacrifice some frequency anomolies of a K-Horn anyday for dynamics (micro and macro) than have a flat response but which seems strained. The AN's offered the middle ground.
Soundmind - if you could take a step back and realize that 99.99999% of people live in a practical world where if we want to own a music reproduction system then chances are that is going to be purchased. So you pick the best of what you hear that fits the budget and you're done. Do you see that there is the holier than thou almost impossible ideal you are arguing endlessly over and the reality that is out there now?
I don't need your endorsement or anyone elses for my ideas. My theories are the results of my own experiments and practical results I've gotten for myself. I am not interested in going into the electronics manufacturing business. And unlike PQ, I AM and engineer, not a marketer and my ideas are well grounded. I don't try to make a speaker enclosure resonate like a guitar or a cigar box violin. I don't need to go to Russia to buy exotic birchwood that nobody can afford or even demonstrate has any value. I don't need to pretend I have magic potions to sell my products because I don't make or sell any. I just offer my ideas, the results of my experience and experiments for other people to try if they are interested. Apparantly, nobody is, they'd rather just go shopping. And judging from the fact that none of the ones I met or saw at the VTV show so much as bothered to bring a disc or two from home, they aren't even very good at that."But you can;t know how it was recorded -- AN's article on comparison by contrast makes far more sense than what you are proposing"
PQ can write all the articles he wants but having seen his equipment, it is clear he has no way to make any compensation for recordings which were made differently, not even to compensate for the grossest of differences. And besides, as soon as he tells the world that anyone who doesn't buy and listen to his product is living in "audio hell" I knew he was full of crap. Meeting him and hearing and seeing his products just confirmed it for me.
"I understand why you view rock the way you do"
I don't think so. Setting aside my opinion that as music rock is shit (there's plenty of recordings of it in my house BTW) it is invariably performed with electronically amplified instruments and tweaked to achieve a commercial sound which sells on the radio. Recordings made this way have no real world reference to compare the sound to so there is no way to determine the accuracy of the equipment reproducing it. In the case of listening to rock recordings, the term accuracy has no meaning.
"Unfortunately the Bose 901 sounds like a box to me especially when it attempt to hit any sort of midlow note. The thing is a wonky sounding artificial speaker"
You are in the minority. In one incarnation or another with only six variants of the design and only one really significant change, this product has survived on the market for almost 40 years. I've said what IMO its major limitations were, a bad mid bass peak, inability to reproduce the top octave of sound, and with the switch to a ported design starting with series III, an inability to reproduce the bottom octave of sound. It's FR is far from flat. The original also required an enormous amount of amplifier power. However dismissing those real innovations it embodied is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It can be salvaged with insight and a lot of patience and work. Unfortunately, IMO AN speakers cannot.
Well this thread has provided many good belly laughs. Not all of them are with your comments since you have made some valid points, especially concerning real music as a reference, a reference that seems almost contemptable with a growing number of audiophiles.But your comments on the longevity of the Bose 901 did produce a nice belly laugh. Thanks!
The Bose 901 has survived so long in the market place for two reasons. 1. MARKETING primarily. They have marketed the living piss out of this piece of dreck for 40 years. Nothing more. And you have such comtempt for audio companies marketing. Bose, without question, is the marketing king in this industry. Marketing is all that Bose has been about for several generations. As savvy as many hi-end audio companies have gotten about marketing, that can't even begin to compete with the master, Bose. A better example you will not find on how a company can take a terrible product and turn it into a legend simply by marketing. Should actually be a case study in any good marketing class. Couple that with.... 2. Most folks that purchase the Bose did so on the marketing hype alone having no idea, and not caring, what real music sounds like.
I have no problem without about 80% of your comments/ideas. You are spot on in many cases, i.e. live music as the ONLY meaningful reference, massive marketing hype in this industry, the lack of any real innovation, ideas, etc. Some of this is great and I love some of the feathers you ruffle. But then you just went and shot yourself in the foot with the Bose comment. Talk about total hype and marketing. A complete lack of real innovation. It was not innovative even when it came out. It was simply horrid then and is just as horrid now.
A few years ago Ken Kessler nominated the original Quad ESL as the audio component of the century. If one could nominate the worst audio product of the last century, the winner would be the Bose 901 by a long-shot, for one would be hard pressed to find a better piece of hyped junk. Laughable concept, terrible engineering, comical construction quality and way, way, way over priced. A big cheesy shoe box full of cheap ass driver.
BTW, musician here, or at least I fancy myself as one. Voice, piano. Season ticket holder for our local symphony, and I try to spend as much of my time listening to real, live, unamplified music as I do the hi-fi. And a degreed engineer to boot!
This is the biggest con job ever. You have thouasands of LIVE venues -- and I can Guarantee you that whatever Soundmind has tinkered with it won;t reproduce not a single one in his home -- you want LIVE then create the philharmonic's portrayol of Beethoven's Ninth in your home and convince anyone that it is the live performance -- I will bet all the money I have on it.It is pure lunacy to compare to "live' in the above sense. A live instrument in room -- I have done this already with musicians.
Bose is best because it sells the most so I have already been down the argument with Soundmind and his logic is heavily flawed. AN only succeeds because of marketing -- even though they never advertise -- how did they sell it to me -- a person who went in cold and NEVER heard of the company -- look at it and it sure as hell won't sell you on appearance. Soundmind is heavily biased -- first he hates Peter Qvortrup and already had a big chip on his shoulder before his so called auditions. He has claimed that to get his wonderful tinkered Bose crapfest working it has taken him YEARS to tailer it to the room. So naturally he can judge a speaker in a room he's never been in set-up super quick. That is not to excuse the makers at audio shows - but at the same time it's also hypocritical to have an apple of years to set-up and tailer recordings the way you "like it" to one where none of those things have been afforded.
Audio Note has a clearly different goal than to tailer the sound to the way you "want" it to sound. I am sorry but SOundmind wants to adjust recordings by altering the intent and original RECORDING to something entirely different...I have no problem with people who wish to do that because that is their choice and the point is to be happy with what you are hearing. Audio Note's goal is to reveal the largest amount of difference between recordings by NOT stamping it's sound at the listening position onto everything. That means by nature that the sound of recordings will not be TAILORED to a homogeneous presentation of a person's likes. I may like the singer in the center and I may be able to get a stereo to ALWAYS project the voice dead center -- but it's not truthful to the recording.
There is no question that unamplified live acoustic instruments need to be auditioned with recordings that exhibit a high level of "quality" on audio systems and a fairly strong knowledge of the instruments' sound by the consumer. Peter Qvortrup has perhaps the largest personal collection of classical recorded music on the planet so at least he has the recordings to pull from to put his Comparison by contrast approach to the test. But a stereo system is not or should I say SHOULD NOT be limited to JUST playing "some" recordings well and everything abysmally. That is an Excuse used by high end dealers to say yeah this Chesky disc sounds pretty damn excellent but the other 99 recordings you brought are dreadful so get a new music collection. Which is not to say that AN won't render some stuff poorly since there are poor recordings but IME some of those so called great recordings have for the first time been shown to be not so great -- while others that made some discs unlistenable actually turned out to be rather steller -- rock to boot. The AN does not in fact favour rock -- it is designed for classical and that is failry obvious but the same time it has not totally been gutted dynamically for a sense of added "air" to gain a false sense of better soundstaging.
Bose is a marketed product almost entirely...it is conceptually completely to make some bucks selling garbage at high dollars and it ALWAYS was and it STILL is. Ford has been around 40 years too but it does not make a great car company. It may make them grreat BUSINESS people but great products and great sales are hardly mutually condusive.
One high end dealer said he'd kill to have the rights to Bose -- but the distribution went to another high end dealer. Not because it's any good but because it requires no work to sell it. Bose refuses to allow a side by side comparison with anyone.
BTW, right now I'm having a lot of fun and great success restoring and experimenting with....AR2a. Dreadful as supplied by the factory, It's turing out to be a very fine speaker with considerable modifications including additional tweeters. You really outght to get out more RGA, there's more to life than Audio Note.
You seem to be hung up about Bose 901. I don't know why. I own many different speakers and different kinds of speakers, original Bose 901s among them. They were never inexpensive in any era they were sold in, so their popularity must have been due to more than mere hype and marketing. I'm not going into the technical details of it again, it is what it is. Just suffice it to say that there are many innovations and unique ideas embodied in it even if it is fatally flawed by current audiophile standards and the original version had some real advantages over series III and every series afterwards (starting about 1975.) Regardless of how you think it performs, two things can be said about it. One is that it was built to very high manufacturing standards. The second is that given Bose's offer to swap my 30+ year old speakers for a replacement new pair at half price means to me that they stand behind their product is ways other manufacturers don't. (once upon a time ago, KLH was such a company.) I don't expect you to beleive that they can be turned into a first rate speaker which still retains the unique advantages of the direct reflecting principle. Before doing it I wouldn't have believed it myself.
I am not hung up on the Bose. I simply stated my observations on the design, performance, etc. That is what this forum is all about. I was not the one that referenced the Bose 901 as one of the all-time greats. I would not have commented had you not referenced the 901 as one of the stellar performers. Nor did you refute any of my comments, especially the marketing, except to say......"their popularity must have been due to more than mere hype and marketing"
Baloney. Folks overpay for stuff all the time based purely on marketing. Absolut Vodka, Starbucks Coffee, the list is endless. The Bose 901 is no different. Hyper-marketing has given the Bose 901 some perceived value in the market place, the corner stone of good marketing. Bose is a master at what it does best, marketing.
"suffice it to say that there are many innovations and unique ideas embodied in it"Where? What? I am more than capable of holding up my end of any technical discussion you would like to have regarding their concept, design, execution, etc. I see a simple box, full of cheap drivers, running rull range. All the ills are supposedly tamed with massive amounts of EQ. We further solve problems with this design by reflecting the sound all over the room. One band-aid on top of another. This is innovation?
Good designs do not start with bad ideas full of 'fixes' to get the thing to perform. That is called bad engineering. Speakers that interface with the room as these, the "direct reflecting principle" you mention, will never be accurate, they simply cannot be. Highly euphonic, at best, is how we can describe this sort of approach. One may be able to fiddle at length with the thing to make it perform better, perhaps. This is good engineering? No way. Highly reflective speakers are highly inaccurate. You may like them, but that is another matter.
"it was built to very high manufacturing standards"
For what? Quality it is not IMO. Cheap box that is now plastic, cheap drivers and cheap electronics. Now I will be the first to state that a great amount of the hi-end gear we see is way over-engineered/built, in terms of packaging, than what is required to get the job done. As I have stated to more than one manufacterer in the past, we are not trying to launch this thing on the Space Shuttle!
"given Bose's offer to swap my 30+ year old speakers for a replacement new pair at half price means to me that they stand behind their product is ways other manufacturers don't"
Of course they will. Most mass-marketed/produced products play this game. Given the huge margins and mark-ups, everyone is still making a killing. Even the largest of hi-end companies are peanuts compared to a company like Bose. Their cost structures simply cannot do this sort of thing and remain viable as a company.
This is absolutely no indication of any kind of quality, customer support, etc. What is does indicate is excellent marketing! It also indicates how very little it actually costs Bose to make the thing versus what it sells for.
Marketing, marketing, marketing pure and simply. And you took the hook. The only difference between the marketing hype you so loath about hi-end audio and the hype of Bose is the scale of the scam!
I bought a pair of 901 series one way back in 1969. They were the best of the 901's because they actually used a cloth surround which lasted forever. All other series use a foam surround which deteriorates in 5 to 8 years.
In owning the 901 for about 6 years, I discovered nothing I did to my system ever produced a significant change. I switched to the Shure V-15 type III when it came out from the type II: no change. I borrowed a friend's Levinson ML-2's: no change. I bought Fulton Speaker wire: no change. It wasn't until I turned the speaker around one day that I realized how much distortion it created. In reveiwing the glowing write up in High Fidelity, I realized they only very briefly mentioned the fact that the speaker produced 5% distortion. No wonder I couldn't hear any differences! That kind of distortion was akin to the worst seats in a concert hall, but then I was young and impressionable and believed all the advertising hype....
Fast forward to 20 years ago. Dr. Bose actually has a home in my town, and had consented to give a lecture at our local university. A friend who had managed to score a couple of tickets begged me to accompany him, but I really wasn't interested to learn the 'secrets' of the Bose speaker. I did ask him to tell me about the contents afterwards though. He came by the next week looking a little sheepish and when I asked, he replied that the lecture was totally about the future of telemarketing.
About 6 years ago, I met a few of Dr. Bose's teaching associates at MIT, PHD's in their own right. They informed me that he teaches only one class: acoustics, at the university and refuses to do anything else. The only reason he does this is to maintain his credentials for advertising purposes, and that he has been doing this for a long time, even before they were at the institution.
Judge for yourself...
Stu
After all George Bush supposedly graduated fromn two IVY league Universities -- those professors look real dumb when he can't out speak a 9 year old.In fact because many unbscrupulous Universities will take bribes - let my moron kid in and I'll build a wing onto your school then you always have to look sideways at what the piece of paper truly means -- I have two by the way so I'm not slamming them. And at some of the big Universities where they place so much emphasis on one test they are often "easier" on students come marking time because it makes the university "look bad" if the scores are low - after all they supposedly let in the best of the best.
Knowing one professor at my small University who taught at two IVY league US Universities I asked him if they are "harder and he said the reverse was true. An A- student here would receive an A+ at Harvard or Yale. So that is an eye-opener.
Having the thearoy of a speaker makes little difference -- the guy running Monster Cable is a nuclear physicist and can yap up a technical storm on why the cable's elements at the molecular level make his stuff better. Bose? I mean now I know why Soundmind hates everything else -- none of it sound like a Bose 901 --- tweaking it won't help.
" All the ills are supposedly tamed with massive amounts of EQ. ""Good designs do not start with bad ideas full of 'fixes' to get the thing to perform. "
RIAA equalization which makes microgroove long playing phonograph records possible 20-20khz....40 db equalization (that's a factor of 10,000:1)
NAB eqalization which makes analog high fidelity magnetic tape recordings possible, 20-20 khz....also about 40 db of equalization.
FM pre-emphesis/de-emphesis which makes high fidelity FM broadcasts possible 75 microseconds, you figure out how many db of equalization that comes out to from 50 hz to 15 khz.
US National Color Television Standards....IF bandpass amplifier section must have properly equalized response required for reception and decoding of the colorburst subcarrier signal while maintianing adjacent channel interference rejection.
Equalization is a valid and long established part of electronics signal processing. Most phonograph records made since the 1950s used considerable equalization tweaking during mixdown. The German term for mixing engineer "Tonmeister" pretty much says it all.
Equalization of the Bose 901 was not a fix of a bad idea, it was an integral part of a very ingenious one where the inventor observed that below the bass resonant frequency, response fell off linearly and could be compensated for with a precision equalizer. Proof that it worked was evidenced during the early 1970s when Bose 901 was among the world champions for producing low frequencies from a commercial loudspeaker for consumer use beating out AR3a and JBL Paragon D44000. The small box was an integral part of the design pushing the system resonance frequeny up to 180 hz where Bose claimed the associatd phase shift was no longer audible. The pentagonal shape of the cabinet reduced internal standing waves. The use of multiple closely coupled drivers eliminated secondary resonances characteristic of individual drivers leaving only the resonances characteristic of the basic driver design to deal with. The similar Bose 802 was widely used by professional installers and engineers who could just as easily have bought other systems like JBL, Altec or EV.
As I said, the overall response was not flat and the speaker could not reproduce the highest octave of sound because the inertal mass of the drivers was too great even with an equalizer. This does not negate the advantages and innovations of the 901. As for its unique radiating properties, it is much closer to the way musical instruments radiate sound into space than conventional speakers and it is uniform as a function of frequency which is also much like the way most musical instruments work. The radiating pattern of the overwhelming majority of high fidelity loudspeakers on the market stinks with virtually all of their high frequency radiation beamed over a very narrow solid angle straight forward. The problem is made even worse by use of 1" domes which are horn loaded as seen by the slight recess around their perimeter. You would be hard pressed to find one which is not off at least 10 to 12 db at 15 khz around 45 degrees off axis. compare that to woofers which are nearly omnidirectional off less than 10 be 180 degrees off axis.
The design offered many unique advantages but it had not been perfected in the embodiment offered to the market and it was decided to cheapen it in the mid 1970s by making it more efficient which allowed it to be marketed to a wider customer base. Undoubtedly this generated far more profits for Bose than had he further refined it into a product designed to compete at the audiophile level. Unfortunately, to do this, the bottom octave had to be sacrificed. Bose began making his own drivers and abandoned wood cabinets for an injection molded plastic one. Given the special shape he needed for his unusual ported design, this was a good choice.
Try to be more objective about the realities of products on the market. If you are an engineer, it is not wise to become emotionally involved with what are only machines. Every one of them has their limitations. It is valuable to learn from both success and failures and there is much knowlegde this professor of Electrical Engineering and Acoustics at MIT brought to this innovative idea.
Ouch!
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
