Pictorial Review: Bose On-Ear - Page 3

Bose sucks. I know from experience myself, conned into thinking they were good. The limit of my experience then was 30 dollar ear buds.

In terms of value for money, bose is terrible.

I never worried much about it with my QC2. Then the left earcup fell off.

I'm kinda glad that it happened though, because it sent me here.

Bonus points for the QC2 though -- it's very good at making background music. My current headphones are far too good at pulling me away from whatever else I'm doing.

Bose has such good marketing that any google searched/easy to find review will be gleaming. I think this forum just represents the audiophiles view on Bose; Too much for too little.

You completely misinterpreted my post. My comment about the stax had nothing to do with bass, and I love bass too and my SR-X does a fine job at that.

that would be interesting, i'd also like to know.

but the beauty of head-fi is that people can give honest and open comments, even if we disagree, we're all here and we're all freely able to express how we feel. unlike ilounge, avforums, CNET and others i could mention.


I'm not a great fan of Bose as a whole. I love the AE and OE, but I've got time for the QC or IE if the truth be known. The argument about value for money, well, do any of these offer great value for money?

Credit Crunch Headphones? Not Quite!

BTW i got a pair of Denon AH-P372 for Christmas and they're not 'alf bad!

I like the .... lifestyle system for music, but not for movies. the acousticmass, interesting sort of. always thought i'd love to own a set, but never bothered to try.

always like the Bose wave, but i went for the Bang and Olufsen Beosound 1 because they were the only two portable, half decent options going. I took my sony DVD, Cyrus 3 amp and JBL speaker to a Travel Lodge, for my mates wedding. after that i thought i might prefer something more portable, and Bose wave was an option.

bar that, that as far as me and Bose go, but unlike (what would seem) the entire U.S. nation, i never thought that Bose was the final word in AV.

Hi GUINNE55. How were you conned into buying them? and what do you have now?

that's a brilliant description. However are you going to hold it against me if i said: I like them

I spoke to a few sound engineer friends about Shure before i bought them, and they all echoed the sentiment that generally, in the professional world, Shure's aren't that well regarded. I guess there are a whole heap of people that will agree and some who will disagree.

Audiophile, Audiophile, when someone says that i always think that people really mean expert. thing is, where ever you go, there will always be conflicting opinions.

Happy Christmas.

Yeah I totally agree, a pretty good forum.

People do have different opinions! Shures not being highly regarded in the "professional world" was just a few people opinions, how can their views represent a whole profession; or even a bunch of them. But you can hardly ask all the "professionals" and expect one opinion.
So infact.. Backtracking; "People do have different opinions!"

And Merry Christmas to you

That's true - if you mean "too much money for too little performance." (In other words, too expensive for what you get.)

I use the converse of this: "Too little for too much." (This means that the product is an underachiever for the price that you pay for it.)

"Hi GUINNE55. How were you conned into buying them? and what do you have now?" (I'm not good with playing around with quotes :P )

I bought their triport earphones from a big box store when I was didn't know anything about high quality, and I assumed that a higher price would have better quality (Salesman sold me these with a nice colorful sales pitch about hi-fi, ect...would later learn the store runs on commissions). Audio quality worth maybe half their advertised price in actuality. And worth nothing when you considered their major flaw. The bose earbuds have these silicon tips like IEMs, except their not actually connected to the hardware in any meaningful way. They fell out all the time, within the first week, bumped on the bus goin to class, the earbud pops out of my ear, white silicon tip out of sight--> useless earbuds. When I searched the problem on google, the problem was everywhere. Bose had offered to replace the silicon tips (USA only), since I'm Canadian I had no alternative. A week later I bought some cheap Shure Se210's for my iPod and later some Ultrasones for my desktop. Right now I'm using K702s and I'll be getting a Benchmark DAC1 when I get there with savings.

I understand this is probably very hard to follow so long story short, these things had a big flaw that left them useless after a short operating time. Think xbox red ring of death bad.

Why don't you wait until they have at least 150-200 hours which is the range of burn-in given to most headphones. That way the bass would have settle and the mids/highs would be allowed to develop and come out.

Not "good". Aggressive. Greedy.

Anyway, here's the necessary bit of psychology... Many people don't get the "full picture" by default. They rely on prejudices which themselves only relate to a fragment of the original whole. Hence they'll look for what they consider to be "good" (doesn't matter whether it's actually good or not), and if it's there, that's it, "judgment" (really just a reaction to a prejudice) "made". In Bose's case, it's a flair of a certain "space technology" in appearance/design, a carefully crafted "image" of luxury and expense that is automatically associated with "good quality", and, of course, exaggerated bass. If one of those doesn't appeal to a buyer, the rest will.

The important bit here is that the majority of people tend to replace their own perception with "socially accepted" prejudice cliches, then project that onto whatever they're dealing with. Bose's stuff is designed to appeal to those cliches (or even form them), so it earns a lot of money to Bose, and a lot of deserved hatred from connoiseurs, who do notice the cheating.

Thanks, and contrary to what most think Bose is not as bad as it is painted. However there are a lot of snobs that will criticize that which they do not understand or which ... Thanks God I have a flame proof suit.

This comes up now and again. Yes, I've heard the range of Bose headphones. There's a mall across from my office where I spend my lunch every day. Bose has a store there and I wander in every couple of months to listen to their headphones. I'm curious and want to compare them to what I own and have listened to.

You might want to call me biased, but consider the range of headphones I own. I do have preferences for a couple brands, but I've bought headphones from a number of manufacturers and will agree that all of the majors are capable of making an excellent headphone. Some are more to my tastes than others, but I'm willing to buy an excellent headphone from anyone who makes one, regardless of brand.

Also, you need to put audiophile reviews in the correct frame of reference. Most people who review headphones on Amazon, Cnet, etc. don't know about Head-Fi and the variety of headphones available. They know about Bose (of course), Sony, and maybe a few others they've seen at an electronics store. If you mentioned Sennheiser, AKG, Beyerdynamic, Ultrasone, Audio-Technica, Grado, Stax, or others, they would have no idea what you'd be talking about. They might have heard of Sennheiser, but probably haven't heard one.

When you listen to Bose after hearing the above-referenced brands, they suck. They truly suck. It's a lot like when I thought Miller Genuine Draft was pretty good. I was about 20 and that was the top shelf at the local liquor store. It tasted pretty good and I was happy with it. Then I moved to Oregon and discovered microbrewing and craft breweries. MGD is practically undrinkable now.

So if you've never heard better, Bose might seem like the best there is. But it isn't, especially after you've heard a lot of good headphones.

Further, a lousy product like Bose costs more than the good ones. I had a pair of Sony MDR-V6 headphones for years that I think sound better than anything Bose produces. The subject of this review costs $100 more than the MDR-V6, yet is an inferior headphone.

So it's not necessarily snobbishness or bias. Like I said, I'll buy anything that sounds good. I like that Grado is a small, family business. That's great and I support them. However, the giant multinational Sennheiser also makes a superb headphone. I'll support them, too.

Bose has the capital, engineering, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution to bring a world-class headphone to market. But they don't. Instead, they make the cheapest possible product and market it as high end. However, if Bose someday builds a headphone that sounds great, I'll buy one.

BOSE more like BLOWS. However, if they bring their prices down say 100 bucks although even THEN, i dont even consider the Onear to be even in the same league as the Senn PX200.. and the Denon D1001S/K will smash it anyday for cheaper as well.