Originally posted by: V00DOO
Don't buy Bose until you read this
link. Once you read it you wouldn't want to buy Bose.
I'm not going to comment on Bose quality because honestly I don't know. I've never done any informal testing on Bose speakers and the competition because I can't afford any of it. However, I will say that the article that link points too isn't so hot.
First, he throws up a frequency response of the Bose system but makes no mention of how he produced it. What was his amplifier? What was its frequency response? Did he make the measurement in an anechoic room or at least a soundroom? If not, what's the frequency response of the room? These factors can make some huge contributions to his measurements.
Second, he claims that you want a
linear reponse which is all well and good, but his plot doesn't prove that the Bose system is non-linear. It proves that it's not flat, but says nothing about linearity. If he cranks up his input signal by 6 dB and that frequency response doesn't shift upward by 6 dB then it's probably not linear. But his plot, by itself, with no explanation tells me nothing of the sort.
Third, there's this beaut of a passage:
...but the fact that the subwoofer has to respond to frequencies as high as 280 Hz (a well-mated subwoofer should never have to produce anything higher than 80 Hz, ideally less than 60 Hz) means that there is extreme amounts of audible localization of the bass module.... For you current Bose owners, try unplugging all your cubed-satellite speakers and play the DVD "X-Men" on your AcoustiMass system. You will be able to follow the enitre movie off of dialogue picked up by your Bose bass module.
1. He states that a subwoofer shouldn't have to produce anything above 80 Hz, then recommends at least 2 subwoofers (the Polks) that have 3 dB cutoffs at 160 Hz.
2. Just because a subwoofer in the Bose system is supposed to produce higher frequency sounds (i.e. up to 280 Hz) doesnt' mean the lower frequency sounds are going to be localized. Wouldn't 280 Hz sounds produced say by the two main speakers in another system also be localized to location of those speakers? The non-directional nature of low frequency sounds is due to the nature of large wavelength (low freq) sound waves, not the speakers.
3. And I'd bet you wouldn't be able to understand a word of the dialogue if you follow his X-men viewing instructions if his frequency response plot is even remotely accurate. That subwoofer has an attenuation of 15 dB at about 300 Hz (as best as I can tell). Most speech information is conveyed between 500 and 4000 Hz (don't believe me? Your telephone cuts off speech below 500 Hz and you can understand it perfectly). Good luck understanding what comes out of that subwoofer. If anyone here has Cool Edit or the like, take a speech signal and filter it with a low pass filter at 300 Hz and listen for yourselves.
Again, I don't know how good Bose speakers are. But it seems to me that this guy has an axe to grind with Bose and will do whatever it takes to show that their systems are no good.