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OT- Did Bose 901 speakers improve over the years ?

Milacron

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In other words, do the series VI sound better than older models ? And before anyone says it, yes I know placement, room size, room shape, and room type (hardwood or carpeted) is important..plus the equalizer and matching era amp...just want to know if "newer is better" and which series would offer the most bang for buck when it pops up on eBay or Craigslist.

And can you get absolute 3D sound illusion with just a pair if placed correctly in the right size/type/shape room ?
 
Don't know about Bose speakers, but yes, you can absolutely get the proper soundstage with a good 2 channel setup.
 
Obligatory Bose-bashing, lifted from audiokarma.org:

"Seems this is the appropriate time to post the old Bose/Klipsch joke;

So, Paul W. Klipsch (the creator of the Klipschorn and founder of Klipsch) was walking down the street one day, and he saw Dr. Amar Bose on the other side of the street. Paul stops, faces Amar, cups his hands around his mouth, and clearly yells, "Hello Amar!" Amar hears Pauls loud voice and stops. He immediately turns 180-degrees from Paul, puts his hands over his mouth, and mutters, "Hello Paul." Paul shrugs his shoulders and walks away."

Re: 3D... If you want 3D imaging, skip ahead in time and look at Dolby Atmos systems. Although primarily home theater units, they will play music as well, especially that which is mastered for it. Bring some of your music with you when you audition it. (Best Buy will have a system; not that you have to buy it there.) After hearing, you still may like the Bose, which is fine if you like it. It's your money.

Chip
 
I think that the Series 3 and 4 have foam surrounds and will be old enough to likely require new surrounds. The Series 1 and 2 have cloth surrounds and some feel that their sound is superior.

In any case, all of these may require re-capping of the EQ.
 
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"Did Bose 901 speakers improve over the years"

no. they continued to suck.

no highs...no lows...

better have 200 wpc+ to push those soggy things , or you're wasting your (our) time . that
fancy crossover'd better be completely recapped too, as well as the 18 little speakers refoamed.
unless you have a huge amp (100 wpc isn't even close) it doesn't matter what they sound like-you'd never hear it. they
are the least efficient things , after maybe a pair of bricks.

if you insist on listening to period stereo equipment with gimmicky imaging..... get some Polk SDAs .
 
Cerwin Vega D8 had good sound for the punch but we should have got the klips...

Reform the surrounds and good to go.

Bose requires too much power to be heard.

Simple attenuate to least common response where others had wide responding transducers that made god sound with little input.

Picked up nice altec at thrift store but only had one so it is now a table...

Go back to late 60 or 70 when watts were expensive and that was when speakers were good.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337Z using Tapatalk
 
If it's imaging you want and you have no room restraints (read SWMBO), Magneplanars blow everything else away. I have a set of early 80s MG1s and, once you get them set in the exact spots in the room, you cannot walk in the room with the lights out and point at a speaker to say, "that's where the sound comes from". You can walk anywhere in the room and the sound is the same. My computer desk is 3 feet from the left and almost behind the plane. I can hear the right speaker from 15 feet away just as if I was in my chair equal distance from both. You can actually hear the locations of instruments in the studio. Last week,I was listening to a radio show and suddenly a set of maracas was playing behind my left shoulder. They are really freaky, even if you are used to them. Next best I ever had was mid 80s Polk RTA 12s. Had to be in front of them, as usual, but they imaged better than any other box speaker system I have ever heard.
 
better be some new maggies... the old ones were made from bits of tape to hold the bar magnets and traces in place
on the film . when they delaminate... game over. it costs a small fortune to get them redone. again..... better
have a huge amp to drive those . they're also wildly inefficient....but big,thin ,flat bricks.
unlike blose, they actually sound great .
 
" it costs a small fortune to get them redone. "

Don't know who told you that. Magnepan sells the glue to put the wires back on the mylar for about $5 a bottle and it takes an afternoon to do. I have not done mine yet, but they could use it. Get a little snare drum sounding if you push the low end. I have a 200w Klipsh powered sub that more than accomodates the bottom.

As for power, they can use all you can give them, but they sound great with my Harman/Kardon A700 tube amp pushing them at only 35watts/ch. It's not stupid loud, but I get that o'plenty with my rock band. This is a comfortable listening level you can tolerate for hours on end.

As for the Martin/Logans, a friend had a set. No significant difference in sound, except the subs, which the Klipsch mentioned above handles.
 
$5 is cool . the $300 my friend paid to have his refurbed years ago did include new grill socks and cleaning up
the furniture. i've refoamed for $4 and accomplished the same thing .

back to the op... i'll bet the 901 sound about the same if they're in similar health. the newer one could be
an improvement , but like said - might have rotten surrounds .. so maybe the older model is superior..
 
Boy, volumes have been written on that subject. Can you get "absolute 3D sound illusion"? I think the experts will say NO! Not with any two speaker system. Not with a three or four or five speaker system either.

The system that seems to have come closest to "absolute 3D sound illusion" is not stereophonic sound. It is binaural sound.

binaural recording - Bing

It was clear from the beginning that binaural sound was not going to be practical as each listener would have to wear headphones and high quality ones at that.

Stereophonic sound came from the idea that if you could draw an imaginary wall between the performance and the listener in the audience and place a succession of microphones across that wall to record the wave front at each and every point on it and then have a succession of speakers on a similar wall in the home or other listening area they would reproduce the original wave front for a listener in that listening area. Each speaker would be connected to one of the microphones with a separate channel and they would be in the same arrangement as the original microphones. Obviously, this idea has a lot of problems. The areas where the sounds are recorded will be different in size from the areas where the listener will be. So some scaling will be needed. Then, the spaces for each listener (their den or living room or wherever) will also be different from one listener to the next. Finally, it is not possible to have an infinite number of microphones or speakers. We could lower that number to the enough to have the microphones placed less than one wavelength at the highest frequency of interest (20 KHz) but even then we would have a lot of microphones and speakers. 331.2 m/s / 20,000 /s = 0.01656m or converted to mm 16.56 mm. So we would need a microphone every 16.5mm and if an orchestra was on a stage 10 meters wide that would be over 600 microphones and recorded channels of audio and amplifiers and speakers. Ain't gonna happen. So they decided to cut the number down - WAY DOWN. They decided that since the whole thing was going to be a compromise anyway, they would use just two microphones and two recorded channels and two speakers. That was the basic idea of stereophonic sound. And there is no way it will EVER produce "absolute 3D sound illusion".

The debates on this have been endless for decades now. And I am not anxious to get into it with anyone here and now.

Once you know that it is not completely possible, you also know that you can improve the illusion of 3D sound with things like recording medium, electronics and amplifier, speaker type, speaker placement, room size and shape, and many other factors. In any such listening area there will be a preferred listening area and other areas where the 3D illusion will not be so good. It will never be perfect and there will always be room for more improvement. You can probably get it to the point where 99 blindfolded people out of 100 will not be able to tell if they are in your den listening to a pair of speakers or in a theater listening to a live orchestra. But there will always be that 100th person or the 1000th one or the 10,000th one. Basically you have to decide on what's good enough for you. I worked as an engineer in the TV industry and had to produce professional quality sound recordings for all of my career. Here in my office I have a sound system that uses a $35 amplifier and a pair of $100 speakers. I know that, with my 73 year old ears, I could easily spend hundreds or even thousands more dollars and not hear any difference. I am quite happy with that system. Frankly I doubt that many people can actually hear the difference beyond perhaps the $200 or $300 point if the money is spent wisely and the system installed properly.

As for those who claim that they can her the difference with $1000 or $5000 speakers, I have never found one of them to prove it with a double-blind test. They always find some excuse to defend the expensive speakers even after picking the less expensive ones.



Don't know about Bose speakers, but yes, you can absolutely get the proper soundstage with a good 2 channel setup.
 
I can tell the difference between a live band playing a mile away[literally] or someone with a loud stereo at a short distance. There are plenty of high end audio products that sound great, but they never ever sound like a live performance. It has to do with dynamic range and something I don't know the term for, but basically impact. Walk into a club and the drum kit vibrates your rib cage. One does not hear entirely with ones ears, it is the impact on your body that does not get recorded and does not get reproduced, so I do not see the point in chasing your tail on ever higher end audio.

I remember listening to Dark Side of the Moon on quadraphonic vinyl and you would swear the grandfather clock was sitting in the corner

I like silk soft dome tweeters over all else, prefer large cabinet speakers to sub woofers and can tell the difference between an amp with real power and one with an IC that claims to produce 100 watts.

I remember hearing a set of Ohm F's that impressed me some years ago, but otherwise a good 'Merican or Brit speaker is good enough

As to the actual subject, never heard anything overly impressive about the Bose. I think it depends on your whether your room is right for them.
 
I was a stockboy at a stereo place, and got to hear many good speakers.

It wasn't until I walked into a competitors store, that sold Klipschorns, did I ever
hear the stereo separation that good.
 
In other words, do the series VI sound better than older models ? And before anyone says it, yes I know placement, room size, room shape, and room type (hardwood or carpeted) is important..plus the equalizer and matching era amp...just want to know if "newer is better" and which series would offer the most bang for buck when it pops up on eBay or Craigslist.

And can you get absolute 3D sound illusion with just a pair if placed correctly in the right size/type/shape room ?
I have a decibel meter and a stereo setup dvd by a company called Avia(i think that's the name).
It helped me set up my 7.1 Onkyo system with Polk Audio speakers and a booming Velodyne 1500w subwoofer.
Without those 2 tools, it would have been a mess to get perfect.

Pretty sure they had a chapter on 2 speaker setups as well.
 
[lots of good stuff skipped] As for those who claim that they can hear the difference with $1000 or $5000 speakers, I have never found one of them to prove it with a double-blind test. They always find some excuse to defend the expensive speakers even after picking the less expensive ones.

But don't you agree $100/foot speaker wire makes a HUGE difference? :)
 








 
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