To all the owners of bose speakers, does the direct/reflecting stereo everywhere actually work, compared to conventional speakers...
I don't own any bose products, but curious if this technology they have actually works.. The Bose 901's sound is reflected 80% from the back and 20% of sound from the front.I have heard them but only for a few minutes, and thought to myself what a waste of money.. for that speaker... so does it work or not?..
I myself think it does, but agree with Nuck that the positioning of the first pair of speakers isn't the best in that pic.
However, you can get excellent "stereo everywhere" results with a pair of Mirage speakers. Those are sonically excellent.
The only pair of Bose speakers that I am quite fond of are the latest iteration of the 601, which aren't made anymore. The last time I heard the 901, they really didn't impress me that much.
That graphic was made by advertising people who do not understand what sound is, do not know how stereo works, and have never played billards or pool, either....
Stu, I quite aware, that bose is crap, u don't have to keep telling me that over and over and over and over again.... (i don't own any bose stuff).... besides lines like that don't mean $hit........Just wanting to clarify about their technology thats it... As per the useless threads pls keep ur professional,expert opinion to urself, don't like it, simple - don't contribute to it.. move on...
Gavin, I totally agree with u.. the 601's sounded good, when I last heard them... 701's... are totally crap... and can't even imagine they made such a speaker...
The fact those "illustrations " are indeed from the Bose website, should be a clear indication of how completely ridiculous Bose is.
Sorry Shane, not trying to pile on; but the criticisms by Stu (and others) are helpul if you're willing to listen.
Sorry, but Bose makes horrendously, over-priced garbage. They pander (brainwash) to people who haven't a clue about audio or HT. People who are either too busy to take the time to educate themselves on the audio/HT subject matter; or have absolutely no interest in learning anything in this hobby.
In my life I have the displeasure of hearing many, many Bose "speaker systems", so I don't speak from ignorance or inexperience. They are terrible.
I've heard just about all of their Acoustimass series, over the years.
I've heard the 701, the 901, the 601 and many others.
Anyone would be better off spending $350-$400 on something like the Panasonic Panasonic SC-PT750 Deluxe 5 DVD Home Theater System; than any of Bose's offerings. This system will embarrass any of the Bose systems.
Bose....."Terrible Sound Through Marketing and Advertising"
If you come here seeking only positive reinforcement for Bose and refuse to accept the negative and realities of Bose and their products; your only doing yourself a diservice.
I remember several years ago auditioning the Bose 701 floorstanders.
The 701 were dispicable sounding speakers, priced at $800.00.
I couldn't believe that anyone could make such a piece of garbage and slap an $800.00 price tag on it.
It was thin and dead sounding. And whatever it was that was coming out of those speakers, I can assure you; it wasn't music. Nothing but lifeless, boxy and disjointed.
Ironically, there were a pair of Athena floorstanders for $399.00 which completely kicked the hell out of the 701. The Athena's were 200 times better, for half the price tag.
I even asked if there was something wrong with the 701 ...maybe they were damaged...defective; or maybe they were not correctly hooked-up.
So after checking the connection and tracing the wires, I found they were correctly hooked up.
I even went to a different store to check out another pair of the 701, in case the first pair were defective.
Sadly, the second pair sounded just as bad.
Apparently, the true defect was in the design and parts used in those speakers. Garbage ......inside and out.
why thanks for that honest opinion nmytree.. Do you think the problem lies with their technology? for that horrible sound? or What if Spk brands like klipsch,athena,defentive techs or paradigm used technology like bose does, would it sound the same or differnet?
Shane, orbaudio makes little speakers, like Bose does, except 3x the sound at 1/3 the price, in the acoustimass lineup.
As for larger speakers, everybody uses everybody else's tech, secrets are not held for long. Difference is that other makers care about making stuff that is actually good, not just making money and sponsering EuroCup soccer teams with customers stupid purchases. You notice how I didn't mention sound quality in the last paragraph?
Ironically, the theory is sound. In theory, it should be possible to use reflections to produce a wider sweet spot for listening. Similar technology is used by Yamaha's YSP-1 digital audio projector to produce 5 channels of surround sound. It's very clever indeed.
So why doesn't it work in practice? Well, for one there's the implementation of the speaker (or YSP-1). All the drive units, each with its own frequency range, the complex crossover which increases the phase distortions. The concept is great if all the frequencies arrive at the same time to reconstruct the signal at all the listening positions, but in practice the phase differences cause timing errors which lead to more destructive interference than anything else. Then there's the problem that as you go up the frequency range the emitted sound starts to beam in a narrow fashion so as you bounce signals off walls some frequencies are more spread out than others.
Furthermore, even by looking at Bose's own depiction, one can see that there is a relationship between the bounce angles in rder to get the result that they depict. Well, reality strikes again in that not all rooms are that shape (or even the correct shape to setup the angles correctly) so once again the theory is shot to hell. Add the fact that many rooms aren't rectangular and the reflection angles become laughably wrong of course. Different wall materials also make massive differences to the reflected sound. If there is glass behind the speakers and the side walls are wood or stone (or worse one wood one stone), the reflectivity of the surfaces has an effect on the percentage of reflections and - even worse - on the percentage reflection by frequency! I other words, glass reflects anything in upper midrange and treble but not bass. Stone is better at reflecting lower midrange and (you guessed it) bass. So now the seating position has a mishmash of these reflected signals. It's a wonder they sound as good as they do.
I once heard the Yamaha YSP-1 in a dedicated small room at a show that had been built by Yamaha. There were a good 12 people in this room and the results were superb. I was seated at the back almost up against the wall and I could swear I had birds singing right behind me. Amazing. When I took one of these things home, it didn't work very well at all. Soft furnishings, irregular walls (i.e. chimney on one side, angled door), all had their efect of draining the important reflections and giving me enhanced stereo instead of surround sound. Now the YSP-1 had a much better chance since it has a whole bunch of DSP in it designed specifically to let you configure it to reflect the sounds correctly to your room's requirements. What chance has a passive reflection based system like a 701 got? Very little indeed.
But the theory is sound,a nd who knows? One day with enough DSP we may be able to make this stuff work.
The 601 I think is a decent speaker, and I admit that... but 701's? I didn't care for them the last time I heard them.
Frank, many 901 users state what you just did... the 901 only works decently in a particular room. Put it in a square room and OH SH!T... no good. Bass response all over the place, and horrid midrange.
The 901 is entirely dependent on the room you put it in. I would LOVE to hear this speaker sound good. I am a huge fan of the mirage OM series, but sadly don't think I will ever hear the 901 give the OM a run for the money.
We'll just have to if the orbs can stand up. I just ordered (7) mod 2 to go with my paradigm PS1000v. Which I quess is also crap on the forum. I have HKDRP2005 Pushing them whish also gets bad reviews on here. But you guys Like my TV SXRD60 and Panasonic 42 Plasma and my Oppo 981. I quess I need to hear some real speakers. I've always like Paradigm and HK Till they went mass market 3-4 yrs ago. So I'll let you know what I feel abou the ORBS
If you're interested in poly-directional speakers which aim to fill the soundspace using reflections, have a look at Shahinian. They seem to do quite well in this market space. I've heard a couple of their speakers and although not my taste they certainly seemed to work better than many others, probably because of the superb birch ply cabinetry.
Another interesting new brand which I've only heard on a couple of occasions and which has quite a different approach is Bolzano Villetri.
