I received the Bose 201 IV as a present, and they were simply AWESOME! The only problem, I must have had a factory defect, because both tweeters began to smoke one day. Now I have the 301 IV which provides an even more realistic sound. That is the point of these speakers, not to make big loud sound, but rather to provide real sound. There is a big difference and real gets my vote anyday.

Describing why the 201 sounds bad (and this applies to all Bose Speakers) is easy. The need for an IQ slightly higher than the outside temperature is not required in this case.First of all, Bose Speakers are built very cheaply: 1/2" medium density particle board, hard card board ports, plastic (?) for the 201, 301, the ridiculous little cubes. All cabinets are very poorly dampened.
Second of all, the drivers are cheap junk imported from Taiwan; they would cost you (Bose got them cheaper because of the large quantities OVER 15 years for the 201 and 301,ie, 30 years for the 901) between $2.50 and $7 a unit.
Third, the cross-overs are made of cheap electronics, and are absolutely not elaborated.
Fourth, their theories are NOT GOOD. Direct/Reflecting is something unwanted because soudstage and imaging are uncontrolled, and their multi-bass chambers, which are 6th order band-pass are crossed-over above 500Hz, which is very bad (they actually make false claims saying that their bass-modules can be placed anywhere because Bass is non-directional. Their chambers actually deal with a little bit of bass, and with a great deal of upper-bass and mid-range. But that's OK they've got good lawiers).
Fifth, all this for a lot of money.
And last, another reason to not buy Bose. When you walk in a Bose Factory Store, you'll encounter some employees telling you, just like robots or humans who got a brain wash: "We're proud of our products. Bose is a good company to work for. Enjoy the show. Enjoy the magic of Bose"
A good company to work for?
They sued a student for saying bad things on the internet, just like this post for instance.
They sued Thiel for naming their speakers a little bit too close to Bose Model (2.1 3.1etc...)
They sued Consumer Report for giving Bose speakers bad quotes (Now the exact same products have good quotes...)
They pay tremendous amount of money to magazines to not review their products, and if they do, give them a 5 stars.
For now, I have to give them a star, and I hate it.

First, Bose products are not worth the price tag.I disagree with a few things that are said by the majority of 'hi-fi'
lovers. There are ways to cut costs in construction and still get a
quality product, if you know the proper corners to cut. Bose obviously
does'nt know what these corners are, they simply have cut all corners
instead. Bose offers no quality in any area in their construction
methods. Most companies selling speakers in the $100-$400 price range
at least bother to give the consumer something in the construction that
offers worth, but not Bose.

One example of quality in cost cutting construction is Technics.
Technics offers a classic 3-way loudspeaker design with 6db/per octave crossovers and matched drivers. The woofer is a poly-laminated cone with
foam surround. The mid-range is also poly-laminted with a foam surround.
The tweeter is nice sounding for a paper-tweeter, and seems to match the
sound of the woofer and mid. It is a bass-reflex design that pulls
the most from the woofers in terms of bass response. The areas of cost
cutting were in the cabinet being 1/2" particle board and the internal
wiring is thin. Now the area of quality was the design stage in the
engineering aspect. First, rounded edged cabinets for reducing defraction.
Second, the dimensions of the cabinet were specifically designed for
the best response from the woofer they employed. Third, they use plastic
sound 'focusers' around the drivers that prevent unwanted wall reflections,
further reducing defration based irritants and keeping the soundstage
where they intend it to be. I admit that 'dampening' was not a high
priority, but Technics cut only the corners they needed to in order to
merge a 'high' quality design with a cost conscious construction. For
$145 dollars a pair, you cannot beat the sound reproduction. I've found
that the 12" 3-ways sound superior, even to speakers costing up to $1000.

Back to Bose, who use paper drivers in the most important parts of the
frequency spectrum. Tweeters can be paper drivers because the human
ear does'nt hear the particulars of high frequency sound. Bose uses
low quality paper drivers for the woofers and mids. They also design
speakers to USE DEFRACTION and reflection to force ambience (i.e. their Direct/Reflect design that bounces sound off the walls).
This is why so many people do not like the sound Bose speakers
make after prolonged exposure to them. Defraction almost always irritates
the listener during long listening periods. I'm not the only one who
notices this, but Bose is the only speaker line that has low efficiency
speakers that sound like sandpaper. Low efficiency usually equals softer
sound, but not Bose speakers. I have no idea why Bose brags about their
engineering when it is obvious that a child's imagination thought their
speaker designs up. Few engineers believe that reflected sound is better
than direct sound. Direct sound is always best. The only reason to
reflect the sound is to add ambience (like in THX rated speakers that use
dipole speakers for the rear channels) in small rooms. Bose also uses
poorly thought out cross over points for their sub/sat designs.

In closing, Bose is the worst speaker designer/manufacturer I can think of
today. They use idiotic engineering theories (cabinets that do not play
to the strengths of the drivers used), sloppy design methods, and
cut EVERY conceivable corner in construction (wires, cabinet, drivers,
bonding materials(glue, no screws), also advertise and price thier goods
in the 'quality' price range. So I conclude that the Bose company is
IGNORANT, LAZY, and GREEDY. They are no different than a street thug
trying to sell a cheap quartz watch as a rolex. The average buyer
doesn't know what a rolex looks like, so they buy it, thinking they got
a quality item for a resonable price. Shame on Bose. My sympathies
to anyone who bought from B.O.S.E.(Buyer Obtained Sulphorous Extcrement).
It is not your fault that Bose misled you.

Timothy

Resale to the uninitiated, marketing to the uninformed masses, reputation among the uneducated, and customer support. Most of all environmental as the paper drivers deteriate after about 5-10 years and future generations won't have to worry about over filling of the landfills.

Sound quality (this is comparing at it's price point vs other bookshelves), build quality, reputation among the educated, and accuracy.

The only good thing about this speaker is that you can return it in the first 30 days after purchase (take this to an audio store with you and directly compare them to the speakers above and prepare to return these). Even if you make the mistake of buying these more than 30 days ago, some poor uneducated fool will buy these for about 70-80% of what you paid at one of those auction sites (this is of course if you have no conscience). This is a horrible product at it's price point.

The reason why people complain about this is that it's extremely poor build quality contributes to it's horrible attempt to reproduce good sound (it produces horrible sound even worse) at it's price point (speakers in this price point make compromises usually in the bass and bright tweets but not as much as this company). The first thing to notice is that this uses spring-clip connectors which limit wire size and therefore limits the quality/quantity of the signal sent to be reproduced. Using an untreated non-reinforced paper for a woofer/mid-range cone causes flexing of the driver surface and thus the sound reproduced will be severly colored (in this case an over emphasis in the mid-bass and cupped hand sound in the vocals). This same approach for a tweeter is far worse as paper resonates at this frequency and at best this speaker produces highs that will be colored and distorted (harshness which is noticed in the brass like cymbals hiss instead of clash and decay). Some of this sound could still be salvaged if they used an actual cross-over instead of inline capacitors (thus a better way to separate frequencies and steer the correct frequency to the correct driver), sound dampening materials (control standing waves inside the box from coming back and re-hitting the cone's surface), or better braced/isolated cabinet (which adds it's own coloration). Another noticible engineering flaw that this company uses and actually promote is "direct-reflecting" as this contributes to the miss-timing of the upper frequencies and causes a dopplar effect in sound which is good in diffusing rear ambiant noise but not in direct sound which is the desire that is produced from well recorded sources (the 11% direct/ 89% reflected is stupid as you don't tell your significant other during an argument to face away from you so they can hear 89% of what you say to get your point across). Remember good materials with good engineering will produce much better sound than good engineering with poor materials or worse yet bad engineering with poor materials.

Anyone listening to any of the other speakers in the "similar product" list can state whether that these other products reproduce either poor/average/good/great in the categories of bass/mids/highs which are the three categories used to evaluate a speaker's sound reproduction quality and from this extrapolate a standard of accuracy. Fortunately for speakers of this category (bookshelves) bass quality needs only to be measure down to 80hz (100hz for earlier generation decoders subwoofer signal cut-off for blending) as most likely a sub will be used to integrate for the lower frequencies. Unfortunately for this speaker it scores poor in all these categories as it suffers from a notey mid-bass hump (bass 60-120hz), colored "cup-hand" vocals (mids), and harsh sizzling trebles (highs) compared to these other speakers. Loudness is a factor I don't consider and I'll concede that this speaker can play louder than some of the above speakers and maybe better in bass to those that don't know what quality bass sounds like but unfortunately not in any form of accuracy.

The funny part is that this company has it's speakers in sound-treated rooms (ironic since this hampers the "direct-reflecting" sound), on the best equipment in that store, using/suppling frequency limited Q-sound recorded sources, on a separate switcher (thus making it almost impossible to do direct comparisons with other product), and at standing auditioning height (other speakers have controlled dispersion which is noticible when toed-in and when you sit-down) makes you wonder how much better the competition would sound if the store set them up for a truly fair comparison shopping situation.

Note that Bose does make professional gear but notice that the following might shock you about Bose: none of their speakers are THX rated, none of their speakers are used for professional mixing by professional studioes (movies or music), none of them are used at your local cinemaes/movie theaters (mostly JBL), and none of them are used by any main-stream professional musicians (most are JBL). Though it is used in some stadiums for PA systems this is the easiest venue for sound production. Even the rock-n-roll hall of fame use Optimus speakers so this should make you wonder how much this company really knows about reproducing sound (Nasa uses them for sound cancelling but not sound reproducing).

"Better sound thru Research" is a Bose motto that almost everyone has heard them market but not deliver on. Even the people who owned the older generation of Bose talk about the decline in quality of sound and build that this company has suffered over the years. Really makes you wonder better sound than whom. If I had to answer this I would say their other speakers (301, 141, 100, VCS-10, AM-series, 501s, but I can't say about the 701 or the 901 since I haven't heard them personally) as this speaker seems to me more accurate than the others and sounds much better than the rest of the Bose line-up.

If you end up buying these expect to replace them within 5-10 years as they will suffer from speaker rot (moving them to a second room for the kids will be a temporary solution). The easiest way to compare this is to the factory-stock car speakers of cars in 80s and their predecessors since most of them use paper drivers which most people replaced before they rotted (paper just has a poor sound quality). Bose understands marketing trends not sound engineering and should only be bought if you intend to make others of your uninformed circle of friends jealous as people who know real sound quality will bypass them and enjoy a more educated purchase. I will give this an value of 2 for resale and being better than the more expensive 301 or 501, but a 1 as there are many more speakers in this price range and less that simply outperforms them on more levels.

Similar Products Used:

Optimus Pro-LX8/LX5/X88/X77/X55, B&W302, Paradigm Titan/Atoms/Microes, Infinity RS1/RS2, Sony 215, JBL bookshelf (couldn't remember model), Polk R-series/M1, Pioneer CSG104, Technics (couldn't remember model), and Mission 701/731/771. All of these were far better and only the Mission 731/771 and B&W 302 were more expensive ($50-100 more).

BASS

NONE

These speakers are very good they have a tweeter that looks cheap but isnt and amazing bass you hear the bass from outside when im on the block haterz say bose fell off if you dont like bose dont stop other people from getting a good speaker they can go very loud with out distortion. And people if u want to know more about these speakers e mail me.

Similar Products Used:

CAMBRIDGE SOUNDWORKS MODEL 6 bose are better

These are pretty good speakers. You can buy them for about $100 each at a store like Circuit City or Best Buy. Step into the sound room where you can switch from speaker to speaker off the same disk and listen for yourself. They are very similar to speakers costing twice as much. You can certainly buy better, but not at this price point.

Everyone references extreme high end and extreme low end frequency responses, or lack there of, as reasons to purchase a speaker - each extreme of which is inaudible to anyone but your dog - regardless of how good you claim your ear is. Forget the numbers, and just listen.

All you so called 'Audiophiles' need to get a life!! It is impossible to find any helpful recommendations from you morons. So you bought a different product...so you like some other speaker...who gives a sh*t? If you can't help out those looking for rational reviews of these products, then get another hobby, and stay off this site. All you high school kids need to get a part time job after school, 'cause you've got way too much free time. Read the guidelines.

Great mids and highs

Really does need the sub

Went from a pair of circa 1970's two-way Pioneers to these when I finally got fed up with a popped woofer. For the price, they are great. They do lack low-end punch, but I expected as much from 6.5" woofers. I paired these with a relatively low-cost powered sub for a great system in my bedroom. Not the greatest solution for a home theater system, obviously.

better than some speakers

bose rides on the name and not price versus value

READ READ READ

This message is for everyone below me or all of you so called audiophiles.There is a little canadian company called Axiom that has been around for twenty years and they sell loudspeakers and they have a speaker called the Axiom M3Ti and this speaker is about the same size as the 201 and it is rated at 175 watts 93db and they sell for $275.00 and you can read the awesome review they got from the professionals and not the salesman at soundstage.com. These speakers are worth three times that and they will eat these bose and spit the money that you would have pizd away back into your pocket. This company I assure builds quality products at an affordable price and they do not ride on the big bose or paradigm name. Listen to your ears and not the salesman who needs the extra cash to buy his girlfriend a fansy dinner. Bose is better than some companies but not all. If you would like to see more than the review at soundstage.com go to axiomaudio.com.I like mine close to the wall so they get an amazing amount of base and the most important thing of all midrange.Feel free to email me if you have any questions. 3 stars because they are better than some.

Sound reasonably good for the price

build quality is not what it once was

I purchased these speakers today at Sears mainly because I needed a cheap pair of speakers. They are not the greatest speakers I have tried, they are not the worst. The ARs I used for comparison sound better, but have a list price that is almost double that of these Bose 201s. I have several other Bose speakers which I obtained for one reason or another, the oldest being the 501 Series IV. The old 501s were decent speakers, build quality is quite a bit higher than the current models that I have seen, but as time progresses it seems everything becomes cheaper in build quality. Back to the 201s, I hooked them up to a mini system to try them out initially. The spring terminals put a limit on the wire size you can use forcing you to use some sort of connector if you want to use thicker wire. For sound quality I put them up with various music routines, piano, deep bass etc. They seemed to perform well enough, bass was deep, the treble range was respectable. The bass is very directional which may require some tinkering with positioning. The bass does appear to be true bass, rather than accentuated midbass. Whether or not it really is bass makes no difference since perception of the sound is what really counts. As for direct reflecting sound, I am a little bit skeptical that the 201s actually accomplish this. One tweeter positioned at an angle may reflect some sound, but in listening to classical music it did not seem to accomplish much reflecting, at least in the position I tested them in. My old 501s have multiple tweeters mounted at various angles in a column down the outside of the cabinet which is cut at an angle on the outside corner and covered with a cloth grill. This system does seem to cause sound reflection that mimics sound coming from different directions. If I was to say sit on the couch looking at the cieling listening to certain songs it sounds as though the flute (or another instrument depending on the song) is hovering next to me or above me. The same is true for the sound reproduced in my setup using the ARs. With the ARs I have a set of Optimus Dipole tweeters (the ones from Linneaum) which produce multidirectional sound. The same type of oddities will occur in various positions in the room. The build quality of these speakers is my concern. The cabinet looks to be made well enough with some thick particle board, much as one would expect in a speaker of the price range. Contrary to some reviews I have seen on here they do use acoustic insulation which can be seen simply by peering in the port with a flashlight. The woofer is a rather plain thing. Paper cone, appears to use a 1 inch or so voice coil, the surround appears to be made of some sort of cloth which should resist deterioration (based on my old Utah WD-90s which are now 28 years old and the surround, which is made of cloth, still holds up). The tweeter is a simple basic tweeter. The cost of materials to build a speaker similar to this would cost the average person maybe $30, so figure $60 per pair to build, not buying in volume. Bose is probably making a tidy profit per pair especially at the full list price of $200. They are decent speakers. I have heard far worse than these, and having paid $130 I feel they are worth it. For $200 I would have a hard time shelling the money over. If you were to spend $200 on these the money would be better spent on the 301s or some other quality speakers, I personally think the 301s sound better than these anyway. If you can have these speakers for $150 or less they sound good. If I found another pair for $130 like I paid I would buy them again. If the issue came to full list price however I would go with the 301s. For a bedroom or other small room though these speakers sound good for the money. My value rating is based on the price I paid. Overall I give them four stars, only because at the list price the 301s are only a bit more expensive.

Similar Products Used:

Acoustic Research AR-226PS, Bose 141, Bose 101, Bose 501 Series IV, Utah WD-90, AudioSource (I forget the model, little tiny 3 way speakers), and countless others

Decent Sound for a low price

Bass is quite limited

I must confess to being a "Bose Basher" as well. BOSE quality has gone down in the last 15 years or so. For the low price and to use them for Front Effects with my Yamaha 2095, Klipsch KLF 20, C7, SS1 setup I think it was a good choice. To the gentleman that gave the good research on where Bose gets their drivers--Bravo! From Taiwan! But the caveat here as that even with Klipsh--especially with their new SB 3's which I was going to buy for the effects speakers--they are manufactured in China! I figured at least Mexico is a little closer.

Similar Products Used:

Klipsch