In the passive XO. At least in the 301 & 401. If in the 901 would just be in series.
dave
The 901 relied on the comb filtering of the adjacent drivers to establish a desired polar pattern……..if I were going to attempt something in the vain of the 901, it would be more drivers, smaller in size.
I had them late 80ies Not good sound. Good for low level non-intrusive background music in cafes. Not for really listening to music.
Cheers!
What most people do not remember, until the middle of the 80's, when the CD was aviable to a broad audience, the sound quality for home audio was limited.
Of course there where many good and high end turntables, but the most important part was the pick up. Just like the record, it had a limited lifespan. The price for a pick up that reached about CD quality, in 1985 was roughly 200 German Marks (DM). For comparison, a good entry level record player, already with a cheap pick up build in, was about the same price. Records had only a few times of perfect reproduction, then they lost their "as new" sound. Audiophiles often conserved new records on large tape decks, which came at quite some cost for tape reels. The industry had only a limited interest in producing high quality recordings, because (as they always said) the customer was not able to reproduce and in the consequence, "did not hear it anyway". So why waste money for quality the customer did not pay for? They made gigantic profits anyway.
The CD made music production much more a quality problem. Just putting a copy of a record on CD was not what the consumer wanted.
Now what I want to say, at the time before the CD, most homes had only a limited quality sound source. A "normal" record player, a tuner and a cassette deck was the standard audio equipment. So people did not have the fine detail, spacious and dynamic sound sources of today, which of course had an influence on the speakers they used.
In Germany the industry cultivated the "bath tub" frequency response with elevated bass and tremble, but no real deep bass to upset the record player. This somehow "corrected" the frequency response of the consumer class audio sources. Amplifiers had switchable "rumble filters", because the average record player had such high noise.
With the CD soft and hardware, now at reasonable prices, people realized what they had missed all the time. There was a huge demand for "digital ready" amplifiers and speakers. So many speaker systems that sounded quite OK with limited quality source material, fell out of favor.
What you should have in mind, people with BOSE speakers usually had an elevated income. These where the ones that adapted the high quality CD first and so they soon experienced the limited performance of the Bose cone speakers used. The 901 for example had many upgrades to keep up with the market.
This whole story is important to people that expect too much of vintage speakers from the "pre-CD era". Even if you are able to put such an once famous speaker into factory new condition, with todays amps and high resolution audio it may disapoint. Which is the cause for many "how to upgrade" questions.
Aged people who rave about these speakers do not lie. At the time they auditioned these icons they where outstanding. But only in comparison to the average speaker of that time, playing sources of the same era.
Today a well build pair of two ways, with a decend sub woofer, should outperform many once high praised, expensive speaker systems. This is the sad difference between myth and reality. By the way, I like vintage gear too, but only whith the quality of today. With some care you can implant good, modern DIYS kit's into an old cabinet. Which often is cheaper than sourceing vintage spare parts for blown and detoriated original drivers. I think you could call this a "restomod".
To get back to BOSE, there are quite some modern direct/ reflecting speakers, even in DIYS kit form. In most cases these will outperform the old Bose constructions. What these don't have is the cool optics...
Of course there where many good and high end turntables, but the most important part was the pick up. Just like the record, it had a limited lifespan. The price for a pick up that reached about CD quality, in 1985 was roughly 200 German Marks (DM). For comparison, a good entry level record player, already with a cheap pick up build in, was about the same price. Records had only a few times of perfect reproduction, then they lost their "as new" sound. Audiophiles often conserved new records on large tape decks, which came at quite some cost for tape reels. The industry had only a limited interest in producing high quality recordings, because (as they always said) the customer was not able to reproduce and in the consequence, "did not hear it anyway". So why waste money for quality the customer did not pay for? They made gigantic profits anyway.
The CD made music production much more a quality problem. Just putting a copy of a record on CD was not what the consumer wanted.
Now what I want to say, at the time before the CD, most homes had only a limited quality sound source. A "normal" record player, a tuner and a cassette deck was the standard audio equipment. So people did not have the fine detail, spacious and dynamic sound sources of today, which of course had an influence on the speakers they used.
In Germany the industry cultivated the "bath tub" frequency response with elevated bass and tremble, but no real deep bass to upset the record player. This somehow "corrected" the frequency response of the consumer class audio sources. Amplifiers had switchable "rumble filters", because the average record player had such high noise.
With the CD soft and hardware, now at reasonable prices, people realized what they had missed all the time. There was a huge demand for "digital ready" amplifiers and speakers. So many speaker systems that sounded quite OK with limited quality source material, fell out of favor.
What you should have in mind, people with BOSE speakers usually had an elevated income. These where the ones that adapted the high quality CD first and so they soon experienced the limited performance of the Bose cone speakers used. The 901 for example had many upgrades to keep up with the market.
This whole story is important to people that expect too much of vintage speakers from the "pre-CD era". Even if you are able to put such an once famous speaker into factory new condition, with todays amps and high resolution audio it may disapoint. Which is the cause for many "how to upgrade" questions.
Aged people who rave about these speakers do not lie. At the time they auditioned these icons they where outstanding. But only in comparison to the average speaker of that time, playing sources of the same era.
Today a well build pair of two ways, with a decend sub woofer, should outperform many once high praised, expensive speaker systems. This is the sad difference between myth and reality. By the way, I like vintage gear too, but only whith the quality of today. With some care you can implant good, modern DIYS kit's into an old cabinet. Which often is cheaper than sourceing vintage spare parts for blown and detoriated original drivers. I think you could call this a "restomod".
To get back to BOSE, there are quite some modern direct/ reflecting speakers, even in DIYS kit form. In most cases these will outperform the old Bose constructions. What these don't have is the cool optics...
I owned a pair of 901 series 3 in the 80's and was very happy with them at the time.
One evening we passed a crowded bar with loud music and I convinced my mates to go in and listen to the musicians playing. Once inside, there was no musician to be seen, but four 901's series 1 hung in every corner of the pub. It really sounded live. Those speakers were excellent in that regard.
One evening we passed a crowded bar with loud music and I convinced my mates to go in and listen to the musicians playing. Once inside, there was no musician to be seen, but four 901's series 1 hung in every corner of the pub. It really sounded live. Those speakers were excellent in that regard.
I can only support netlist with his (positive) listening experience of the 901.
In technical terms a frequency response corrected fullrange system has some advantages over phasey sounding multi way speakers:
time coherent music reproduction with no loss due to phasing problems many multi ways suffer from until today.
Long time impulse response was claimed to play no role in Hifi.
But since some time big companies like RCF tell openly the truth:
In technical terms a frequency response corrected fullrange system has some advantages over phasey sounding multi way speakers:
time coherent music reproduction with no loss due to phasing problems many multi ways suffer from until today.
Long time impulse response was claimed to play no role in Hifi.
But since some time big companies like RCF tell openly the truth:
I was equally surprised with a medium-sized PA system containing a battery of 802's and 302's on a square of roughly 200–300 people. We were attracted to it by the very good sounding system without having seen it.
A friend, who is also a member here, tried different broadband speakers in 802's a long time ago. I never heard them, but it would surprise me if they sounded as good as the originals.
A friend, who is also a member here, tried different broadband speakers in 802's a long time ago. I never heard them, but it would surprise me if they sounded as good as the originals.
Im sorry @Turbowatch2 You are way of bringing audio sources quality into this discussion.
Discussions about Bose are mainly two fold if Im correct:
1. The "external directed sound" vs (atempted?) point source or nice wide and uniform polar response schools that will debate against each other for even more decades to come. Bose is the most well known brand in indirect sound, so will most often be brought up in such debates.
2. The perhaps unreasonable overselling selling by Bose sales department of their products qualities and their following up market price settings.
Radio, a reasonable low-midd prised turnable, or a taperecorder were plenty good to judge the qualities of speakers and still is.
CD's higher dinamic range of course is a little bit rougher on speakers if turned too loud, but I doubt CD killed many speakers that werent "digital ready" That was just marketing too. -Scaring people to buy new speakers that could handle their new enourmously potent cd players😄
Discussions about Bose are mainly two fold if Im correct:
1. The "external directed sound" vs (atempted?) point source or nice wide and uniform polar response schools that will debate against each other for even more decades to come. Bose is the most well known brand in indirect sound, so will most often be brought up in such debates.
2. The perhaps unreasonable overselling selling by Bose sales department of their products qualities and their following up market price settings.
Radio, a reasonable low-midd prised turnable, or a taperecorder were plenty good to judge the qualities of speakers and still is.
CD's higher dinamic range of course is a little bit rougher on speakers if turned too loud, but I doubt CD killed many speakers that werent "digital ready" That was just marketing too. -Scaring people to buy new speakers that could handle their new enourmously potent cd players😄
Sure audio source quality had a great influence on speaker development. How old were you when the CD took over?
Speakers got better, just as the CD made turntable and pickup manufacturers improve on their products. Consumer class HIFY simply got better.
Sure "digital ready" was a marketing thing, but things really evolved with the CD. The reference for sound was set higher and effortable for many, not only some rare audiophiles. Normal people realized how bad their old gear sounded and bought new stuff because of the CD.
Which was the birth hour of CD haters, too. Some are still alive.
Speakers got better, just as the CD made turntable and pickup manufacturers improve on their products. Consumer class HIFY simply got better.
Sure "digital ready" was a marketing thing, but things really evolved with the CD. The reference for sound was set higher and effortable for many, not only some rare audiophiles. Normal people realized how bad their old gear sounded and bought new stuff because of the CD.
Which was the birth hour of CD haters, too. Some are still alive.
Hey guys, as the Passive speaker repair tech for Bose in the US, I can try to answer any questions about their speakers.
The 901's do not have any bulbs in them, just nine drivers in series. The rear drivers are out of phase with the front driver.
Also to note is Bose has turned off repairs for the 901's. There's not enough drivers left stocked for a complete pair referb/repair. (Black or blue cones) Sad really, should be the one product supported till the end.
The 901's do not have any bulbs in them, just nine drivers in series. The rear drivers are out of phase with the front driver.
Also to note is Bose has turned off repairs for the 901's. There's not enough drivers left stocked for a complete pair referb/repair. (Black or blue cones) Sad really, should be the one product supported till the end.
I am 63, and I was witness of the birth of CD in year 1982. So I can tell you in the year 1981 there were plenty good loudspeakers, which wouldn't be ashamed by today's loudspeakers. Some are still in use - no need to "upgrade" them with new.
I got the first SONY publication n on CD in 1980. The first ones that came out were crap. Took till 2000 for me to get a CD player.
dave
dave
Yup, they were awful, along with the crappy sounding CD's, which carried on into the 90's. There's nothing inherently wrong with the format, but the mastering varied from bad to unlistenable.
As players improved, they just made the poorly mastered CD's sound worse. 🙂
jeff
Im 52 if that matters. Started out with a tapedeck and a tuner. Got a cd in 88 and a Rega planar in 91? I can enjoy all of them and bluetooth audio as well. Speakers developed greatly in the 70ies. I didn't notice any particular jump in the eighties. I would say a lot of improvement happened the last ten years regarding directivity. Both in commercial and diy. Bose came with AM5 speaker system after CD came. Tiny speakers that sounded larger than they looked. Hardly developed to live up to cd being more demanding and not a step forward in high fidelity.
Since then I've heard good about wave canons from professionals and their first bluetooth speaker surprised me by sounding pleasant and full for its size.
Tons of Bose I haven't heard, so maybe they made more good product.
Many of their ideas were sound despite of faults and high prizing. I found a pair of mint 201 btw. I ended up just throwing them out. They were so bad I would give or sell them to my worst enemy 😊.
Sorry for taking the bait deriving from the topic of reflective sound design filosophi.
Since then I've heard good about wave canons from professionals and their first bluetooth speaker surprised me by sounding pleasant and full for its size.
Tons of Bose I haven't heard, so maybe they made more good product.
Many of their ideas were sound despite of faults and high prizing. I found a pair of mint 201 btw. I ended up just throwing them out. They were so bad I would give or sell them to my worst enemy 😊.
Sorry for taking the bait deriving from the topic of reflective sound design filosophi.
Parts Express sells a replacement blue cone. I've received quite a few 901's with them in it, but never seen one with all of them in there. I've never done a one on one comparison.
We were upgrading the blue cones to the newer black cones. The black ones have a treated cloth surround, so no more rotten foam.
There is a usual way to describe a speaker chassis: Measure TSP, measure frequency response, take a defective one apart, measure voice coil and magnet gap depth.
This way you can make yourself a picture of a speaker construction. The 901 is iconic, but I never saw any attempt of a copy. So I see not much interest in the principle. Maybe I missed something.
This way you can make yourself a picture of a speaker construction. The 901 is iconic, but I never saw any attempt of a copy. So I see not much interest in the principle. Maybe I missed something.
A good way to get ambience while still preserving imaging and clarity is to use a "Late ceiling splash" arrangement ala Duke LeJeune
(https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/late-ceiling-splash.332507/). Works particularly nicely with constant directivity waveguide speakers (which IMO otherwise can tend to play music that sounds great except it doesn't seem like you are in the same room as the musicians).
(https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/late-ceiling-splash.332507/). Works particularly nicely with constant directivity waveguide speakers (which IMO otherwise can tend to play music that sounds great except it doesn't seem like you are in the same room as the musicians).
Somewhere in the production years of series 5, Bose changed the formula of the surrounds. From then one, the foam rot problem was solved. Thus, some series 5, series 6 and 6 V2 don't have that problem. The GRS speakers are most likely good replacements, but until we have all parameters of both original and GRS's, we don't know if they will perform the same. Also, when I calculate the price to replace all drivers, I would tend to find a good working second hand series 6 pair.