None what so ever except that people might be impressed with the amount of money you spent.

where do i start?

I am new to this site and I see that Bose speakers are surrounded by much debate. It seems that after reading the posts, I found that the people that like Bose speakers simply stand by the product and offer little information as to why they are so great. Now on the other hand the people that do not like Bose speakers can list reasons upon reasons as to why they don't like them. I just bought a Harman Kardon HK 3470 receiver the other day to replace my old Yamaha that died after 14 years. I thought I would upgrade my speakers while I was at it. I was talked into the 701s by the salesman who said that they would sound great at home. I was not all that impressed in the store, but he told me that they were not hooked up to the speaker switcher correctly. I took his word for it and brother, it made no differance when I got them home. They sounded the same. I was dissapointed that an expensive speaker had spring clip wire connections because I wanted to use good speaker wire and plugs to improve the sound. I figured that I would try the speakers for a few days and see if they grew on me. The cymbals were not as crisp as they could be, and the lower end was kind of boomy. Needless to say, I took the 701s back and bought a set of Polk towers and was happy. I don't understand why so many people just love Bose speakers. I mean they are very over rated in terms of sound and preformance. I really think that people buy them because they are trendy or hip looking. As for me, I was suckered.

Small Size

Everything Else, especially the PRICE

I went shopping for some speakers and when I saw these speakers, I couldn't believe how ridiculously overpriced and underperforming these speakers were. For about $850, you get speakers that utilize cheap materials (paper cones and an exterior Vinyl finish) and extremely subpar sound. These speakers should be selling for $200 at the most. People who spend this kind of money on these speakers obviously have no musical sense.

Similar Products Used:

JBL, B&W, Boston Acoustics, Klipsch

Piece of mind and a logo. (see below)

Construction and quality. (see below)

Please read the review before passing judgement on these speakers, the reviewer, or another other reviewer of this product line. I can offer a unique perspective that supports both sides of this heated debate.

There are two kinds of audio listeners. One group consists of people that listen to music as a background sound. Then there are the people that occasionally spend time to listen to music more critically. Neither group is perfect, but that is how it audio breaks down by listner. Those that listen to music as something in the background, want sound that "fills" a room the same way that well designed track lighting fills a room with light. Those that occasionally like to listen to music critically, want something that sounds as realistic as possible within their allotted budget. Once again, both are fine and justifiable pursuits.

The problem arises when these two groups try and mix together their opinions. It is often like oil and water. First you must decide how you want to listen to music before you even audition a product. If you only want background sound, the Bose will give you the piece of mind and logo status that you are seeking. The piece of mind comes from purchasing something that so much advertising dollar has gone to telling you how great your purchase is. For these people, I couldn't recommend Bose enough. They will sound just fine for that application, as that is precisely the way they are designed to function.

But, if you like to listen to music critically, I would suggest that you most definitely compare brands. The reason audiophiles (those individuals that critically listen to music) give Bose such a hard time is that Bose actually charges too much for the quality of musical reproduction you are buying. The problem is that the construction and materials used to produce the speaker are of very low quality. It is not to say that a speaker cannot be made out of them, just that that speaker would be very economical to manufacture and sell. The same technique is employed by Pioneer, Technics, and Kenwood for their rack systems that are sold in electronics stores. The only difference between Bose and the speakers from Technics and the like is that the Technics speakers are rarely ever sold for more than $150 per pair. That, incidentally, is the basic cost of manufacturing a pair of Bose 701's.

It is for this reason that audiophiles wail on Bose so much. Audiophiles would wail on Technics as well, but for the $150pr they charge for them, it is pointless. The idea being you get what you paid for. Unfortunately for Bose, it is their price that makes them sound bad. If they were priced with speakers of the same performance level, you'd hardly see a post. But because Bose is charging the same money has high end audiophile and recording studio speakers from B&W, PSB, Paradigm, and Mirage (to name but a few), audiophiles feel compelled to warn new and "budding" audiophiles that money could be spent better else where. The competing speakers at the same price range often spend more on the bass drivers for their speakers than the overall manufacturing cost of the Bose 701's. If you don't believe or understand things, price the cost of raw speaker drivers. Bose use standard Taiwanese paper drivers, the kind that are in clock radios and standard equipment TV's and car stereo systems.

Now for where my experience comes from. I used to work as a salesman for Circuit City a few years ago. I worked in computers and in audio. When I first started, the sales people could see what the cost and retail and mark up percentage were for all the products being sold in the computer. All except for Bose, which was mysteriously blocked from view. Speakers in general, those that aren't the bargain basement ones, have a 20%-40% mark up! Yes folks, this is how retail chains make their money. When we had access to a managerial login, we found that Bose also had a 50% mark up! Wow! As sales people we were pushed to sell all the Bose we could, and for good reason. As sales, we made a commision, called a spiff, on each item sold. Most speakers, cause of their high margins, paid from $10 to $30 for each pair. Not bad at all. Bose though, had super incentives. You could make from $60 to $180 selling Bose speakers! That is because the manufacturer also paid part of our commisions! Now those of you that have shopped for speakers in stores that carried Bose can now know why sales people would push their line. They did it for the money. I never could cause I was an honest salesman, which is why I made less money. I gave the customer choices, not a hard sell.

But in the 2 years I worked there, I heard a lot of different speaker lines and lots of different models of speakers on all sorts of different equipment. One thing that became quickly aparent, is that the Bose could not keep up with any other speaker we sold at a similar price mark. So much so, we had to put the Bose seperate from the other systems in order to make them easier to sell. The next time a salesman or saleswoman tells you something will sound better in your home than where you are demoing them, you shouldn't buy them. You wouldn't purchase a car from a dealer that tells you the car will drive better on a different road, would you? All I am stating is that if you want to occasionally listen to music more critically, that you spend the time to demo the products before you purchase. If you don't need that kind of quality, then by all means purchase a product that will make you feel proud!

Similar Products Used:

Polk, Infinity, DKM (house brand, kind of a spiffed up Cerwin Vega clone)

Strong following by brainwashed consumers.

Now we turn to Bose's 301/501/701/901 line. In this line, everyone agrees that Bose speakers employ a highly unusual design. Depending on your point of view, you may say that this design is unusual because it is innovative and patented, or you may say that it is unusual because few others care to duplicate it. Regardless, there are few other speakers with similar designs, and certainly none with anything like the high profile of Bose speakers.

One aspect to this series is the "direct/reflecting" design. In other words, these speakers have numerous speaker elements, some angled forwards, and some angled backwards, and some angled to the side. In most speakers, there are only two or three speaker elements, all pointed straight forward. The Bose philosophy is to create a great deal of indirect sound --- sound that reflects off walls and furniture before it reaches the listener. Of course, all speakers inevitably create some degree of indirect sound, unless listened to in a specially treated non-reflective room, but Bose purposely creates a great deal more indirect sound. Some people feel that this strategy results in an unfocused diffuse sound, with unnaturally large stereo images, while others very much like this sound. You should listen for yourself.

To justify the direct/reflecting technique, Bose has claimed that, in real life, about 8/9 of sound reflects before reaching the listener, and only 1/9 reaches the listener directly. However, these numbers apparently come from one set of measurements made in a concert hall, certainly an unusually reverberant environment. Furthermore, the recording picks up both the direct and reflected sounds, and adding more reflection at playback just adds synthetic reflections on top of real reflections. In fact, according to the scientists on the audio newsgroups, there are some well-established theories about the proper ratio of direct to reflected sound in playback --- based on many years of research rather than one perhaps misleading measurement --- which theories Bose speakers intentionally violate. If you really want to bring out the ambient reflected qualities of recorded sound, a better technique might be surround sound, where it possible to control the ratio of direct to indirect sound. The proper use of surround sound could fill another entire FAQ.

Before purchasing a Bose "direct/reflecting" speaker, especially one of their more expensive models, you may wish to compare them with other speakers which produce relatively large amounts of indirect sound -- this includes any planar speaker such as Magnepan, Quad, or Martin-Logan. Also, Shahanian produces speakers somewhat like Bose speakers.

Another aspect to the Bose 301/501/701/901 series is their use of multiple small speaker elements for reproducing bass. While most speakers use just one large high-quality expensive element for the bass frequencies, Bose speakers such as the 901s use many smaller lower-quality less-expensive speaker elements, wired together with complex equalization circuitry. While this certainly produces bass, many people feel that the deep bass is attenuated, and that whatever bass there is contains large amounts of distortion. Others apparently believe the bass is deep and of high-quality. Whichever way your opinions run, it should be noted that there are well-established theories about the size of the driver versus its lower frequency limit --- the bigger the driver the lower the frequencies it can naturally reproduce --- which Bose violates, or at least tries to circumvent in a highly debatable fashion. More specifically, John Busenitz says:

"When judging low frequency response, it is not only the total surface area that is important, but the excursion capability of the drivers and their resonance frequency, which determines the low frequency cutoff. Smaller drivers almost always have far less excursion capability and higher resonances than larger drivers. That is why Bose is pretty much alone in using multiple small drivers."

Of course, bass response is not just a matter of personal opinion --- frequency response in the bass regions is easily measurable, although it depends a great deal more on room acoustics and speaker placement within the room than the midrange and treble. Bose does not provide frequency response plots, feeling that they are potentially misleading. Reports on the internet have run both ways, with probably a slight bias towards reports of an inadequate bass response.

You'll need "TECH" talk to understand these speakers. THEY JUST SOUND HORRIBLE. REALLY DAMN HORRIBLE!!! HIGHS-muffled, as if there where a blanket in front of them, MIDS-choked and inaccurate, AND LOWS- slow, boomy and one notey. THEY SOUND TERRIBLE. What more could anyone want to know about them? Let me think.... they'd probably want to know all the other $800 speakers that lay waste to these. Speakers are TRANSDUCERS THAT MOVE AIR. I have listened to many, many speakers and the "TECH" information does indeed co-relate with actual sound, you just have to be able to understand it. THE REASON I HATE THESE SPEAKERS IS BECAUSE OF SOUND.

Heres a list of $600~$900 speakers that will "soundly" lay waste to the pitiful 701:
Acoustic Energy, Aegis $700
B&W, DM602S2 $600
Canton, CT-920-SC $900
Dynaudio, Audience 50 $850
Energy, e:XL-26 $750
Focus Audio, FRII $900
Gabriel Loudspeakers, Model 308 Exodus $650
Hales, Revelation 1 $900
Infinity, IL-50
JBL, S412P $850
KEF, Q 55.2 $800
Legacy Audio, Studio $900
MB Quart, QLC404 $800
NHT, Super-2 $750
OHM Acoustics, P-1 $800
Paradigm, Monitor-9 $800
RBH, Model-61 $850
Sonance, Model-635T $850
Tannoy, S6LR $900
Vandersteen, Model-1C $720
Wharfdale, Opal-70 $800

I bought a set of 701's for Christmas 1999. I listened to a large number of speakers in the same price range; Polk,Klipsh etc. and the Bose 701's blew them all away. They make my CD collection sound better than I have ever heard it. I'm going through it again just to hear all of the disks on the 701's. The highs sparkle and the base, even with flat response, is outstanding -- especially for speakers of this size. It sounds like I have a powered subwoofer. I could not be happier with the 701's. People who badmouth Bose speakers either don't know what good sound is or they have another agenda relative to rating speakers.

These speakers are GREAT! I don't know why there are so many BOSE bashers out there,everyone that has
heard these speakers think there fantastic . I also
just bought the Vcs-10 center channel ,its very good
to.My advice " Go to store and listen for yourself DO
NOT listen to all the BAD BOSE garbage on here!

Bose name. Nice looks..

Sound. Bass, clarity, midrange....

This is Bose's second to top of the line in their line of speakers. Just under the 901. These speakers are very boomy. The boomy bass reporduced with these is horrible. Simalar to a bass pass subwoofer, I still have yet to hear or feel a good one. The build quality for these 701's is not up to par. I think my Mini Monitors weight more than they do. When I knocked on one I heard a hollow unbraced cabniet. For 800 dollars!!!!! I got bought my Mini Monitors for 300 and my Monitor 5's for about 600 for both. Thats less than the 701!.

These aren't very good speakers. Bose should be ashamded to sell these. And by the way I am sure that there are better speakers out there and not made by MIT grads. Just because McDonalds puts a lot in adverstising and sells a lot of hamburgers doesn't mean that they are the best....


Happy Listening
DX guy

Similar Products Used:

Paradigm Mini Monitor and Monitor 5

People love to knock Bose,especially audiophiles but this is mostly because Bose has a well advertised and promoted brand; in business this means they spent their money on advertising which does not leave high margins for audiophile dealers who then hate Bose because it is a low margin product whereas they need huge margin products to make their tiny volume shops profitable. Bose has a marketing strategy that gives them an army of audiophile enemies.
And, with their public marketing they threaten or make obsolute the expertise of the audiophile. Who needs them when you can buy from the Bose line depending on your budget. After all sound is a common commodity who really needs 100's of tiny companies trying to do what a few good MIT engineers can do. At its worst the audiophile industry will reccommend $800 speaker cables when ordinary lamp wire will often test better. BJe1000@aol.com




THe idea that the biggest player in the industry can't or won't produce quality speakers is silly. Why doesn't somebody just do a serious double blind study?

got them for $300 through Bose

bass is just marginal descent overall sound

If you get these for under $400 there good for the money ,but if you like you music loud and clear go with someone else. These speakers dont sound bad but all your buying is the "Bose" name.

Similar Products Used:

Boston Acoustics