[Noobiiee]

Denon D1001 is around 89GBP last time I checked

 

[Prog Rock Man]

The shop was John Lewis and apart from the B&Ws, I am sure there are cheaper places to get them.

 

[tyty5150]

Quote:

Lots of hate on Bose for their false advertising and lies to the community via their tv commercials.  they literally say you wont hear this kind of sound quality anywhere else and its unrivaled.  Snap off 75% of their price and look to really your pick of a sennheiser or something else and you will find things superior to them in every way.
 
well, its not unrivaled, the JVChas700 is basically a QC2 clone.  The sound quality is only slightly better in the highs on the bose.  Bose is like 200$, the JVC are $30 and come with memory foam pads instead of junk foam padding.
 
The grado sr60i right now is better than the Qc3, the grado 80i is better than the newest Qc15 from bose that is priced at $300.  Sennheiser has some priced at around 20-50$ that outperform the Q15.
 
>.>  thats how much bose stinks and wants to steal your money with lies and false promises.
 

Thanks for not reading earlier arguments.  Just because you think that way doesn't mean all people do.  Some might enjoy the Bose sound over what you praise.

 
Quote:

I spent sometime at a listening post with ipods and various headphones including the Bose Around Ear, Denon AH D1001 and B&W P5s. The Bose were the cheapest at £99 compared to the Denon's £110 and B&Ws £250. The Bose did not even feel like a £99 headphone such was the material used to make it and generally flimsy design. The Denons felt much better value for money. Sound wise they each had their own strengths and weaknesses and the Bose did OK. If money were no object I would get the B&Ws, then the Denons and last the Bose. 

I have to agree the Bose AE are flimsy.  Went to a Best Buy and some careless people must have tried them on cause they were cracked above the ear piece.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Quote:

Lots of hate on Bose for their false advertising and lies to the community via their tv commercials.  they literally say you wont hear this kind of sound quality anywhere else and its unrivaled.......

But all audio manufacturers claim that their products sound the best. So all but one, the best, must therefore be false advertising and lying. 

 

[tyty5150]

 
Quote:

But all audio manufacturers claim that their products sound the best. So all but one, the best, must therefore be false advertising and lying. 

This is true.  But in a sense, the way sounds are perceived and how people enjoy music is up to them, so for each person the brand could be different depending on the sound signature they love.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Since blind tests do repeatedly show that audio equipment does not sound a s different as audiophiles claim, people buy audio products based on adverts, reviews, image, brand name, style far more than many an audiophile is prepared to admit. That is why Bose are so successful and audiophiles often hate them for it.

 

[Super3dcow]

Why can't any companies make headphones that play music the way it is supposed to sound? When I listen to music, I want to hear it the way the creator meant for it to be heard, not just what I think sounds good. Sure, a headset that could give sound in that wide of a range would be expensive, but they should at least exist. (or maybe they already do?)

 

[wind016]

Quote:

Why can't any companies make headphones that play music the way it is supposed to sound? When I listen to music, I want to hear it the way the creator meant for it to be heard, not just what I think sounds good. Sure, a headset that could give sound in that wide of a range would be expensive, but they should at least exist. (or maybe they already do?)

We'd all be wearing studio monitors then... I'd rather not. Different ppl want to hear different things out of their music. IE Guitarists want guitars. Bassists want bass.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Quote:

Why can't any companies make headphones that play music the way it is supposed to sound? When I listen to music, I want to hear it the way the creator meant for it to be heard, not just what I think sounds good. Sure, a headset that could give sound in that wide of a range would be expensive, but they should at least exist. (or maybe they already do?)

Unless you were there in the studio, how would you know? Otherwise go for accuracy and detail and an even frequency response.

 

[wind016]

Quote:

Unless you were there in the studio, how would you know? Otherwise go for accuracy and detail and an even frequency response.

good point too... ud have to standardize all studio monitors all artists use to hear what the artists hear out of the final product themselves. 

 

[Bilavideo]

But all audio manufacturers claim that their products sound the best. So all but one, the best, must therefore be false advertising and lying. 

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.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Quote:

 
.....  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......
 
 

Lol, very well put.

 

[mckinetic]

Hey this is a great thread. So I'm in the Navy, and one day find myself in the NEX, rapping with a, "product specialist" about TV's, etc.
Turns out he is also the Bose dude, and is very interested in showing me his wares. We go to the 301? system, and he cranks it up all smiles, and asks my opinion. I tell him to turn his bass cube off and see what is actually coming out of those cute little satellite speakers. Of course he is genuinely amazed at what he hears, completely, awesomely suprised at the crud produced. He quickly turned his bass cube back on and wished me to leave quietly. Hahah. So yeah Bose deserves what they get in IMHO.

 

[aephur]

 
Quote:

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.

 
*clap...  clap.. clap..clapclapclap-Applause-standingOvation*
 
As a former Bose owner, I wholeheartedly agree.
To this day, I keep looking back at my $185 purchase of the Bose Triports 4 years ago thinking "I really genuinely burned $140, when I could have gotten a pair of PortaPros and call it a day".
 
I don't accuse them of false advertising. If anything I applaud their advertising teams for doing such a great job at promoting the product. As a graphic designer, I know how to appreciate promotional techniques.
 
What really gets in my nerves is how much money is spent on advertising instead of genuine audio research and engineering.
If they spent even 25% of their revenue into proper research, they would have gained some honor in my book.
 
No, I believe Bose created initial technology, and mass produced it in different shells.
The only thing progressing in their line of products is their Noise Cancelling technology.
Everything else sounds the same.
 
That means they're not an Audio Technology Company. They are producers of Noise Cancelling technology.
They have no business making anything without noise cancelling.
And they have no business making new products.
 
I bet they use the same drivers in all their headphone lineup.
But the difference with Koss is that Koss actually prices it right, and they admit that the drivers are the same.
Plus Koss offers great services with their impressive lifetime warranty.
 
Bose has no honor.
 
EDIT: IMHO In my Honest Opinion

 

[PointyFox]

Hating something about a company shouldn't mean that you try to tell everyone possible not to buy any of their products and make up excuses about why. 
 
I own Triports and have given them to audiophiles to listen to.  They all had positive things to say about them.
 
Read my unbiased review on the Triports and try them out first if you're going to give opinions about them.