Fair point. I think what rubs this particular community the wrong way is the simple fact that none of the serious audio geeks has any use for a pair of Bose cans. And while there's plenty of room for differences and conflicts between hardcore geeks, none of these people spending serious money on source material, players, DACs, amps and cables is remotely interested in Bose. Bose is not audiophile material. It's a consumer product sold at Best Buy and Target. It's "audiophile" to a general public that knows little, if anything, about the larger universe of audiophile products.
In other words, Bose is a poseur product.
I think you could make it sound pretty good if you tweaked it. Given all the things that audiophiles do to get the most performance out of their gear, I'm sure a pair of Bose cans could be raised to a decent level if given the same love and attention. But if you wanted a pair of dark and boomy cans, aren't the DT770s legendary in that department?
Think about it this way. Headfi geeks go through life getting laughed at by people who wear cheap headphones and wonder why anybody would spend a grand or two on them. They get smirks and stares from people who think you'd have to have a hole in your head to care about lossless recordings, silver-plated cables and esoteric amps. These people know they're not "cool" in the eyes of the general public, but they're okay with that because sound matters.
Enter Bose, with its corporate ad wagon and its sausage-casing consumer boxes priced as "expensive" for what the average schmo would pay for headphones. For $200 to $300, these audio newbies now have what they regard as "the best you can buy." They're still laughing at the audio geek, but this time it's because the geeks don't have Bose, which is laughably low-rent for the audio world.
I had a colleague who spoke to me of his plans to get a pair of Bose. For him, it was an expensive jump but one he was willing to make, if only to treat himself for all the hassles of a tough year. When he asked me about it, I tried not to rain on his parade, but it was all I could do to steel myself as other colleagues rattled off the opinion that "Bose is the best." When he asked me how audiophiles view Bose, I calmly and gently told him the truth, which surprised him. I sugarcoated my response, then brought him a pair of lowly PortaPros, which blew his mind.
"These," I said, "are the bottom rung of a ladder that reaches much higher."
The next day, I brought him a pair of HF2s and he was in Heaven. Not everyone likes the HF2s, mind you, nor am I offering them as the epitome of headphone design, though I happen to like them very much. For some, all Grados are too bright. It's just that most people who shop for Bose have either never heard them or have only heard them from those in-store demos. What's more, most have never heard a decent headphone in their life. Their only frame of reference is the $20 stuff you can find hanging from a hook at Walmart.
If I had a pair of Bose, I would probably tweak them till they sounded the way I like. I would probably widen the sound hole in the middle. I don't know if I'd go to the expense of recabling (I'm a little skeptical about major differences in short cables). I would definitely use an EQ to find out what they might sound like if you could boost the treble for clarity. I've done this in Apple stores, taking the Bose cans off the store models and hooking them to my own iPod. When I switched to Acoustic or Treble Boost, the Bose headphones sounded significantly better.
But the anger is not about any inability to "fix" the Bose presentation. It's about identity theft. People who invest hours and thousands in audio gear - often at the expense of looking odd - don't like it when a consumer product is marketed to make the average schmo think he's an audiophile because he spent what, to him, was a small fortune on headphones. The idea that you can become an instant audiophile by purchasing Bose is as outlandish as the idea that Bose represents "the best" in audio design.
Yes, I know that we all hear differently and your idea of "the best" is not necessarily going to correlate with mine. But if you take that idea to its logical extreme, you end up with relativistic mush. "Best" is "relative" in terms of reference points but that hardly means anything goes. I know a guy who thinks the RS1 is a better Grado than the PS1000 - for reasons that I respect. I know folks who like the HD800 better, as well as folks who prefer the T1, as well as folks who think the Ed9 is the shiz while a new group of fanboys is forming for the LCD-2. What surprised me, as I looked at the PS1000, the HD800 and the T1, was how much these cans had in common - even while each had its signature sound.
Nobody thinks the JCV Marshmallow leaves these others in the dust. Nobody prefers the $5 Kosses you can grab off a hook at Walmart. Nobody thinks entry-level audio has anything on the top contenders. All roads do not lead to Rome.
I suspect that Bose would not be invited to the party, even if it made a decent headphone, for the same reasons Jan Brady hated Marcia and Joseph got sold into Egypt by his brothers. There is a jealousy that comes from being the "favorite," particularly the favorite of those who laugh at headfi as a geek's passion to begin with.
