[TedwardRoberts]

I tried them and they are okay, but not good for the price IMO. They are pretty comfy tho (memory foam, so I hear)

 

[Danosaurus]

Okay please allow me to offer a little rational thinking...I've been around these and other forums for a while to know that the name Bose stirs up some passionate debate. Many dismiss anything Bose out of hand just because of the name, maybe because they've heard others bashing or maybe they've listened and were unimpressed by the sound/price ratio which is fine although maybe a little hypocritical considering the gobs of cash many of us (including myself) have spent on other brands.

I actually started with the Bose In Ears a little over a year ago (which did SUCK, but I got them for free with my Apple iPhone credit) and as often happens around here have been accumulating headphones ever since. I now have Denon D1001s and D2000s, Senn PX100s, and couple high end IEMs. I also had and sold various other phones including Grado SR80s, AT ES7s and Porta Pros.

After all this I still bought a pair of Bose On-Ears a couple weeks ago. It's actually the mobile headset with microphone cable which happened to be on sale. I am NOT going to argue that they sound better than other phones, but they do fill a niche and for the life of me I can't think of another phone that has all the same qualities.

Denon D1001-Yes they sound better and are very comfy but for closed cans there is NO isolation and lots of sound leakage. The Bose OEs have surprising isolation and little leakage. Denons are NOT portable. Granted they aren't huge, but they don't fold up small either. Also a small annoyance but the plug is not original-iPhone compatible, and with my 3G iPhone I have to take the phone completely out of it's slider case.

AT ES7-Not very comfortable for me even with the headband mod, and I was unimpressed by the sound quality...weird honky mids (and yes they were genuine!). Killer looks though.

Senn PX100-Probably the gold standard for portable phones next to the Porta Pros, outstanding sound and comfortable but they are open phones...no isolation and lots of leakage. Good on the street where you want to hear stuff around you, bad in libraries or noisy places like buses or trains.

Senn PX200-Closed version of the PX100, I had a pair and sold them. I always felt the sound was lacking and between these and the PX100 there's no contest. The small earpads made it very hard to get a seal on my ear so they were very bass deficient.

Grado SR60/80-Great sound but (for me at least) very uncomfortable. Also not truly portable, also open cans and ummm how many of us want to wear Grados in public? (Okay I know there's a few here!

)

Senn HD25-I tried a pair of these at work and they sounded great with good isolation. Bland in the style deparment and definitely not as comfortable as the Bose OEs...they hurt my ears after a few minutes. Also pretty expensive.

In conclusion...can you get better sound for the same or less money? Yes, of course. Is Bose overpriced and over-marketed? Probably. The Bose OEs may have lackluster sound but they do offer super comfortable squishy foam earpads, decent isolation and minimal leakage, great portability, a removable cable, a nice carrying case and they aren't hideously ugly. Like I said, for me they fit a particular niche in my collection. If anyone can recommend some phones that have all of the above AND sound better at any price I'd love to check them out...I think that would be the perfect portable headphone.

 

[DTKZ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Danosaurus /img/forum/go_quote.gif super comfortable squishy foam earpads, decent isolation and minimal leakage, great portability, a removable cable, a nice carrying case and they aren't hideously ugly.

These qualities you mention describe the AKG K450 pretty well. I know the OP doesn't like them, but there are a few people on here who do, myself included.

AKG Personal Audio - K 450

 

[Danosaurus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DTKZ /img/forum/go_quote.gif These qualities you mention describe the AKG K450 pretty well. I know the OP doesn't like them, but there are a few people on here who do, myself included. AKG Personal Audio - K 450

I would like to try those out...I didn't mention above that I do have a pair of JBL 410s (same as AKG K27i) which I picked up cheap a few months back. The small earpads are not very comfortable and they sound kind of muddy but from AKGs description the K450s are much improved. Might have to get some eventually, but I have Zinos arriving on Tuesday...

Yes folks, I have a problem...

 

[captian73]

Quote:

Originally Posted by billybob_jcv /img/forum/go_quote.gif is that they are simply not a "natural" sound signature.

but that could be said of a lot of headphones. The Sennheiser CX300's sound really bright against the Soundwise T4 earphones. the AKG K450, C-jays and HD238's sound ... artificial to a certain degree, after listening to the well grounded Ultrasone HFI-15G. we could go at this all day!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Danosaurus /img/forum/go_quote.gif Senn PX100-Probably the gold standard for portable phones next to the Porta Pros, outstanding sound and comfortable but they are open phones...no isolation and lots of leakage. Good on the street where you want to hear stuff around you, bad in libraries or noisy places like buses or trains. Senn PX200-Closed version of the PX100, I had a pair and sold them. I always felt the sound was lacking and between these and the PX100 there's no contest. The small earpads made it very hard to get a seal on my ear so they were very bass deficient.

have you tried the iGrado's yet?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Danosaurus /img/forum/go_quote.gif I would like to try those out...I didn't mention above that I do have a pair of JBL 410s (same as AKG K27i) which I picked up cheap a few months back. The small earpads are not very comfortable and they sound kind of muddy but from AKGs description the K450s are much improved. Might have to get some eventually, but I have Zinos arriving on Tuesday... Yes folks, I have a problem...

I also have ... had (had the AKG K27i) and I can tell you the K450's are a much improved version of the JBL 410's.

http://headphonedeals.org/wp-content...comparison.JPG

 

[Ultrazino]

Thanks guys, you convinced me not to get the Bose.

Quote:

Originally Posted by captian73 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I like the Bose, they're small enough to go fairly unnoticed. I also like my AKG K450, deep well controlled bass,but not as stylish as the Zino's. The issue with Bose is the constant bass, but the same could be said of the AKG's. Good when you're in the mood, but a bit tiring if you're not!

Okay, as I already said, I really don't like the K 450 and if the Bose are somewhat similar there's no way I'm trading the Zino in!
Guess closed on-ears are not for me either. (Damn, my ears hardly like anything!)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Danosaurus /img/forum/go_quote.gif Senn PX100-Probably the gold standard for portable phones next to the Porta Pros, outstanding sound and comfortable but they are open phones...no isolation and lots of leakage. Good on the street where you want to hear stuff around you, bad in libraries or noisy places like buses or trains.

Looks like this could be my final alternative. Will try to find a store today to check them out and do a comparison.

Thanks again!

 

[billybob_jcv]

Have you considered in-ear 'phones instead of portables?

 

[-=Resonant_Rebel=-]

Simplest way to put it- you pay for their marketing when you shell out $160 for a pair of Triport On-Ear.

You pay for the name- which on here is a down right crappy one. Over Priced and Under Qualified.

EQ'ed is right- when you listen to the demos, thats the EQ they have it set to. Unless you're willing to go home and Equalize your gear to match the demo stuff- you won;t get the same sound.

BUT, I like them for watching movies.

Sorry for my ranting, had some bad experience with bose.

Regards,
Spencer D.

 

[Danosaurus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ultrazino /img/forum/go_quote.gif Looks like this could be my final alternative. Will try to find a store today to check them out and do a comparison. Thanks again!

The PX-100 really is a great portable phone...they fold up small and the hard case is nice. They sound amazing for their size, they're light and comfortable, look pretty cool too, all at a budget price. I'm actually listening to them right now, but sadly I don't get to use them as much as I'd like because they're open phones and I mostly listen in quiet environments with other people around, and I don't want to annoy them with my music. If only the PX200 sounded as good!

How are the Zinos? I should be getting mine tomorrow! My first Ultrasones...

 

[Bilavideo]

I'm not a fan of Bose. I went into the mall one day and took the tour. I just wanted to hear what the wave radio sounded like. Instead, I got ushered into a demo room designed for suckers. The room is set up to look like a movie theater, with rows and rows of chairs. We were, of course, invited to sit up front. In fact, they don't give these tours to groups of 100 people at a time. The whole room was a scam. If you look behind you, you'll see that the rear sats are set up, near the ceiling, just a few rows back, so there's no expectation that anybody is ever going to sit anywhere but up front.

To show off its $3,000 system, Bose uses a big-screen TV showing clips from popular movies, as well as some concert footage. These guys are not stupid. If anything, they're sharks. The big-screen TV helps get your mind off what you're listening to, so that, at best, you're having a hybrid experience. The better the visual presentation, the easier it is to sell the audio. For a lot of Joe Lunchboxes, dazzling HD sells itself, with the poorest of audio, over at Walmart.

The point of the presentation was to blow us all away at how much sound Bose gives you with the smallest footprint. To its credit, the WAF factor of a Bose system is probably among the best, since it amounts to a receiver/amp, about the size of a DVD player, along with a small center sat, front left and right sats (positioned at the ceiling corners) and a pair of rear left and right sats (positioned at the ceiling corners). Bose also has a small box containing its version of a subwoofer, which works best when it's positioned in a room corner, where its sound can echo off of two walls.

The Bose approach is all about "psychoacoustics," which is a fancy name for convincing people they're getting better hi-fi than they've bought. I'm not going to make direct comparisons involving Bose's receiver/amp, which tries to be an iPod, but the sats and the subwoofer box could be duplicated for a lot less than three grand. If you look closely, you'll see that the whole system is based on creating a bit of audio confusion. Reflected, degraded, sound is interpreted by the brain as mimicking the acoustical idiosyncrasies of a concert hall or live performance. Despite the claim to better sound through research, the whole effect is really low-tech. Each sat has two paper-cone wide-range speakers, not more than 3.5 inches in diameter. One is aimed at the audience; the other is aimed at a reflecting surface, like a wall. The idea is to produce sonic mud - a direct signal, followed by a degraded reflective signal, to convince your mind you're hearing live sound bouncing all over the place. In fact, with a double-left, double-right, double-surround-left, double-surround-right and the mono coming at you from the center, there's enough duplicative info flying around to convince your mind that the sound is coming from all over the place.

Bose is selling a sonic funhouse, with less interest in sonic fidelity than in making an impression on Joe Lunchbox during one of its presentations for its $3,000 system. Using visual distractions to convince the prospect that he/she is sitting in a large theater, rather than a small room, full of hard surfaces, Bose carefully arranges the audio to give the impression that its 10 speakers (each of which can be replaced for less than $3 per driver) are giving you dynamic sound, rather than a midrange with HF roll-off and a bass that mostly consists of mid-bass whump. The subwoofer box is actually an assortment of small paper-coned woofer/mids, crossed low and wired up so that one sucks while the other blows, using as much of the box as possible as it ports to a different side of the box. There is a great deal of efficiency in this arrangement, but its purpose is to get something out of nothing.

For half the cost of Bose's big system, I bought a Yamaha receiver off the shelf, bought Morel 33s and Morel 55s for my midtweet combo, bought Aurum Cantus aluminum ribbons (five of them), bought a pair of 15" woofers, another pair of HF 15" subwoofers, a 500-watt subwoofer amp, and an array of 8 planar ribbons as mid/tweets for rear sats. I had to build my own crossover and convert my wife's entertainment system into a pair of towers, but I now have sound that would eat Bose's best for lunch - and at a fraction of the price.

I tell you this because the same mentality that went into the $3,000 box of mediocre mids is hard at work in the on-ear headphones. To its credit, Bose did invent a noise-cancelling technology, decades ago, which is useful in wearing these phones in public. But with a lower profile, any IEM would give you greater noise cancellation, and without subjecting you to hiss or an HF roll-off.

Not that the on-ear phones are a dirtbag experience. They're fun, especially when worn in the store and while pumped through Bose's sound system and with Bose's choice of tunes. My experience with the properly-stationed on-ears at a local Best Buy was positive. They gave good sound isolation and the bass was dynamic. But suspecting my experience was rigged, I went home, performed an online search and found Bose's list of tracks, which I then downloaded from iTunes.

Listening to that same set of tracks, on just about any set of headphones, will perk you up. They're not particularly challenging, in terms of what they expect from a headphone. They stay, fairly well, in the midrange. They include tracks with a lot of percussive popping that isn't very high or very low. Pumped through any system, these tracks would give the listener the impression that he/she were listening to something spectacular. As I was able to replicate the experience on a wide range of headphones, I've come to the conclusion that "psychoacoustics" is what Bose is selling.

One thing I noticed, about the clarity of the phones, is that the attempt to provide a bassy presentation comes at the cost of clarity and detail. These phones do sound warmer, mostly because the nagahyde-like cushions create a leathery sound chamber isolating the sound and providing no vent except a small earhole in the center. To me, they sounded unnecessarily dark.

 

[TobaccoRoad]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Danosaurus /img/forum/go_quote.gif Okay please allow me to offer a little rational thinking...I've been around these and other forums for a while to know that the name Bose stirs up some passionate debate. Many dismiss anything Bose out of hand just because of the name, maybe because they've heard others bashing or maybe they've listened and were unimpressed by the sound/price ratio which is fine although maybe a little hypocritical considering the gobs of cash many of us (including myself) have spent on other brands. I actually started with the Bose In Ears a little over a year ago (which did SUCK, but I got them for free with my Apple iPhone credit) and as often happens around here have been accumulating headphones ever since. I now have Denon D1001s and D2000s, Senn PX100s, and couple high end IEMs. I also had and sold various other phones including Grado SR80s, AT ES7s and Porta Pros. After all this I still bought a pair of Bose On-Ears a couple weeks ago. It's actually the mobile headset with microphone cable which happened to be on sale. I am NOT going to argue that they sound better than other phones, but they do fill a niche and for the life of me I can't think of another phone that has all the same qualities. Denon D1001-Yes they sound better and are very comfy but for closed cans there is NO isolation and lots of sound leakage. The Bose OEs have surprising isolation and little leakage. Denons are NOT portable. Granted they aren't huge, but they don't fold up small either. Also a small annoyance but the plug is not original-iPhone compatible, and with my 3G iPhone I have to take the phone completely out of it's slider case. AT ES7-Not very comfortable for me even with the headband mod, and I was unimpressed by the sound quality...weird honky mids (and yes they were genuine!). Killer looks though. Senn PX100-Probably the gold standard for portable phones next to the Porta Pros, outstanding sound and comfortable but they are open phones...no isolation and lots of leakage. Good on the street where you want to hear stuff around you, bad in libraries or noisy places like buses or trains. Senn PX200-Closed version of the PX100, I had a pair and sold them. I always felt the sound was lacking and between these and the PX100 there's no contest. The small earpads made it very hard to get a seal on my ear so they were very bass deficient. Grado SR60/80-Great sound but (for me at least) very uncomfortable. Also not truly portable, also open cans and ummm how many of us want to wear Grados in public? (Okay I know there's a few here! ) Senn HD25-I tried a pair of these at work and they sounded great with good isolation. Bland in the style deparment and definitely not as comfortable as the Bose OEs...they hurt my ears after a few minutes. Also pretty expensive. In conclusion...can you get better sound for the same or less money? Yes, of course. Is Bose overpriced and over-marketed? Probably. The Bose OEs may have lackluster sound but they do offer super comfortable squishy foam earpads, decent isolation and minimal leakage, great portability, a removable cable, a nice carrying case and they aren't hideously ugly. Like I said, for me they fit a particular niche in my collection. If anyone can recommend some phones that have all of the above AND sound better at any price I'd love to check them out...I think that would be the perfect portable headphone.

This is the most honest post you'll see. Head-fi needs more members like him, where others just go with the crowd in terms of opinions even when they haven't even listened to it (although I have to agree with Bose case). It's disappointing how there aren't many portables to choose from, while there are so many full-sizes and IEMs around. I'm also surprised none of the manufactures came up with the portable that matches the factors Danosaurus mentioned (HD 228?). I mean wouldn't that be the main purpose of a portable headphone? I've been looking for a portable forever, yet my problems were same as the quoted post with the list of headphones. I've been looking at HD 228, but many weren't impressed by the sound. It's getting to a point where I'm actually considering Bose OE. Now I feel depressed all of sudden. damn

 

[iponderous]

I started out with the Bose OE's before I knew of Head-Fi's existence. I bought them on impulse. But after discovering Head-Fi, I felt so ashamed of owning them that I sold them on ebay and moved up to the ESW9's.

I did find the Bose OE's sound signature to be bassy, but I think they were more comfortable, compact and provided better passive noise attenuation than the ESW9's in my opinion. I didn't detect any shortcomings in build quality. They appeared no less durable than the ESW9's, which I regard as rather fragile. So much so, that I never take them out of the house. They were also well under half the price of the ESW9's.

 

[alphaphoenix]

Had them and returned them after two weeks. Although very comfortable, the tremble and mids were watered down by the eccessive and muddy bass, which can only be overcome by EQ. I bought them directly from Bose and took advantage of the 30 day return. In all honesty, for the comfort, portability, accessories, build quality, and sound, they should be $30 less at $149.

 

[peli_kan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bilavideo /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm not a fan of Bose. I went into the mall one day and took the tour. I just wanted to hear what the wave radio sounded like. Instead, I got ushered into a demo room designed for suckers. The room is set up to look like a movie theater, with rows and rows of chairs. We were, of course, invited to sit up front. In fact, they don't give these tours to groups of 100 people at a time. The whole room was a scam. If you look behind you, you'll see that the rear sats are set up, near the ceiling, just a few rows back, so there's no expectation that anybody is ever going to sit anywhere but up front. To show off its $3,000 system, Bose uses a big-screen TV showing clips from popular movies, as well as some concert footage. These guys are not stupid. If anything, they're sharks. The big-screen TV helps get your mind off what you're listening to, so that, at best, you're having a hybrid experience. The better the visual presentation, the easier it is to sell the audio. For a lot of Joe Lunchboxes, dazzling HD sells itself, with the poorest of audio, over at Walmart. The point of the presentation was to blow us all away at how much sound Bose gives you with the smallest footprint. To its credit, the WAF factor of a Bose system is probably among the best, since it amounts to a receiver/amp, about the size of a DVD player, along with a small center sat, front left and right sats (positioned at the ceiling corners) and a pair of rear left and right sats (positioned at the ceiling corners). Bose also has a small box containing its version of a subwoofer, which works best when it's positioned in a room corner, where its sound can echo off of two walls. The Bose approach is all about "psychoacoustics," which is a fancy name for convincing people they're getting better hi-fi than they've bought. I'm not going to make direct comparisons involving Bose's receiver/amp, which tries to be an iPod, but the sats and the subwoofer box could be duplicated for a lot less than three grand. If you look closely, you'll see that the whole system is based on creating a bit of audio confusion. Reflected, degraded, sound is interpreted by the brain as mimicking the acoustical idiosyncrasies of a concert hall or live performance. Despite the claim to better sound through research, the whole effect is really low-tech. Each sat has two paper-cone wide-range speakers, not more than 3.5 inches in diameter. One is aimed at the audience; the other is aimed at a reflecting surface, like a wall. The idea is to produce sonic mud - a direct signal, followed by a degraded reflective signal, to convince your mind you're hearing live sound bouncing all over the place. In fact, with a double-left, double-right, double-surround-left, double-surround-right and the mono coming at you from the center, there's enough duplicative info flying around to convince your mind that the sound is coming from all over the place. Bose is selling a sonic funhouse, with less interest in sonic fidelity than in making an impression on Joe Lunchbox during one of its presentations for its $3,000 system. Using visual distractions to convince the prospect that he/she is sitting in a large theater, rather than a small room, full of hard surfaces, Bose carefully arranges the audio to give the impression that its 10 speakers (each of which can be replaced for less than $3 per driver) are giving you dynamic sound, rather than a midrange with HF roll-off and a bass that mostly consists of mid-bass whump. The subwoofer box is actually an assortment of small paper-coned woofer/mids, crossed low and wired up so that one sucks while the other blows, using as much of the box as possible as it ports to a different side of the box. There is a great deal of efficiency in this arrangement, but its purpose is to get something out of nothing. For half the cost of Bose's big system, I bought a Yamaha receiver off the shelf, bought Morel 33s and Morel 55s for my midtweet combo, bought Aurum Cantus aluminum ribbons (five of them), bought a pair of 15" woofers, another pair of HF 15" subwoofers, a 500-watt subwoofer amp, and an array of 8 planar ribbons as mid/tweets for rear sats. I had to build my own crossover and convert my wife's entertainment system into a pair of towers, but I now have sound that would eat Bose's best for lunch - and at a fraction of the price. I tell you this because the same mentality that went into the $3,000 box of mediocre mids is hard at work in the on-ear headphones. To its credit, Bose did invent a noise-cancelling technology, decades ago, which is useful in wearing these phones in public. But with a lower profile, any IEM would give you greater noise cancellation, and without subjecting you to hiss or an HF roll-off. Not that the on-ear phones are a dirtbag experience. They're fun, especially when worn in the store and while pumped through Bose's sound system and with Bose's choice of tunes. My experience with the properly-stationed on-ears at a local Best Buy was positive. They gave good sound isolation and the bass was dynamic. But suspecting my experience was rigged, I went home, performed an online search and found Bose's list of tracks, which I then downloaded from iTunes. Listening to that same set of tracks, on just about any set of headphones, will perk you up. They're not particularly challenging, in terms of what they expect from a headphone. They stay, fairly well, in the midrange. They include tracks with a lot of percussive popping that isn't very high or very low. Pumped through any system, these tracks would give the listener the impression that he/she were listening to something spectacular. As I was able to replicate the experience on a wide range of headphones, I've come to the conclusion that "psychoacoustics" is what Bose is selling. One thing I noticed, about the clarity of the phones, is that the attempt to provide a bassy presentation comes at the cost of clarity and detail. These phones do sound warmer, mostly because the nagahyde-like cushions create a leathery sound chamber isolating the sound and providing no vent except a small earhole in the center. To me, they sounded unnecessarily dark.

There is nothing that I would change in what you posted. It's common knowledge among those in the high-end audio industry, and worth passing on to eager and learning newcomers.

 

[ljokerl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bilavideo /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm not a fan of Bose. I went into the mall one day and took the tour. I just wanted to hear what the wave radio sounded like. Instead, I got ushered into a demo room designed for suckers. The room is set up to look like a movie theater, with rows and rows of chairs. We were, of course, invited to sit up front. In fact, they don't give these tours to groups of 100 people at a time. The whole room was a scam. If you look behind you, you'll see that the rear sats are set up, near the ceiling, just a few rows back, so there's no expectation that anybody is ever going to sit anywhere but up front. To show off its $3,000 system, Bose uses a big-screen TV showing clips from popular movies, as well as some concert footage. These guys are not stupid. If anything, they're sharks. The big-screen TV helps get your mind off what you're listening to, so that, at best, you're having a hybrid experience. The better the visual presentation, the easier it is to sell the audio. For a lot of Joe Lunchboxes, dazzling HD sells itself, with the poorest of audio, over at Walmart. The point of the presentation was to blow us all away at how much sound Bose gives you with the smallest footprint. To its credit, the WAF factor of a Bose system is probably among the best, since it amounts to a receiver/amp, about the size of a DVD player, along with a small center sat, front left and right sats (positioned at the ceiling corners) and a pair of rear left and right sats (positioned at the ceiling corners). Bose also has a small box containing its version of a subwoofer, which works best when it's positioned in a room corner, where its sound can echo off of two walls. The Bose approach is all about "psychoacoustics," which is a fancy name for convincing people they're getting better hi-fi than they've bought. I'm not going to make direct comparisons involving Bose's receiver/amp, which tries to be an iPod, but the sats and the subwoofer box could be duplicated for a lot less than three grand. If you look closely, you'll see that the whole system is based on creating a bit of audio confusion. Reflected, degraded, sound is interpreted by the brain as mimicking the acoustical idiosyncrasies of a concert hall or live performance. Despite the claim to better sound through research, the whole effect is really low-tech. Each sat has two paper-cone wide-range speakers, not more than 3.5 inches in diameter. One is aimed at the audience; the other is aimed at a reflecting surface, like a wall. The idea is to produce sonic mud - a direct signal, followed by a degraded reflective signal, to convince your mind you're hearing live sound bouncing all over the place. In fact, with a double-left, double-right, double-surround-left, double-surround-right and the mono coming at you from the center, there's enough duplicative info flying around to convince your mind that the sound is coming from all over the place. Bose is selling a sonic funhouse, with less interest in sonic fidelity than in making an impression on Joe Lunchbox during one of its presentations for its $3,000 system. Using visual distractions to convince the prospect that he/she is sitting in a large theater, rather than a small room, full of hard surfaces, Bose carefully arranges the audio to give the impression that its 10 speakers (each of which can be replaced for less than $3 per driver) are giving you dynamic sound, rather than a midrange with HF roll-off and a bass that mostly consists of mid-bass whump. The subwoofer box is actually an assortment of small paper-coned woofer/mids, crossed low and wired up so that one sucks while the other blows, using as much of the box as possible as it ports to a different side of the box. There is a great deal of efficiency in this arrangement, but its purpose is to get something out of nothing. For half the cost of Bose's big system, I bought a Yamaha receiver off the shelf, bought Morel 33s and Morel 55s for my midtweet combo, bought Aurum Cantus aluminum ribbons (five of them), bought a pair of 15" woofers, another pair of HF 15" subwoofers, a 500-watt subwoofer amp, and an array of 8 planar ribbons as mid/tweets for rear sats. I had to build my own crossover and convert my wife's entertainment system into a pair of towers, but I now have sound that would eat Bose's best for lunch - and at a fraction of the price. I tell you this because the same mentality that went into the $3,000 box of mediocre mids is hard at work in the on-ear headphones. To its credit, Bose did invent a noise-cancelling technology, decades ago, which is useful in wearing these phones in public. But with a lower profile, any IEM would give you greater noise cancellation, and without subjecting you to hiss or an HF roll-off. Not that the on-ear phones are a dirtbag experience. They're fun, especially when worn in the store and while pumped through Bose's sound system and with Bose's choice of tunes. My experience with the properly-stationed on-ears at a local Best Buy was positive. They gave good sound isolation and the bass was dynamic. But suspecting my experience was rigged, I went home, performed an online search and found Bose's list of tracks, which I then downloaded from iTunes. Listening to that same set of tracks, on just about any set of headphones, will perk you up. They're not particularly challenging, in terms of what they expect from a headphone. They stay, fairly well, in the midrange. They include tracks with a lot of percussive popping that isn't very high or very low. Pumped through any system, these tracks would give the listener the impression that he/she were listening to something spectacular. As I was able to replicate the experience on a wide range of headphones, I've come to the conclusion that "psychoacoustics" is what Bose is selling. One thing I noticed, about the clarity of the phones, is that the attempt to provide a bassy presentation comes at the cost of clarity and detail. These phones do sound warmer, mostly because the nagahyde-like cushions create a leathery sound chamber isolating the sound and providing no vent except a small earhole in the center. To me, they sounded unnecessarily dark.

Ah, that's pretty much identical to my own experience at the Bose "boutique" in Richmond, VA. Came in to try Bose QCs/IEMs with my own sources and ended up watching the demo. Also noted how the 3 or so tracks that Bose rotates through their headphones if you don't bring your own source are pretty much tailored to their sound sig. I'll give credit to the Bose employees though for bearing with us (me and a friend) for a good half hour as we mixed-and-matched Bose phones, tracks, sources, and amps.

Also, to be fair to Bose, the presentation seemed to accent the form factor of the $3k Bose system rather than its acoustics (and rightfully so).

In addition, the Bose store we were at happened to be directly upstairs of that particular mall's Apple store. We went down to try some Ipods later and noticed that Apple didn't actually give you any ibuds to try (except the ones tethered to the 3g shuffles). Instead, they were all QC2s and QC3s, with some Sennheiser cans and a Dre Beats thrown in for good measure. Also, the wiring arrangement is rather odd, with the headphone cords going down into the counter and different cords coming back up, plugged into the players.