On 1/13/14, 2:22 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 1/13/2014 1:36 PM, F.O.A.D. wrote:
On 1/13/14, 1:25 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 1/13/2014 12:16 PM, wrote:
On Monday, January 13, 2014 1:04:50 AM UTC-5, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 1/13/2014 12:27 AM, wrote:

On Sun, 12 Jan 2014 12:26:58 -0500, "F.O.A.D."
wrote:



On 1/12/14, 11:51 AM, wrote:

On Sun, 12 Jan 2014 11:25:52 -0500, "F.O.A.D."
wrote:



That's cool...are those M-Audio speakers? They look very much
like mine.



I bought my wife a set of Bose speakers that are the size of a Spam

can and sound like a boom box.



http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41aYSHGKCwL.jpg



A typical Bose sound.

The only problem is you can hear the flaws in low bit rate rips
;-)





I know they are very popular and highly rated, but I've never been
fond

of the sound that emanates from the Bose speakers I've heard. I
don't

know why that is. My "main" stereo speakers are electrostatics,
about

six feet tall, and I like they way they sound. I've got a pair of

M-Audio speakers on my computer desk, and they're adequate for that

purpose.



Like I said, the Bose sound. It seems to be aimed at people who have

very good hearing in the higher ranges. The sound is very crisp. I

worked on line printers long enough that my hearing has a bit of a

notch in that area.

I like that good old 70s deep sound you got from ARs or Sansui with

cabinets that could hold a small child.







Over the years Bose has earned a (often deserved) reputation for phony

sounding speaker systems but that was not always the case. Way back

when the original 901 speakers were introduced, they were met with
very

positive reviews by audiophiles of the time. Also, the Bose sound

reinforcement designs in small sound system packages have been copied

and emulated by many other small speaker and/or radio/CD/mp3 players

manufacturers over the years.



Back when "hi-fi" was the rage, there were two distinctive speaker

"sounds", the "West Coast" sound and the "East Coast" sound. The
West

Coast sound emphasized the mid range and tended to be brighter
sounding.

The East Coast sound was a more mellow sound with the mids somewhat

de-emphasized.



The original 901 and even the original 501 Bose speakers were pretty

good for their time. Obviously technology has advanced and, to me,
the

most natural sounding speakers today are ribbon types and some

electrostatics.

Wasn't it the 901s that had a special sound processor box that hooked
up between the pre-amp and amp? Basically an equalizer that shaped
the audio to compensate for the speaker's lack of a flat frequency
response.

I always thought they sounded impressive... for a while. Then
listener's fatigue set in, and I didn't like them anymore.

I've been running a set of NHT's for a few years now. Great sound,
very accurate.



The 901s required an equalizer as did some of their PA and sound
reinforcement speaker systems.

A friend of mine is heavily involved with his church and was given the
responsibility of upgrading their sound system.

He is also a regular customer at the guitar shop and performance venue I
built and equipped and he asked me to recommend a new system. I visited
the church to scope out it's size and noticed the PAs they were using.
The church is not very large, so a big system was not required. They
were using a pair of older Bose PA speakers .... I've forgotten what
model number and they sounded terrible. They are supposed to be used
with an equalizer (like the 901s) but it didn't exist. The speakers
had been donated minus the equalizer and no one knew they needed it. We
checked eBay, found one and bought it cheap. When it arrived we hooked
it up and he was blown away at how much better they sounded. Saved them
quite a bit of $$.



Sort of church-related, but not. The last time I was in New Haven, one
of our hosts played a CD of Bach he had being played on the 1928-1929
Skinner Pipe Organ at Woolsey Hall (you know that place, right?), and he
was playing it over a Bose 901 system he's had in his house for years.
Well, the "lackabass" of that sound system was really noticeable,
because what we heard through his Bose speakers didn't sound anything
like the Skinner, which I've heard dozens and dozens of times. The pedal
notes sounded like intestinal gas being passed.




The performance stage I built last winter has a JBL sound system
consisting of two 650 watt powered speakers and two, JBL 18 inch
subwoofers. It sounds great but there's no way in hell it could
reproduce the overall sound quality of a pipe organ, especially the lows.

The human ear and mind are very forgiving sonic devices though. Unless
you are actually comparing sound sources in real time, your mind tends
to fill in what you don't hear ... or at least adapt for the decreased
fidelity. It's the reason most people can listen to music on an iPhone
or something and get some sort of enjoyment from it. I can't.

I've told some of this story before about Bose, but it's related to this
topic and since you brought up pipe organs:

At one point years ago we were boat shopping and went to check out an
Albin that was advertised. The seller turned out to be a retired sound
and recording engineer who had worked for the Boston Symphony Orchestra
back in the Arthur Fiedler days. The subject turned to music and
recording and he showed me the collection of very expensive microphones
that he had.

At one point I noticed a pair of older Bose 901s set up in his
"listening" room. I asked about them and he offered to let me hear them.

He played some recordings he had mastered, played on an ancient reel to
reel tape deck. The recordings including the massive, Aeolian-Skinner
pipe organ located in Boston's Symphony Hall. I've been there several
times in my life and have heard it being played live twice.

The sound of the organ in his listening room was simply amazing. Lows
were being produced that reminded me of hearing it live and they shook
the room. I didn't believe the Bose 901s could do that and I questioned
him on it. He just smiled and led me to a place in the floor that he
had modified and had installed a custom built, 18" sub woofer driver
with it's own dedicated, 3000 watt amplifier. That was the source of
all the lows. He had also modified the equalizer for the 901s so they
only produced frequencies from about 150Hz and up.

Right now my sound system has a 15" Velodyne servo driven sub woofer.
I've had and tried many and I think the Velodyne, especially the 15 inch
version, produces the most natural sounding bass from a musical
perspective of all I've tried. I also had an 18" Velodyne sub that
produced ground shaking THX effects for home theater applications but it
was not as musically accurate as the 15" version.



I've a pair of Magnepan electrostatic speakers that were given to me by
a friend breaking up his household after a nasty divorce. They're
hooked up with a pretty decent subwoofer. The array suits me.