BOSE.....why does it get laughed at in the audiophile community? Are the products really that bad???

Yes.

I even prefer beats to bose, at least they dont have the stupid commercials. ( Im talking about HT Bose, never heard their HP)

Edited by alv4426 - 12/18/11 at 4:34pm

Wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy over priced and suck with Chinese made drivers. 

Bose headphones are bad for sound quality, and charge you $300 for it to boot. They do offer the best active noise cancellation I've heard, but the mid-bass is so thick it makes music sound sickly sweet and fake.

Not enough cowbell.

Bose Companion II speakers have served me well for their small size and looks. They do go overboard on the bass even though its tight and controlled in my paper wall apartment thats not a good thing. They are in storage now along with my JBL Control One bookshelf speakers as am enjoying my Insignia Bass Reflex bookshelf speakers which are great for nearfield listening and i can control the bass and treble from my Onkyo TX-8555 stereo reciever with no worries of a sudden BOOM! happening unexpectedly.

Bose headphones break really really easily. For $300 you get a cheap thin plastic headband and muddy sound quality. There are headphones for $20 that out perform Bose in both durability and sound quality. My M50's I got for $90 and I have thrown them at a concrete wall, slept on them and rolled over on them at least 15 times and I am about 170 pounds, and they still work fine. Also for isolation just get iems or the HD-25ii or those new Beyerdynamics, even the M50 does a pretty good job. 

 

Bose wasn't actually bad during the 60's and 70's. they had some interesting and good speakers. they even produced some receivers but never heard any of them. i forget when but they were sold out and became more of a marketing company. they're not so great nowadays but at least they still make their 901 speakers they were well known for.

There hate is undeserved. Their ae2 is on average $149.99 and their sale price is sometimes $99. They aren't bad for $99 and average for $150.

 

Bose doesn't deserve their hate.

 

Perhaps for the headphones, but certainly not for the htib systems. My friend decided he wanted a 5.1 system and picked up the V35 for $2700 (msrp $2995). I'd place it slightly above the Onkyo setup I had in highschool in sound quality. It got loud but lacked the kind of clarity one would expect from a ~$3k system. One can pick up a Marantz receiver, a full set of Klipsch speakers and an HSU sub for that money and rock the hell out of anything you throw at it (I know because I did just that, though I spent $2900...). The bang for the buck for most of their loudspeakers is just absurdly bad.

This is where i draw the line.

 

Who the hell would spend more then $1000 on speakers?

(Who the hell would spend more than $100 on headphones) = (Who the hell would spend more than $1000 on speakers)