JZ1276

So my friend just bought a house and is asking me advice about what kind of receiver/speakers to get for his media room. (This is the type of guy that chose to spend $100 on a Monster HDMI cable rather than spending $6 @ monoprice b/c he thinks it would be a lesser quality cable). After throwing around a couple of brands he mentions BOSE. I see how most people trash bose on this and other forums, and told him not to bother with it. When he asks why I really didnt know what to say except for the amount of money you would spend on bose equipment, you can get something much better from Pioneer, Onkyo, Denon, etc.
Is Bose as bad as everyone says (and why) or just overpriced ?

Premise

Extremely overpriced. Just remember the old saying: If there's no highs and no lows, it must be Bose.

matrixrok9

They are overpriced but it seems like your friend is pretty stubborn. If he's, no explanation will change his mind.

SoSpacey

Bose....Better sound through marketing!

Friends dont let friends buy Bose.

Bose stinks. You can chalk it up to "just overpriced" if it makes you feel better but they just stink. You pay $1100 for a system that should cost $200. And $200 systems STINK. The Base "module" produces no base. Highs are non-existent. Do they even offer an HD solution? Do they support HDMI? Decode HD-Audio?

Tell your friend to post his budget and we will collectively put together a package for him.

Or he can buy his Bose, impress morons who dont know any better and get laughed at by anyone who knows a lick about audio.

mrhan

Read the following:


http://www.intellexual.net/bose.html

Sdallnct

Yes, Bose really is that bad.

The one thing Bose had going are small, easy to hide/place slick looking speakers. But now many a speaker maker has those. There simply is not a reason to buy Bose any more.

Brian Shannon

Do a search here for many, many threads on BOSE.

The bottom line is that for the same money you can buy better products. As yourself this, why does BOSE have their own store or in a larger store why are their products setup so that they cannot be directly compared to any other speakers?

The reason is fairly obvious.

GreenMonkey

This is what to read.

Put it this way. They violate the principles of what makes good sound.

Bass, say under 80hz, can be anywhere, because the ear can't pick out a location for it. Bose bass modules run way above that - thus, they are producing sounds that are supposed to be directional - in the surrounds, or fronts, or wherever - from the module instead.

They do all sorts of stuff like this.

I listen to Bose speakers every day in my Grand Prix simply because they are custom wired somehow and a PITA to remove and rewire the car. Yes, they go very loud. But high pitched notes like on violins and electric guitars all sound very scratchy and painful to the ear.

I never realized how bad my in-car Bose sounded until I got my $300 Fluance HT speakers - which don't make my ears hurt on highs, even though they are extreme budget speakers.

shelland

I agree that's a good reason. But I don't think the employees understand that. I've heard more than one retail employee telling a customer that Bose is considered the best of the best. And I don't think it was a sales pitch - I think that's what they believe.

JZ1276

OK well after talking with my friend again and finding out he doesnt want to spend more than $400 the point is mute. I told him to get a pioneer/Onkyo receiver/speaker package.

TGM

That bad? no.

Worth the $$$? no.

tommyp007

Buy
Other
Sound
Equipment

Spiky

And the funny thing is, they don't have much in the middle, either.

Bose makes Walmart look like a saint.

Brian Shannon

At the price point he is definitely NOT a BOSE customer

Drexl

Here are some helpful placement tips for someone considering Bose. They don't actually mention them by name, but you can tell it's what he means. Unfortunately the article is from a few years ago, and won't be helpful for a flat-panel display.

http://www.audioholics.com/tweaks/sp...cubed-speakers

Spiky

"Bass transients". LOL!!

hahn

It's not that Bose is bad, exactly. It's that they are nowhere near worth the price tag that they are putting on them. And you absolutely can find MUCH higher quality speakers at the equivalent price. They do put out a few products that I do think are pretty good. I like their triport headphones. But in the speaker arena, stay away.

Here's a very simple way of convincing your friend. Take virtually ANY well-known speaker company (Pardigm, NHT, Klipsch, JBL, etc), go to their website, pick out a pair of speakers, select their "specifications", and print them out. Now challenge your friend to find a pair of Bose speakers on their website with better specs. He won't be able to find them because Bose doesn't list their specs. Not on their website. Not anywhere. Because they know perfectly well, if people use specs to compares speakers, they wouldn't be able to charge the exorbitant prices they charge.

Their bookshelf speakers are decent sounding, but they just aren't worth their price. Their tiny cube speakers just plain suck. It's an audio illusion that the sound good because people are surprised you can get decent quality sound from such a small speaker. But Bose would have to break the laws of physics to actually produce a wider frequency and tonal range than larger speakers from other manufacturers. Hint: they can't change the laws of physics.

JZ1276

Thanks for all the advice. I'm talking about a guy here who knows NOTHING about a/v equipment. Like I mentioned before, even if he still wants Bose, he wont be able to with his $400 price range anyway. I recommended an onkyo/pioneer receiver/speaker package.

hdtv00

you ask me bose or one of those totally shit packages....which would you guys choose....

Spiky

Sorry, the redundancy in your post makes it hard to answer.

rockinbrian19

So he will spend $100 on a cable but only $400 on 5 speakers, a subwoffer and receiver? Sounds like a lost cause to me.

CKMorpheus

Hey its his money. If he want to give it away, so be it. Keeps competition stiff and prices down for us consumers who wants better products

dhmac

A long time ago, more than 10 years, my brother and I went inside one of the Bose store. We weren't planning to buy anything but were just browsing around to kill time. And I knew nothing about the "real" story of Bose and naively thought they were a good audio brand. A salesman there wanted to give us a demo and took us into a room. In the front were a pair of large speakers. He then started up the demo and music played from the speakers. And, I have to admit, it sounded pretty good. At some point as a part of the demo, the salesman went up and removed the large speaker enclosures, and underneath were the little Bose Cubes. At the time, I was impressed and would've liked to own them. (Don't worry I didn't buy anything from Bose then or later.)

A few years later, when I actually was shopping for Home Theater speakers, I started reading the online opinions saying that Bose were terrible speakers. It surprised me at first, because I could still remember how good the speakers sounded in the Bose demo, but then I read a lot of online comments that said those demos were rigged with equalization and such to make that demo sound good, but anyone who bought the speakers would never hear that good sound quality again once they got them home.

And then, while in a Best Buy a year or so after that, I noticed that the store had the Bose Cubes installed in their DVD room, playing the sound from movie trailers that were running on screens in the room. I listened carefully to the speakers focusing mainly on the background music in the trailers... and the speakers sounded like crap! They quite frankly reminded me of low quality car speakers with no range at all (it made me immediately think of the funny saying "No highs, no lows - It must be Bose"). To make a long story short: yep, Bose blows.

Commander Dan

Having worked for Bose ("Retail Direct Group") a few years ago, I have a somewhat unique perspective of Bose, their products, and how they do things.

Whoever came up with the slang term “Better Sound Through Marketing” couldn’t be more correct. Indeed, marketing seems to be the only thing Bose is interested in. So much so, that it trumps the interests of their own customers, the expertise and advice of their own employees, and the development of their own equipment. They certainly have little to no interest in informing either their customers or even their own employees with crucial technical knowledge regarding their products. Instead, they are interested in keeping well-spoken mind-numbed robots employed that are willing to simply regurgitate pre-written dialog.

Indeed, this has gotten so bad that last I heard, potential new-hires are required to cite at least part of the Bose “Listening to Life” script as part of their interview process. Bose seemingly has no use for employees that challenge the way things are done, or even the way the audio equipment operates. In fact, one would think that a supposed “high-end” home audio store would be delighted to have had someone with my credentials employed for them.

I have a degree in Commercial Music and Music Education. (And for those wondering, my stint at Bose was merely something temporary, while I was looking for a job in my actual field of study). As it turned out, however, my background was totally inconsequential to them. And in the end, I believe upper management thought of me as an annoyance more than anything, as I was always challenging why things were done the way they were, as well as attempting to address the glitches and shortcomings of certain products.

Bose does make some good stuff, but it is always far overpriced, for seemingly no other reason than inflated profits. Speakers are constructed from paper cones, bass modules from laminated particleboard, Lifestyle systems are pieced together using over-the-shelf items such as Toshiba drives, and most products are made in Mexico.

I always tell folks (now that I am no longer employed by Bose) that if you absolutely HAVE to have Bose speakers, get one of their speaker packages and operate off of your own receiver. Unless things have changed in recent years, their Lifestyle systems and 321 systems are riddled with glitches.

I would often get frustrated when systems would have to be frequently unplugged to “reset” the system (powering it down simply wouldn’t do it). Systems would sometimes shutdown (crash) inexplicably. Static and popping might sometimes occur, even in the “Bose Music Theater,” and the system would have to be “reset.”

Yet, when I would try to discuss these issues with upper management, I saw no concern whatsoever. I was told that these are “computer-based” systems that do crash from time-to-time. I tried to explain that with these systems costing thousands of dollars, that customers paying such a premium price would expect them to be glitch-free! But I simply saw no concern for these issues. Management was far more concerned with whether all the light bulbs in the store were working. (Literally!)

I worked at a Bose store for nearly two years, and I always tell people that Bose is far from the supposed end-all be-all of audio. You can certainly find better equipment at equivalent or even cheaper prices.

milo bloom

Commander Dan, your post reminds of me of stories I've read from film students who try to get a job at a video rental store part-time while still in school or something. They always got the impression that the management didn't want somebody knowledgeable in film, just somebody that could work a cash register, because 99% of the customers weren't interested in the latest Dogme 95 masterpiece, they just wanted the newest Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson yuk-fest.


As for my Bose story, when our baby was about a month old, we went shopping for a new laptop for my wife so she could work from home. As we went through Fry's Electronics, we realized the laptops were near the stereo demo's, and they were cranked pretty high that day. We knew they would wake the baby (sleeping in his carrier in the cart) so I ran ahead to start turning down the stereos. As I turned down the Sony's, Panasonic's, Onkyo's, I noticed it was getting quieter, but there was still some lingering malaise in the back of my head. When I cranked down the volume of the next unit on the shelf, while there was still some loud music going from another unit, all of a sudden this pain lifted from my head. I looked at the nameplate. Bose. It wasn't the volume, it was the poor sound reproduction that was giving me a headache.

I never had a good opinion of Bose before that, but it was mainly from online testimonials such as these. Experiencing it firsthand was like an epiphany. If anyone ever needs convincing, take them to a store that stocks multiple brands, and do something like I just described. If the specs (or lack thereof) won't convince them, their own ears should.