Bose 301's as reference monitors?

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ap-emerger

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Years ago while recording an EP (1995-ish) our producer used a pair of Bose 301's for our recording project. I now own a pair of those speakers and am wondering if anybody can recommend or warn against using these as reference monitors for a home studio.

AP :cool:
 
Depends on what vintage 301s they are. The original 301s from the early 80s had a fairly decent sound to them, though somewhat lacking on the low lows and high highs from an audio engineering point of view. The big gotcha with them is that their tweeters are pointed way off-axis and designed to reflect the highs off the side walls. They are most definitely not nearfields. This gotcha not only messes up HF soundspace translation somewhat, but make it very difficult to troubleshoot possible HF phase problems in the mix.

The mkIIs that came along somehwer around '84 or '85 absoluetly sucked as far as response goes, and their high-freq dispersion was lousy, even after ignoring their direct/reflect design.

G.
 
i mixed off of an ole pair of the 201's with a cheap sub for a long time when i had no other options.

between that and my room i never, never had any idea what was going on in the low mids, lows.
i couldn't recommend it, but ymmv.
 
I had a pair of 201s that I stripped out the drivers and dropped in some quality replacements. The difference was so huge it was laughable. The Bose does not have a crossover at all, as I recall, it had a single resistor in series with the tweeter. And of course the drivers were crap.

The direct/reflecting is an interesting design, and with good drivers, worked well in the bizarre little room I used to have for a studio. But I wouldn't recommend that for normal use, especially nearfield.
 
Thanks

Thanks guys...I think I'll probably check musicians friend or ebay for a good deal on reference monitors then.

Any decent quality / affordable options?

-Once again, I thank you for the great wealth of info!

Andy :cool:
 
If you take time to learn them (translation) and integrate them into your room properly you can mix on just about anything.
 
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