I remember back in the '70s when Justin Hayward and John Loge (of the Moody Blues) released their "Blue Jays" album.
It was premiered a at NY City's "Avery Fisher Hall" using a single pair of Bose 901s on the stage!
It reportedly sounded fantastic! 🙂
It was premiered a at NY City's "Avery Fisher Hall" using a single pair of Bose 901s on the stage!
It reportedly sounded fantastic! 🙂
I can't remember when the latest series debuted but it seems like its been a loooooong time. So I am surprised Bose hasn't updated them in some way, like add a built-in powered bass section to relieve the stress on the user's receiver, or at least update the styling (though the overall shape is fine the walnut version with light brown grill looks pretty dated to me).
Would not adding a powered bass to a 901 defeat the purpose of them?
Granted, they need a proper placement and acoustical envioument to take avaantage of the 901s which will then give a great bass but, that is where the 901's really shine.
There is/was a powered version of the 901 for use with the Lifestyle series front ends.
The 901 is a "full range" system - efficiency is typical of mainstream modern speaker systems (rather low) and currently available receivers and amps should have little difficulty driving it to reasonably high spls - my recollection anyway.
IMO not my ideal speaker system.
The 901 is a "full range" system - efficiency is typical of mainstream modern speaker systems (rather low) and currently available receivers and amps should have little difficulty driving it to reasonably high spls - my recollection anyway.
IMO not my ideal speaker system.
Ya, no ****.
Amar must still be ******* himself silly knowing the public still loves it. If not for critical listening or measurements, the 901 and other Bose products, would be top of the charts because they appeal to the uneducated populace. 'Better Sound Through Research' does not mean better sound via accuracy, it means give'm what they want. The 'research' IMHO had little to do with giving you accuracy of the artists' or recording engineer's intent, it was all about practicality and convenience.
I believe we can all think of more than one company that uses this as their 'secret' motto. Think about fast food. Dr. Bose just happened to create a market (yes I give him credit for that) that allowed the public to spend more money than they might have, without them knowing any better.
Yes quite correct Cal, Bose despite continuous so called inventions was and always has been primarily about marketing.
Amar Bose - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bose Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
and: Amar Bose believes that traditional measures of audio equipment are not relevant to perceived audio quality and therefore does not publish those specifications for Bose products, claiming that the ultimate test is the listener's perception of audio quality according to the listeners preferences[46]. Many other audio product manufacturers publish numerical test data of their equipment, however Bose does not[47]. In 1968, Amar Bose presented a paper to the Audio Engineering Society titled "On the Design, Measurement and Evaluation of Loudspeakers". In this paper, Amar Bose rejects numerical test data in favor of "more meaningful measurement and evaluation procedures"[46]. When tested by independent reviewers, Bose systems often produce inferior results compared to equivalent products from other manufacturers
the best sound i heard from a Series 4 Bose 901 was when it was connected to a Series 6 equalizer. ( and it was turned on ... 😀 )
Cheers / Chris
All I really will say as a former long term Bose R&D weenie is that a lot of what you read about Bose here and elsewhere is sheer myth... 😀
Dr. Bose is retired and no longer has a very active hand in the running of the place. (Still chairman of the board though)
No dispute that their target market is not the people who hang out here or who place audio performance above most other considerations.
Philosophically I am in a completely different place than that espoused by Dr. Bose, but I learned a great deal about good engineering practice while there.
Dr. Bose is retired and no longer has a very active hand in the running of the place. (Still chairman of the board though)
No dispute that their target market is not the people who hang out here or who place audio performance above most other considerations.
Philosophically I am in a completely different place than that espoused by Dr. Bose, but I learned a great deal about good engineering practice while there.
Hmmm.. it would be nice then to sort the myth from truth. It is interesting reading the history of the 901 that started off sounding very poor, but then appears as being coaxed or very engineered to then reproduce sound in a better manner. Usually one starts with a good sounding product in the first place and over time manages to get slightly more,- or if the pen slips- sometimes the product goes very backwards.
Correct me but i am thinking with that it was about shapes and furniture in rooms and fashion..... mainly marketing.
A bit like the album Presence by Led Zeppelin, they introduced a object placed it everywhere and people were seen to worship it.
see attached Having heard 901's Series 1V they go very loud, are very if not extremely inaccurate, but strangely manage to be a half reasonable speaker when partnered with the Series 6 equalizer.
Cheers / chris
Attachments
I had a couple of friends who had the original 901 in the early 1970s and they seemed reasonable for the time, certainly up to that point about the best thing I had heard. (I was an inexperienced teenager at the time)
My understanding is that subsequent changes made to the 901 were mostly to increase efficiency, improve LF performance, and reduce cabinet resonances.
Bose was a fairly small company at the time the 901 was introduced and was probably also constrained by the materials in common use at the time.
Can't say anything about the design except that by the standards of the day it was considered pretty avant-garde in appearance and concept. I can't think of a lot of contemporaries that we would consider very acceptable today with the exception of the Quad ESL-57 and 66. I find little from those days very tolerable to listen to - such is not necessarily the case with certain vintage drivers..
I don't think aesthetics or room integration were the primary goal of that design, but would become important in later products. The 901 after all has rather specific requirements for placement to achieve optimum performance, and was not exactly invisible either.
I left Bose more than a decade ago so anything I know is at least a decade stale, comments are my opinions only.
I'm pretty surprised to see almost 19K views on a thread of about 50 posts, probably pretty close to a record for a diyAudio thread. 😀
My understanding is that subsequent changes made to the 901 were mostly to increase efficiency, improve LF performance, and reduce cabinet resonances.
Bose was a fairly small company at the time the 901 was introduced and was probably also constrained by the materials in common use at the time.
Can't say anything about the design except that by the standards of the day it was considered pretty avant-garde in appearance and concept. I can't think of a lot of contemporaries that we would consider very acceptable today with the exception of the Quad ESL-57 and 66. I find little from those days very tolerable to listen to - such is not necessarily the case with certain vintage drivers..
I don't think aesthetics or room integration were the primary goal of that design, but would become important in later products. The 901 after all has rather specific requirements for placement to achieve optimum performance, and was not exactly invisible either.
I left Bose more than a decade ago so anything I know is at least a decade stale, comments are my opinions only.
I'm pretty surprised to see almost 19K views on a thread of about 50 posts, probably pretty close to a record for a diyAudio thread. 😀
Yeah, I did neglect the LST, but then again having lived most of my life within a stone's throw of Boston I have yet to see an LST in the flesh, can say the same for most of the rest - Spendor, Sonab, and IMF were never big in this neck of the woods. The Walsh was very cool, but not very common. The 901 on the other hand was ubiquitous. 😱 I've never been thrilled with the contemporaneous AR-3A or the the KLH-5 or 6, these were the local competition. Despite living a couple of miles from Allison Acoustics my exposure was quite limited to them. I'm actually not a fan of the 901 either, not even vaguely.. I do like the ESL-57 and could live with a pair even today. Talking personal experience here, and even as old as I am the 901 and its contemporaries were of little interest to me by the time I got to point of being able to acquire speakers of my own. (I'm currently running Iconic 165-8G woofers in big Onken boxes, and JBL horns on mids and highs so you know where I am coming from. I had and liked Magnepan 1.4, and 1.6QRs, Spica TC-50s and a few others not worth mentioning)
I found this site after acquiring a pair with the intent to do that and on the top end as well. I wanted to find frequency response/impedance graphs and figure out how to build a crossover so as to add woofer and tweeter support. Let the 901s handle the midrange and pick-up where they roll off with a better item for the job.
I'm not sure what their purpose is or could be other than a full reflected surround sound.
The change from series II to series III was the radical departure. The system went from being an acoustic suspension design (sealed) using CTS drivers to being a vented system using Bose manufactured drivers. The Bass got worse, not better but the system became far more efficient.
Both the CTS and Bose drivers are what we'd call today mid-woofers. IMO they cannot reproduce the highest octave of sound, their inertia is just too great as Gordon Holt pointed out in the original Stereophile review. What's more even if they could produce any high frequencies the sound in that range from the front driver would be entirely on axis. Since that's the sound that establishes the "precedence effect" and is largely responsible for directionality, this was a problem.
In the original design the system resonance frequency was deliberately pushed up above 180 hz because according to Bose that is where phase shift associated with resonance is no longer audible. The response falls off at a uniform 12 db per octave below resonance but the equalizer only supplies 6 db per octave boost. By adding another 4 to 6 db per octave a properly sealed and functioning pair of original and series II 901s will produce very good bass flat to 26 hz at moderate volume and to 23 hz at low volume. Power requirements are enormous to do this and multiple pairs and lots of amplifier power are needed to play loud LF tones at those frequencies.
e/e and other magazines reported an upper bass peak of around 7db at 250 hz. My pair have about an 8 db peak in my room at around 500 hz. Using the Bose supplied equalizer without further equalization the speaker falls to the 1 khz output at around 95 hz and continues on down at 6 db per octave. My pair in a 14 x 14 fairly live room will eat up 135 wpc at very low frequencies easily. At that point the amplifier is overloaded and clips but the speakers can handle twice that power continuously so there's no risk of damaging them.
The design can be salvaged turning it into a first rate system by anyone's standards but it takes a lot of skill and patience. It took me two tries, the second one requiring 4 years to be successful.
BTW, I never heard anyone say "No highs, no lows, it's Quad."
IMO adding a built-in powered bass section (not a subwoofer*) would significantly reduce the load on the user's receiver, especially since there are so few powerful stereo receivers out there to choose from AND which are equipped with a tape monitor loop (to accomodate the EQ box).
* I think the built-in bass section should reach down flat to at least 40Hz - easily done using today's long-excursion drivers and potent class-D amps - to properly accomodate the music listened to by the projected purchasers of these redesigned 901s, which IMO would mainly be rock and pop music, followed by classical listeners, especially classical fans who enjoy music played by large orchestras in large venues because IMO they might really enjoy what the 901s do for such music
TONEAudio magazine has put up the first part (of three) of their 901 review: www.tonepublications.com/review/we-review-the-bose-901/
Rats - they didn't review the all-black version! 🙂 About three years ago I saw a wireless provider commercial taking place in a stylish modern/minimalist living room & in the background was a pair of the black 901s where they fit right in and looked quite nice (about six months later another commercial [for a different product] featured a pair of Acoustic Research AR3s - dark walnut with creamy tan grill - on matching wooden four legged stands in another light colored modern room. They also blended in smoothly and like the 901s still managed to actually add to the room's attractiveness - who says speakers need to be heard but not seen!?).
FYI according to the article, the Bose salesman tried to get the reviewer to buy a Wave Radio instead, saying that nobody uses large speakers in their home these days - huh?! (though I do believe many non-music fans actually fit that description). Can you imagine what that guy would think if he saw a pair AR9s or the typical 12" OB design here on diyaudio? Probably would curl up in a fetal position on the floor! 😀
Rats - they didn't review the all-black version! 🙂 About three years ago I saw a wireless provider commercial taking place in a stylish modern/minimalist living room & in the background was a pair of the black 901s where they fit right in and looked quite nice (about six months later another commercial [for a different product] featured a pair of Acoustic Research AR3s - dark walnut with creamy tan grill - on matching wooden four legged stands in another light colored modern room. They also blended in smoothly and like the 901s still managed to actually add to the room's attractiveness - who says speakers need to be heard but not seen!?).
FYI according to the article, the Bose salesman tried to get the reviewer to buy a Wave Radio instead, saying that nobody uses large speakers in their home these days - huh?! (though I do believe many non-music fans actually fit that description). Can you imagine what that guy would think if he saw a pair AR9s or the typical 12" OB design here on diyaudio? Probably would curl up in a fetal position on the floor! 😀
Last edited:
The 2nd, and much more informative, part of the 901 review has been posted on that magazine's site.
BTW Parts-Express sells replacement drivers for several of the later series: http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=290-922
BTW Parts-Express sells replacement drivers for several of the later series: http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=290-922
Well that kind of sucked - no measurements provided of any kind except for using that Stereophile CD to check for the 901's lower frequency limit, by ear I guess. I was really looking forward to at least their frequency response and efficiency numbers. I'm not a slave to measurements since they don't tell the whole story (yet) of a speaker's personality, so the subjective description the writer provided was useful.......but no numbers at all? 🙁
Edgar Villchur of AR and his acoustic suspension ideas,should have been continued:
Edgar Villchur - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, good ideas are good ideas. why would you trade accuracy for loudness.... is there a marketing angle in there I am missing ?
as for the Quad 57, they will reproduce bass and high frequencies. The pair I own are from 1961, and required the crossover caps and resistors replaced... I regard them as the finest speakers.
Cheers / Chris
It was a matter of economics pure and simple. A different business model that changed the profit equation. The power required to get original and series II Bose 901 to produce the kind of bass it was capable of was enormous by late 1960s early 1970s standards. Only a few of the most expensive amplifiers could handle it. Crown DC 300, then entrants from Phase Linear, SAE, McIntosh 3000 monoblocks. A Heathkit showed up. The equation was $500 for the speakers, $1500 for the amplifiers and since Bose had to outsource the drivers profit margins were relatively low. What's more there were no compact discs. Unless you had excellent tape sources few recordings had much bass below 50 hz anyway. CBS (Columbia) cut low frequencies deliberatly except for pipe organ recordings to keep modulation within acceptable limits. Most turntables would suffer acoustic feedback if enough gain to produce the lowest frequencies audibly were available unless extraordinary measures were taken.
The decision to manufacture his own drivers and drop the lowest octave made power requirements modest. He could get the lions share of the profit and sell to a wider market that would buy modestly powered receivers. The bottom octave still remains the most expensive part of the audible spectrum to reproduce.
Many people in the industry regard Quad as the best speaker ever made. However, it has never been known as an excellent low frequency reproducer. By their very nature electrostatic full range systems never are, they can't move enough air. I heard an enormous one last year that must have been 8 feet tall and a few feet wide. Its bass was disappointing. At least one reviewer (might have been Julian Hirsch) said the Rectilinear III sounded exactly like the Quad but with better bass and its bass while good was not particularly outstanding even in its day.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.