Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler So I stopped into a Bose store today....

I hear you on wishing there was an Axiom, Energy, Paradigm, B&W, Dynaudio, etc store beside every Bose store. The problem is, if these companies did that, they wouldn't have any money left for proper R&D to create the great products that they do. And if there were no great products for us to evaluate and buy, then we might as well buy Bose.

Education is the key!!!! Everyone sing with me, no "highs no lows it must be", well you get the picture!!!

paul

Exactly. 'Good marketing' is about maximizing profit by whatever means and is employed by both purveyors of crap and quality with similar results.

Apple produces good products, but locks you into their proprietary world: probably the biggest reason why I don't own anything Apple.

I generally didn't like the sound of Bose systems even before knowing about their shortcomings. Despite the allure of their retail stores and great marketing, I decided to let my ears be the final judge, and thankfully, Bose was never on the list.

However, I did have a pair (and still do) of Bose Roomate II speakers that I picked up in 1990. They lacked crisp highs, and the lows were abysmal, but they sounded better than any 'boom box' I've heard up to that point.

Each bass reflex enclosure comes with one full range driver. The amp sits in one of the enclosures and all you need is a source. For me it was my Walkman, or a portable CD player. I kept the speakers on each end of my desk in college and was fine with the sound they produced.

After college, I lent them to a friend who used them for 4 years or so and he enjoyed them as well. So much so that he ended up buying a home cube system.

Awhile back, I plugged the Roomates in just for old times sake, and the cheap 2.1 Logitech setup with my PC easily bested the Bose speakers. Still, I cant get rid of them for nostalgic reasons, and even tried using them as the 'height' channel in my current setup (didn't work out). I believe you can see the left speaker sitting on my entertainment center in the gallery.

While I don't care for the Bose sound, some of thier smaller products aren't half bad...just pricey.

There's a second reason I don't own anything Apple, price. When I was building my current computer I was using a work-provided MacBook, and liking OS X. I figured I'd see what a Mac Pro would cost configured similarly to the PC I was considering: dual quad core processors, 16 GB of RAM, two 15k RPM drives large enough to run the OS from RAID1, also a slower 10k RPM storage array of mirrored 1 TB disks--all SAS controlled. A 512 MB video card, and a 26" professional quality LCD.

Long story short, my PC build cost $6000. If I were to get the Apple it would have been $11,000. I prefer Windows 7 to OS X too (prefer Ubuntu Linux to both).

When I was in college one of my roommates had Bose 901's. Everyone thought they were the "bomb" or whatever the expression is these days. (I heard my daughter using the term "Baller" to describe excellent football tickets). I have never been in a Bose store - do they still make that type product? Would 901's stand up to the Axiomite crowd?

The Bose 901s are some of the least flat speakers ever made. To get around this Bose includes an EQ to flatten their response. They're so bad that there's not enough headroom in the auto-EQing systems of today's receiver to correct them. So one must use the tape-loop to insert Bose's EQ into the signal path. Too bad no one builds receivers with tape-loops anymore. Additionally the amount of gain applied to some of the audio bands reduces the headroom of the amp in the receiver and can cause it to distort/clip.

The 901s were Bose's first foray into gimmickry.

We can't have a thread bashing Bose and Apple without mentioning the Monster .

Crap, I did speak down upon Apple and Bose in the same thread. I must just be full of bile today.

Monster is just so blatant in their deception, they're almost not worth attacking. It's the companies like Transparent Audio, Nordost, Shunyata Research, etc. Which take Monster's over-priced hype to a whole new level.

You are not full of bile at all :). With Monster, the frivolous trademark lawsuits really bother me the most. Like Apple and Bose, Monster sells overpriced products and each company in their own way takes part in misleading marketing, something I sure do not want to support. I also hate the proprietary thing with Bose and Apple.

How do I hook my Bose bass module up to my receiver?

I don't know that it's fair to lump Apple in with Bose. Apple's stuff (mostly) works as advertised.