Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Bose 901 comparaison

Hey Martin!
Welcome to the boards. I have owned Bose 901's for about 25 years now. People love to slam Bose and I think that comes from some of the questionable lifesyle concepts they have come up with to get a share of the mass market. Still, even those, I don't think are as bad as people love to say they are. The 901's however do not fall into that mass market category. They are considered Bose flagship model and for good reason. I have heard the 901's in some outstanding settings. Actually I have even had mine in some very decent sounding settings.Unfortunately, I have had mine in more unsatisfactory settings than good ones. Due to the design of the 901's, placement is very tricky. Also, as someone else has already mentioned, they are power hungry. The more you can supply the better they like it.Unfortunately for me, I could never afford the high powered units that would be well suited to these speakers.

Sorry I have never heard the 80's but I do have the 60's(supposedly the same sound just not quite as low) which I bought to replace my 901's.One of the things I didn't like about the 901's was the lack of LF's.
I bought the 60's strictly for music. They are not currently being used for HT. Of course, when I first got them I had to put them in the HT just out of curiosity. Wow, what a difference over the Polk Audio 6600 set. Well I had no intention of getting rid of the 901's, so I was trying to decide if I would put them in the bedroom or what I would do with them? So I decided what the heck I'll try them in the HT as my mains. At first I was unhappy with that. The direct/reflecting design seemed to wreak havoc with the delay settings and the volume wasn't there and the voices seemed a little echoey. Then I started thinking that they should be outstanding front speakers because of the multiple small drivers. I couldn't stop the voice in my head "no highs, no lows must be Bose" . Well I was going to take them out and just use them as a secondary music setup in the bedroom. Then I thought that most of the job of the fronts and center are for voice and dialogue in the HT setup, so I decided to turn the 901's around.Yep use them in reverse of the way they were designed to operate. I recalibrated with this configuration and the sound is just amazing. I have a new found respect for my 25 year old speakers.

I got the Lucinda Williams Live in Austin DVD for Christmas. When the house was empty I put it in and cranked up the system a little extra loud. The sound was fantastic. I was several tracks into the disc before I realized that the player had defaulted to stereo. I could not believe that all I was hearing was the 901's and the subwoofer. No center and no surrounds. Had I known this from the get go I might have just added a sub to the 901's and never have found out about Axiom. Don't get me wrong I love the 60's. I have also since bought 3ti's and love those as well. I'm now considering whether to get 22's of 50's for the bedroom. Or get the 22's and put them in the HT as mains and finally move the 901's to the bedroom. One thing I'm sure of, I will not be getting rid of the 901's anytime soon. I know the sub makes all the difference, but hey, it works.

One of the things to consider if you are looking a 901's is, it is widely beleived among their own fans that the series 1 was good the series 2 was better and then they decided to go for more efficiency and they went down hill from there. Not sure how true this is, but I have seen that in print more than once. I also want to say that I retired the equalizer from the speakers a long time ago. It is not necessary to use it with that in line. It just gives a little added control for different room acoustics. I don't feel the 901's would be good as surrounds because of their difficulty in placement. But who knows maybe if you turn them around and use them backwards maybe you'll be lucky too. Bottom line is mine is a work around or making due with what I have. If I was doing it today I would say go with the 80's unless you can get the Bose for a steel. The 80's, or even the 60's for that matter, will not disappoint.
oz

I haven't listened to 901s for a lot of years, but here's what I remember :

- as long as you used the EQ, the frequency response was surprisingly good

- they played more loudly than you would expect from a bunch of little speakers, although they started to sound congested at high volumes

- the direct / reflecting was really nice for listening to content where precise imaging wasn't an issue (eg. an orchestra) but I missed the sharp imaging of a regular speaker system. Quad ELSs (or Maggies etc...) seemed to give the same nice spacious feeling but without losing the imaging sharpness when listening to quartets etc...

I would seriously consider going with 901s if only for the nostalgia factor, but I honestly think M80s would be better all-round speakers. The 901s suck power because of the heavy EQ required... the levels are taken way down in the midrange where the speakers are naturally efficient, and boosted in the bass and treble. To Bose's credit, the resulting sound WAS pretty darned good.

As someone else posted, I always thought 901s would make fantastic surrounds. There is the EQ issue but worst case you could address that by putting the EQ between the surround pre-outs and a cheap outboard amp.

EDIT -- just one more voice saying that Bose did NOT get their bad reputation from the 901s. That came much later...

In the owners manual Bose says that not using the equalizer will have the effect of no highs or lows with the 901s. This comes directly from Bose. I tried to listen to them without the eq in place and to me they sounded just awful. The eq is an essential part of the design of the speaker.

Well I guess Bose aught to nose

>>In the owners manual Bose says that not using the equalizer will have the effect of no highs or lows with the 901s.

"No highs, no lows, EQ that Bose" ?

So where do Bose 301's fit in all of this? A friend of mine is trying to decide if he should use them as surrounds with M22s in the front - or as fronts with a VP center and QS surrounds - or just leave them in the attic where they are now and buy an all-Axiom system.

I thought 301s were OK but not great. They have the little vane for direct/reflecting, right ?

If your friend has the $$, go with an all-Axiom system (QS8s really make a difference and if he buys all 5 at once he gets a 5% discount) but if he doesn't want to spend the money the 301s would be perfectly fine as surrounds for a while. I would use them as surrounds rather than mains if he has a sub... if no sub then not sure which is better as a full-range but the M22s will be quite a bit better across most of the frequency range.