a great speaker to trick your friends
Written: May 15 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: this must be the best speaker for chorusing
Cons: does not come with a vox wah wah pedal
The Bottom Line: not for music reproduction but can be used for background sound reinforcement. there are many compelling reasons why other speaker manufacturers won't make a speaker such as this one
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| kennethdebbu's Full Review: Bose Lifestyle 901 System |
for years i thought that bose claimed their 901 speaker to be an audiophile speaker. oh how wrong i was. man do i ever have a lot of egg on my face. basically what happened was my musician friend and i were talking about guitars and effects and speakers and i noticed that bose and b&w both make speakers and both start with the letter "b". but that is all they have in common. anyway my friend dared me to go to the bose website, and i took him up on the dare. actually it was a double dare, and it went something like this:
friend: i dare you to go to the bose website!
me: you dare me to go to the bose website?
friend: yeah, i double dare you!
me: ok, your on!
i started by first going to google.com and then i typed in bose and sure enough there it was: bose.com ! the first thing i noticed on the bose web site was that bose has headphones. i wonder if each earcup has 9 speakers in it, with one pointing directly into your ear and 4 facing foreward and 4 facing backward. anyway, i surfed around the 901 web pages and i did not see words such as "audiophile" or "accurate" or "colouration" or "subtle" or any other word or words words that would suggest that this is a musical speaker. in fact i totally agree with everything i read on their web pages. i have somee excerpts from their web site and i am going to comment on them:
(1)"With conventional speakers, virtually all of the sound is radiated directly into the room. Much of the spaciousness of the live performance is lost."
- i definitely agree with the first sentence. i also agree with the second sentence, and i have always said that for a true stereo recording the placement of the 2 microphones is critical. the true operative word here is "much" and how much is much is very subjective. in any event though, an audiophile speaker such as any from b&w gives incredible stereo imaging. and yes, b&w and other speakers just keep getting better and better.
(2)"Many Bose® speakers use either proprietary Direct/Reflecting® speaker technology or an Articulated Array® speaker design for an innovative and better way to deliver balanced stereo sound almost anywhere in your room"
- i don't know what balanced stereo is. stereo means 2, so i guess balanced stereo can mean just about anything, and because i am an easy going guy i am definitely going to agree with it. notice though that they did not say "sound stage" or "accurate reproduction"...just thought i'd say it.
(3)"Full-range drivers provide a more consistent sound field than conventional speakers that rely on woofers, tweeters and crossovers."
- i certainly can see a situation where this is true. suppose you have a speaker cabinet with a 6" woofer and a 1" tweeter and you want to reproduce a simple 1 khz sine wave. the 1 khz wave may be too high a frequency for the woofer and too low a frequency for the tweeter, thus resulting in a less than ideal output. however, it may just be perfect for the bose 901 midrange speaker.
(4)"Engineered specifically for Bose® 901® Direct/Reflecting® speakers, this equalizer smoothes out bumps and dips in the frequency response for a natural balance of bass, midrange and treble frequencies."
- again nothing could be more true, well almost nothing. it is asking a lot for a 4 1/2" midrange driver to produce a sine wave of say 30 hz or so, or to produce a sine wave of 15 khz or so. now try producing those 2 waves at the same time. next, try music waves such as from a bass guitar, a trumpet and cymbals at the same time. the only way to make a midrange speaker look good on its specifications is to boost the signals that it cannot cope with. all that extra bass you're hearing s not true bass, it's all tones other than the fundamental, also known as harmonic distortion.i am not aware of any audiophile speaker manufacturer that recommends equalisation.
(5)" Compare 901 speakers to any other speaker — regardless of size or price — and you'll see why we say, "Only live sounds better." "
- notice that bose is not making a direct comparison such as "the bose 901 is audibly more accurate than any nestorovic ever made". any musician or anyone at nht, nestorovic, b&w, mark levinson, krell, jadis, yba, meridian, and just about any one else on planet earth will tell you that there is nothing like a live performance. to digress for a moment, any other speaker has substantial advantages over the 901 simply by not having 9 speakers in one cabinet pretending to be 1 speaker in a cabinet, or not having a direct/reflecting arrangement, or not using a medium range driver to do the work of a tweeter and midrange and woofer, or not requiring an equaliser to gain output over certain frequencies.
yes for nearly 25 years i always assumed that bose claimed their 901 to be an audiophile speaker and i assumed wrong...egg on my face and i royally deserve it. in fact, i can't recall any advertisement from bose claiming the 901 to have an accurate sound stage or to be a revealing speaker. when i say revealing speaker i mean you listen to b&w 801's and then you go home and play the cd on your system and you still hear the melody and harmony and you still get into the music and your foot starts tapping to the beat but you say "there is something missing and i just don't know what it is but i know it's not there". there is a good review of the 801 at: "http://www.stereophile.com/showarchives.cgi?506"
now i'm going to tell you why i have a new appreciation for the bose 901 and why i truly believe that it is an underrated speaker and un appreciated speaker. first of all let me tell you about chorus. chorus is when two or more people sing the same song the same way. for us guitarists, chorus is an effect we use to make 1 guitar sound sound like many guitars. you can find chorus effect units at: "http://www.musiciansfriend.com/". chorus also happens when 2 or more speakers are reproducing the same signal at the same time. for instance try this experiment:
gather some speakers you may have lying around. they can be speakers you want to throw in the garbage or they can be speakers from an old television set. the more the speakers are identical to each other the more you will notice the chorus effect. then hook up one speaker to 1 channel of your amplifier. then add another speaker to the same channel and notice the effect. now suppose you have 9 identical speakers hooked up to the same channel. now that's what i call good chorus! naturally you would want to do that to the other channel as well. don't stop yet because there is a bit more to do. take 4 of the speakers from the 9 that are on your left channel and make them face away from you. now rotate them 30 degrees to the left. do the same thing with the other 4 speakers on your left but rotate them 30 degrees to the right. now have the last speaker point directly at you. you're doing good. now do the exact same thing with the 9 speakers that are on your right. there you've done it. you have basically created a copy of the bose 901's. next try to listen to your favourite music with this arrangement. please feel free to use any tone controls you may have. walk around the room and notice the stereo everywhere effect. unfortunately, b&w does not make chorusing speakers because they know how to use filters to prevent as much as possible, 2 speakers being given the same signal, plus they don't have identical speakers doing the same thing at the same time.
chorus is a wonderfull thing for a musical speaker to do and i really wish that b&w would make a chorus speaker that is also of the direct/reflecting arrangement. suppose you had a front row seat and celine dion was right in front of you singing without any amplification and all the musical instruments had little or no amplification. man, that would be a dream come true. now suppose you had 2 identical high-quality sony microphones and a really good tape deck or disc recorder, and you made a stereo recording of celine. if it was me i would make 100 copies and put the original tape or disk in the bank's safety deposit box - but that's just me...i'm extreme. now suppose you play back celine through a proceed cd player, proceed power amp and any stereo b&w speakers. man, if it was me i'd just melt. you would have celine dion in stereo, and if you closed your eyes, you would swear that she was right in from of you and that you could reach out and touch her. and that's what true musical speakers do. however, why just stop at 1 celine, and being able to know where she is? why not use chorus to make it sound like there are many celines, and why not use direct/reflecting so that you won't know where the celines are? think about it. instead of having 2 sets of speakers creating an accurate soundstage why not use 18 speakers to make it sound like there are 18 celines. and by throwing the soundstage all over the room, stereo everywhere becomes celine everywhere. you can close your eyes and try to guess where the celies are. i mean, a 2 for 1 sale is great, but an 18 for 1 sale just can't be beat. also if you don't like what remains of any coherent sound you can simply adjust the equaliser and make those esses come alive and boost the bass and make the bass come alive with murkiness and blurring. also the 901's must offer the best value for money of any speaker ever made. i'm going to use rough numbers here so if i'm of a little or lot just forgive me. suppose you pay $1200 for bose 901's
, you are getting 18 high-quality drivers that dissipate heat more easily for greater power handling and increase the dynamic range for greater clarity. that works out to $67 per driver, and you also get an active equaliser that was specifically engineered for bose and smoothes out bumps and dips in the frequency response for a natural balance of bass, midrange and treble frequencies. now suppose you get two high-end speakers from b&w and each cabinet has only 3 drivers for a total of 6 speakers and they cost $10,000 and you don't get an active equaliser specifically engineered for b&w. the b&w speakers are then are $1600 per driver. thus the b&w speakers are 23 times more expensive per speaker driver than the bose speakers. i know a bargain when i see one...i'm sticking to bose!
now i want to tell you a little about me. i have a 1974 gibson sg with a 3 way toggle switch and 2 humbucker pickups and each pickup has its own volume and tone control.
my speaker box is a vox with 2 x 10" sunn studio lead speakers, and the speaker box is open at the back. i have a vox battery powered wah wah pedal. since 1995 i have used the marshall jmp-1 valve midi pre amp.
the bose 901 is truly an innovative and interesting speaker and i am conviced that bose would be all the more successfull with the 901 if they included the following
items with their bose 901's:
1. vox wah wah pedal
2. dod death metal distortion pedal
3. ibanez ts9 tube screamer distortion pedal
4. fender tube reverb unit
5. dod grunge distortion pedal
6. boss 7 band graphic equaliser
7. boss phase shifter pedal
8. midi compatibility
acutally i am now so thrilled and impressed with direct/reflecting systems that i am going to build my own. basically the speaker enclosure will be a cardboard box from the nearest dumpster, with all three dimensions of equal length and held together with duct tape. then on each of the 6 sides i am going to place a 4 sided cardboard pyramid. on each side of the pyramid i am going to install 4 midrange speakers. thus each speaker cabinet will have 96 identical midrange speakers. i will need 4 of these direct/reflecting cabinets. i will have 2 in front of me and 2 behind me. i will have another cardboard speaker box containing 9 midrange speakers pointing in one direction, and i will need 6 of these. 2 will be in front of me giving me "direct" sound and 2 will be behind me also giving me "direct" sound, i will also have one on my right and left giving me "direct" sound but i will pretend that it is "reflected" sound from the speakers in front of me producing "direct" sound. then i will need a triangular cardboard speaker box having 9 midrange speakers on either side for a total of 18 speakers per enclosure. i will need 12 of these and there will be 2 of the floor in front of me and 2 on the floor behind me, 2 on the ceiling in front of me and 2 on the ceiling behind me, 2 positioned vertical on the wall to my left, 2 positioned vertical on the wall to my right. with all those speakers creating hundreds of simultaneous "direct" and "reflecting" waves, i am sure to have stereo everywhere. naturally i will need the finest midrange drivers and i will obtain them from radio shack. i have not bought anything from radio shack since 1976 when i bought an am/fm stereo cassette deck that kept chewing my tapes. then i am going to glue small mirrors on to the pyramid speakers and hang them and twirl them and shine a light on them and turn off the room lights. man it's going to be awesome. finally i will need an equaliser to equalise those few hundred midrange speakers. i plan on using my jmp-1 preamp because it has: gain, bass, middle, presence, bass shift. it also has 2 clean channels and 2 overdrive channels and has many factory presets. basically i will be able to make the music sound like it came out of a marshall super plexi lead. i'll let you know how it all turns out if i ever get the inclination to do it.
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Epinions.com ID:
kennethdebbu
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Reviews written: 4
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