On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 08:03:48 -0500, Harry Krause wrote:

Doug Kanter wrote:
"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
How's it sound? When I was in the biz, Bose speakers were mainly
attractive
to guys who wore backwards Caterpillar hats 24x7, and listened to nothing
but ZZ Top at full volume.
I'm no longer a Bose fan. They're too 'bassy' for me. But, my hearing is
not all that
great, so I need the treble boosted way up.

The only adjustment for bass and treble is on the subwoofer. I'd never
recommend the
set to anyone. But, it will play the Organ symphony loud enough to get the
neighbors
out of bed!
Part of the problem is that most production speakers are built for
moer bass response than is absolutely necessary. Bose speakers are
built with broader frequency response than most production speakers,
so I find that comment interesting.

Crappy ones are. Decent speakers should at least have the potential to
create nice, tightly controlled bass that doesn't sound out of proportion to
the rest of the sound. The problem is that there are too many lousy
salespeople out there. A customer walks into the stereo store and says
"According to Consumer Reports, my brother who's a shmexpert, or some dice
I rolled on my kitchen table, I don't need more than 20 or 30 watts for my
living room". The lousy salesman is too lazy or dumb to explain reality to
the customer, so he yesses the customer, and another underpowered system
goes out the door. Just enough power to make the woofers move, but nowhere
near enough to stop them tightly. So, they sound fat and puky.

At the store where I worked, part of the interview process was a group
meeting with new candidates. First, we'd try and find out if they really
understood things like damping factor. If not, the next step was to try and
determine if they were spongy enough to absorb and understand a lot of
information really fast. If not, we'd politely reject them and suggest that
they apply at Lechemere or some other big box store, so they wouldn't
pollute any of the other stores like ours.




Bose speakers sound too "bassy"? Bose? If they do, it must be an
artificial electronic kind of bass, because there's nothing
"speakerwise" in those tiny little speakers that can reproduce the low
tones. Bose speakers have to be the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the
low-end audiophile market. Well, wait, there's always that $1200 plastic
table radio with CD player Bose is pushing on TV these days.

When you want to shop for speakers, bring along some pipe organ music on
a CD, especially pipe organ music with tones in the low pedal registers,
preferably being played in a cathedral. No cheesy MP3s recorded at
22,050 Hz, please.

To reproduce really big sound, you need really big speakers. The laws of
physics have not been repealed. You want some old Klipschorns,
Altec-Lansings, or some large electrostatics and a top-drawer subwoofer
with a serious adjustable crossover network. Little speakers=little sounds.



You have to remember, loss of high-frequency hearing may have a big impact on what I
*think* speakers sound like. When adjusted the way I like, others wonder why there's
no bass!
--
John H

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