BOSE.....why does it get laughed at in the audiophile community? Are the products really that bad??? - Page 3

B.O.S.E

 

Buy Other Sound Equipment

Ah, yes. Very nice saying indeed.

As for me. I used to be a die hard Bose fan until I realized there were other options out there that sounded much better for more than half the costs. When I think of Bose two important things come to mind. Just like the Beats By Dr. Dre, Bose markets their products insanely well with all of their technology crap which isn't real at all. Also, they overprice their products way too much. If they were half the cost of the original price, then I would respect them a little bit more. The only reason why I like them more than Beats By Dre is because they're not as cocky as Jimmy Iovine. I loathe him and his stupid saying "Other companies use fancy equipment to make headphones sound good, we already know how they they should sound". I despise him. He's a horrible person, extremely cocky, and very unintelligent when it comes I thing.

Wait, where were we? Oh yeah, Bose. They aren't good either.

Bose is a pathetic company because they advertise that their little boombox is just as good as a $3,000 real stereo/speaker setup.

And I feel bad for the people who think they are buying a good product for so much money.

 

If they sold their boombox for $40 like a bunch of other companies then they wouldn't seem so terrible.

 

 

Edited by mibutenma - 12/20/11 at 12:47am

You should give it a try. 

 

People dislike BOSE because they use an arguably completely unfair reputation as sellers of excellent equipment to sell mediocre equipment at high prices.

As for the argument over speaker prices, I would blow $15k or so on speakers  if I had lots of money to spare! Having a virtual concert in my lounge is worth a lot of money IMHO! As long as you don't go for the $100k snake-oil-same-drivers-as-cheaper-ones-bragging-speakers I think one could do quite well for oneself!

I sometimes use my Klipsch RF-82's to do just that. I still prefer headphones for my music experience. The really musical speakers are way out of my price range though, and while I've really enjoyed other people's setups (Martin Logans are like God's gift to man's ears) I just can't bring myself to building a system for music when we have these awesome headphones. Personal preference. Also, in all likelihood, the fact that I simply don't have room for another set of reference speakers in this apartment kind of turns me off from the idea. Maybe one day I'll get myself a setup designed for music... I suppose I was wrong to make that claim so brazenly. 

 

The amps are what will really set you back... at $25k each, these monoblocks are what you really want for a truly musical setup: The VTL MB-1250's

 

If one day I have more money than I know what to do with... these and a set of Avalon Sentinels... 

I don't care how it sounds $5000 or more on speakers is retarded.

 

@NilePP

I'm an objectivist when it comes to audio, so my ideal amplifier would be a helluva lot cheaper! I'd probably have a Benchmark as my preamp also, and would laugh heartily at anyone who claimed my setup was unmusical. There are lines of diminishing returns and as far as amplifiers and DACs are concerned, we've prettymuch hit them. Who is going to be able to hear the difference between 0.0005% and 0.000005% THD? 

 

@bcasey:

 

"I don't care how it sounds, more than $5 on headphones is retarded."

 

It is simply a matter where each person draws the line of diminishing returns. Personally, I would put a lot of value on a stereo which can provide a reasonable "I'm there" sort of feeling. My headphone setup is very pleasurable to listen to, but I couldn't really fool myself into thinking the performers were in the room!

 

EDIT: Just looked up the amplifier you mentioned. If I wanted to add 0.1% THD to my sound, instead of using antiquated technology, I would do it with digital signal processing, grab a cheap, neutral SS amp and save myself a bomb. The Carver Challenge makes for interesting reading...

Edited by Willakan - 12/20/11 at 3:41am

I actually thought the Bose IE2s sounded good until I got my first pair of IE8s. Within 30 minutes of listening the truth became apparent and I could not believe I wasted $100.00 on the IE2s. Even the IE7s refurb ($99.00) made me feel even more stupid for buying into the bose bit. But until I tried higher end equipment I was blissfully happy with my setup in my ignorance. Thanks for saving me headfi lol.

Indeed they are,

Amen to that, bro.

 

I listened to their new circumaurals at the airport the other day and found them to be a huge improvement on the old ones. Much better treble response.

 

That said though, yeah they are still overpriced for essentially capable but medicore headphones. But a lot of headphones are over-priced, including ones from very well respected companies here.

 

I think the real problem a lot of people here have with Bose, myself included, is not that they are especially awful (they aren't) it's that it gets annoying how many people out there are under the misconcpetion they are world class headphones.

 

It's always going to wind someone with a geekishly encyclopedic knowledge of real world class headphones when someone is going on about Bose being the world's greatest all the time. So even though they aren't absolutely terrible, they get slagged off disproportionately as a knee jerk response to the equally disproportionate praise they get from people who know f-all about headphones.

I don't think it's that bad, the sound quality will depend on people's liking.

 

The build quality is pretty awful tho. For it's price, the value won't be very good

Sir,

with respect,

have you ever heard a good vacuum tube amp?

 

 

Nope and can't say I want to. What a tube amp does to the sound is nothing magical and if I wanted it added I would do so in software.

That said, I'll wager that many tube amps sound surprisingly similar to their solid state brethren (they may measure badly, but not necessarily badly enough for it to be obviously audible) when the blindfolds are brought out.