Bose sucks. I'm not just saying that because I like another brand. I say it because it's true. It's low quality shit that's brilliantly marketed toward people who simply do not know any better, or to men who are forced to use tiny speakers in their house because their wife has too tight of a grip on their balls.
"Come on, it's not that bad." Yes it is. We're talking about flea-market type of shit, but because it has a cool modern look, and because they market it so well, people continue to be fooled.
Recently a person on a message board that I read wrote to Bose to ask them what the frequency response on their model 191 speakers was. This was of course a loaded question because the person already knew about the Bose policy of not publishing frequency response measurements. Here was the reply from Bose:
"Bose does not publish frequency specifications. The reason for this is that we believe that such statistics do not add very much to an understanding of an audio product's acoustic characteristics and, even worse, can be misleading. Audio manufacturers make these measurements independent of industry standards, and in varying conditions. Additionally, a single statistic is not a reliable measurement of a product's performance. One could, for instance, find a very expensive system with exactly the same specifications as a much less expensive system. On paper, the two would appear identical. The difference in performance, however, would be significant. A better approach, we feel, is to listen to the product.
Thank you for contacting Bose Corporation."
What their reply should have said was this:
"Bose does not publish frequency response specifications because they're so fucking bad that if you saw the truth, the entire illusion that our product sales are based upon would crumble and we would be exposed for the frauds that we are. We suggest that you just blindly buy our shit like every other half-whit lemming that is perfectlly happy with our stuff, and maintain that satisfied feeling that comes with buying a terribly overpriced product on image alone."
Bose's biggest fraud is their Acoustimass system. This is their famous system that uses a couple itty-bitty cubes and a subwoofer that you hide somewhere. I heard my first one when I was a teenager, back when I had a tin ear. Even then, though overall I was impressed, the bass never sounded natural to me, and when it got turned up loud, the system started to hurt my ears. I didn't learn until many years later that when it hurts your ears like that, that's a clear sign of a HIGH DISTORTION speaker. Low distortion speakers can be played at amazingly loud levels without the hint of pain. It's not surprising that you get this from those speakers once you crack one open and look inside. What you have is a cheap plastic enclosure that holds a $.25 paper-coned full-range driver. Pure crap. Below is a picture of an actual Bose tweeter that's used in some of their stuff (though not in their Acoustimass system):
Even cheap TVs and bathroom radios don't come with shit this cheap.
It took me a lot longer to understand why the bass didn't sound right, but surprise-surprise, it was a distortion issue too. Unlike the "pain" from the cubes that is a result from massive amounts of odd-order harmonic distortion, the bass sounded the way it did due to huge amounts of even-order distortion. In fact, it's a not so well known fact that large amounds of 2nd order harmonic distortion can actually fool you into hearing bass that sounds deeper than it really is. If memory serves me right, the Bose Acoustimass system uses a 6th order bandpass enclosure. These enclosures are known for eggaggerating 2nd harmonic problems with drivers. Not by coincidence, small woofers tend to have a lot of 2nd harmonic distortion.. especially cheap paper woofers with lousy motor assemblies like Bose uses. Rather than stuff one reasonable quality 8" or 10" woofer into an enclosure, Bose chose to use 3 extremely cheap 5.5" drivers. The result is a bunch of midbass output that people are fooled into thinking is deep bass. This results in a very unnatural bass sound because instead of hearing the actual bass note that should be reproduced, you're hearing the upper harmonics of that note that are then highly distorted in an attempt to fool you into thinking that you're hearing the deeper bass that this system is actually incapable of playing. Another huge problem is that due to the lack of any midbass output from the cubes, the "bass" module plays up to over 200hz. At frequencies above around 80-100hz, you can start to localize the sound (that means you can tell where it's coming from), so with all that 200hz garbage coming out of the sub, unless you stick it right between the two main speakers, you'll always be able to hear the bass coming from it instead of having anything close to an accurate stereo image.
Let's get back to those stupid little cubes for a minute. People think it's great that all that sound comes from those tiny things. Well, the truth is, the frequency response of those cubes is awful. A pair of 2.5" speakers just absolutely can not reproduce bass, especially when they're the incredibly cheap shit that bose uses. In the trebble range, you get terrible comb filtering because both drivers are playing unfiltered, and as the wavelengths get shorter with higher frequencies, you are suceptable to cancellation at any position where the distance of one driver is 1/2 wavelength more or less than the distance from another driver. This means that as bad as that comb filtering is, it's completely different at every point in the room. A total disaster. Plus, those 2.5" cone speakers are going to become highly directional at higher frequencies due to the diameter of the cone. Cone speakers tend to become very directional at frequencies where the wavelength is smaller than the diameter of the cone, or in the case of a 2.5" speaker, about 5,400hz. In addition, these shitty little speakers roll off above 13khz, so you can forget about ever hearing any real cymbol crashes through them. The actual measured frequency response of the satellite speakers is 280hz - 13.3khz +/- 10.5dB. For comparison, even cheap Best Buy speakers can usually muster a 100-20khz +/-3dB response.
"But I went to Sears and it sounded great!" Of course it did. Bose has their own display set up so that it's impossible to compare it to anything else. Plus, look at the setup... all of the speakers are within a couple feet of your head. With the speakers that close, it gives a false sense of detail that you'll never be able to get with them farther away. Lastly, you only get to hear the movies/music that they have selected. Naturally they'll pick what sounds best with those speakers.
For what the Bose stuff costs, you can't possibly do any worse. No matter what you buy that's in that price range, it'll be a huge improvement. Boston Acoustics, Polk, Energy, and hundreds of other brands offer products in the same price range that are many, many levels higher up the quality scale.
For more info, check out the site that I stole the frequency response numbers (and graph) from:
http://www.intellexual.net/bose.html
He says everything I did plus a whole lot more.
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