Dr. Bose

TAE

All you have is now
OK Folkcafe started this in the Hammond VST thread showing a picture of a awesome digital recording system he worked with @ 20 years ago...another rabbit hole...

Dr. Bose...For us old farts here we grew up with that name as the crème de la crème of cool speakers back in the day. In modern days I hear all kinds of bashing on the name and a lot of it is with merit ...today ...but back in the day, man some of those speaker systems were AMAZING.

So I'll start this thread with a link to a cool 2007 interview with the man, the myth himself...It's here

Folkcafe I'm hoping you can share some of your war stories with this amazing cat here
 
I worked at Bose at what some insiders might refer to as the golden years. In the span of a few years it went from a few hundred million to over a billion in sales. I bring this up as TAE highlights this to some degree with his comments. Corporate life spans are sometime referred in term of things like the maverick years. Bose is a privately held company and I was there when things were run by engineers. It also seemed to just attract musicians. It was a great company to work for at the time. At least until the leaders who were engineers were replaced by finance people and in ushered the bean counter years.

I worked in corporate communications which was essentially an internal advertising agency. While my primary responsibility was studio operations, I got called on to support a lot of corporate events and trade shows. It is not like Dr. Bose and I were buddies but I interacted with him more than many. As a privately held company, we always referred to our spending as Dr. Bose's money.

So much of the product lines were a direct result of Dr. Bose. The story of how he essentially worked out the math for noise cancelling headphones on a noisy flight is typical of how inventive he was and how he could see unconventionally. A huge product success was the Bose Wave Radio. He argued and fought with the market research people and pushed ahead regardless of those who said a tabletop radio wouldn't be accepted by a mass market. To prove everyone wrong he even took the step to make it a direct to consumer product. It was a huge success.

There were a lot of stuff I saw in research, some which I still cannot discuss but others really interesting projects have come to light. One of them is this one.

 
OK Folkcafe started this in the Hammond VST thread showing a picture of a awesome digital recording system he worked with @ 20 years ago...another rabbit hole...

Dr. Bose...For us old farts here we grew up with that name as the crème de la crème of cool speakers back in the day. In modern days I hear all kinds of bashing on the name and a lot of it is with merit ...today ...but back in the day, man some of those speaker systems were AMAZING.

So I'll start this thread with a link to a cool 2007 interview with the man, the myth himself...It's here

Folkcafe I'm hoping you can share some of your war stories with this amazing cat here
Dr Bose has got an pretty big chip on his shoulder - people didn't conspire against him - and he didn't produce the end all be all speaker he thinks he did.
Now Bose made some inroads into a certain kind of EQ shape that some people liked - and with enough bulls**t sold his speakers - but he's not right about his path.
 
Dr Bose has got an pretty big chip on his shoulder - people didn't conspire against him - and he didn't produce the end all be all speaker he thinks he did.
Now Bose made some inroads into a certain kind of EQ shape that some people liked - and with enough bulls**t sold his speakers - but he's not right about his path.
Didn't comprehend the part where they literally hired someone from another company that confirmed how these companies worked against this brand?

As to be all - end all, does such a thing exist? All design is compromise. For good or bad the ethos for a long time was "different". Hard to argue it wasn't different. There were product I liked and others not so much. I sold Hifi when I was young and can confirm most of the public cannot discern sound. I did a lot of blind testing to have seen this personally. Also speaker manufacturers would intentionally make their speakers overly bright back then so that they stand out. Problem with that was listening fatigue. I had access to a lot of speakers that I thought sounded good the first 10 minutes you listen to them in the showroom. Take them home and listen for a few hours and they become grating. The biggest knock on Bose was they were not accurate but you didn't suffer from listening fatigue after hours of playing music. It was the pleasant voicing that made a $300 pair of speakers like the 301's so popular with the public. Is that BS? Which is more important, it sound good to you or is accurate? Does the perfectly accurate speaker exist?

Heard it all, no highs no lows, better sound through marketing. There is a reason there are so many different flavors of ice cream. Same with speakers. Taste is an individual thing. I personally like silk dome tweeters and have long been a Bang & Olufsen and ADS (long out of business but still l have a pair I wouldn't give up for anything) guy. Could not stand the initial metal tweeters even with Genelec who did a respectable job with them. Others have differing opinions.

Just remember, if music is important in your life, sooner or later, you'll own bagpipes.
 
I worked at Bose at what some insiders might refer to as the golden years. In the span of a few years it went from a few hundred million to over a billion in sales. I bring this up as TAE highlights this to some degree with his comments. Corporate life spans are sometime referred in term of things like the maverick years. Bose is a privately held company and I was there when things were run by engineers. It also seemed to just attract musicians. It was a great company to work for at the time. At least until the leaders who were engineers were replaced by finance people and in ushered the bean counter years.

I worked in corporate communications which was essentially an internal advertising agency. While my primary responsibility was studio operations, I got called on to support a lot of corporate events and trade shows. It is not like Dr. Bose and I were buddies but I interacted with him more than many. As a privately held company, we always referred to our spending as Dr. Bose's money.

So much of the product lines were a direct result of Dr. Bose. The story of how he essentially worked out the math for noise cancelling headphones on a noisy flight is typical of how inventive he was and how he could see unconventionally. A huge product success was the Bose Wave Radio. He argued and fought with the market research people and pushed ahead regardless of those who said a tabletop radio wouldn't be accepted by a mass market. To prove everyone wrong he even took the step to make it a direct to consumer product. It was a huge success.

There were a lot of stuff I saw in research, some which I still cannot discuss but others really interesting projects have come to light. One of them is this one.


We want more! We want more! 8-)
 
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Love it...
Dr. Bose "There are two reasons we cut out the specifications:
1) We don’t know of any measurements that actually determine anything about a product, and 2) Measurements are phony, in general, as they are printed."

True dat! Proof is in the pudding!

In 1973 I was working for the largest Zenith distributor on the west coast. I had access to all the latest greatest stuff iAND insider secret stuff ...like a flat screen TV IN 1973 WTF? Yep..Only took 25+ years for consumers to start seeing them as computer monitors.

Surround sound was just really getting off the ground ( never really did) and Zenith put out some nice quad system...still gotta say those 901's were bitchin..
We'd go to this one buds apartment and listen to echoes while smoking pot and getting "loose on Mateus" cause we were sophisticated stoners :ROFLMAO: Man did that quad system blow our minds......quite the ride.
 
I was in the Orlando airport a few years back and in the restaurant area which is huge circular setting there was a sax player set up with his background MP3 music blowing sax through a Bose l1 Holy shit it sounded amazing...now of course the acoustics played a factor but I was amazed at the fullness of that simple stick speaker array and subwoofer. I had some time to hang around and ended up rapping with the sax player about his set up..he was in love with his L1 so freeking simple and so clean sounding the dispersement was incredible. maybe there was some other company that did this before them but other than TV soundbars this was the first stick PA I had ever seen...now there are a ton of them and they all sound pretty darn good....This country band I'm in is using as set of the EV's and they totally do the job for small venues and waaaay easy to get set up... Bose they still keep bringing it on....That silly ass wave radio back in the day for $350..... WTF? but holy smokes it sounded good
 
Love it...
Dr. Bose "There are two reasons we cut out the specifications:
1) We don’t know of any measurements that actually determine anything about a product, and 2) Measurements are phony, in general, as they are printed."

True dat! Proof is in the pudding!

In 1973 I was working for the largest Zenith distributor on the west coast. I had access to all the latest greatest stuff iAND insider secret stuff ...like a flat screen TV IN 1973 WTF? Yep..Only took 25+ years for consumers to start seeing them as computer monitors.

Surround sound was just really getting off the ground ( never really did) and Zenith put out some nice quad system...still gotta say those 901's were bitchin..
We'd go to this one buds apartment and listen to echoes while smoking pot and getting "loose on Mateus" cause we were sophisticated stoners :ROFLMAO: Man did that quad system blow our minds......quite the ride.
The only time I utilized surround sound was when I played Assassins Creed 2, set in Renaissance Italy. It sounded like there were people all around me and that was really cool. Two people having a conversation beside me, a person running and can hear the footsteps traveling, a vendor advertising his product behind me to the left. It was all very neat. But not neat enough for me to keep the system. Maybe again I’ll do it in the future.
 
MY first quad experience was DSOTM in 1972 at the Hollywood Bowl YOWSER! We were seated right in front of the control booth which was centered in between the 4 columns in the bowl...it was definitely an amazing night...Saw Quadraphenia a few years later and it was cool but different venue and definitely not quite as amazing...It was the next concert after Moon passed out on the drums up at the Cow Palace..He didn't pass out on us ;)
 
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We want more! We want more! 8-)
I certainly appreciate your enthusiasm but I've avoided even mentioning Bose as part of my background. I get there are brand loyalties and all that but the amount of hate Bose gets sometimes is over the top. I've just never understood that reaction to a brand.

What I will say though is that among all the people I've ever known that interacted with Dr. Bose, none have ever expressed ill feelings as he was just one of those really great leaders. Plenty of times I'd be tasked with production support and have to mic him up for presentations, speeches and interviews and always looked forward to his perspective on a topic and the stories he would tell.

As to the products itself, well you can love it or hate it. Really don't care but I'd just rather not be in a position to have the level of vitriol about a brand tossed my way like I've offended someone with the name. Plenty of people love the brand while others really don't. I loved working there and the people I worked with. Best place I ever worked at. The culture and business ethics were second to none.
 
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No worries brother...Very cool of you to have shared the insights you have shared and I learned a lot more about Bose than I ever knew...Like there was a Dr. Bose..clueless of that but glad I found out. I love the magic of audio and the primal vibrations therein....For me personally I enjoyed the clean sounds produced by many Bose products including these new stick PA's. They're another American success story...Love it!
 
I was in the Orlando airport a few years back and in the restaurant area which is huge circular setting there was a sax player set up with his background MP3 music blowing sax through a Bose l1 Holy shit it sounded amazing...now of course the acoustics played a factor but I was amazed at the fullness of that simple stick speaker array and subwoofer. I had some time to hang around and ended up rapping with the sax player about his set up..he was in love with his L1 so freeking simple and so clean sounding the dispersement was incredible. maybe there was some other company that did this before them but other than TV soundbars this was the first stick PA I had ever seen...now there are a ton of them and they all sound pretty darn good....This country band I'm in is using as set of the EV's and they totally do the job for small venues and waaaay easy to get set up... Bose they still keep bringing it on....That silly ass wave radio back in the day for $350..... WTF? but holy smokes it sounded good
The L1 is the logical muso centric product from the MA12 line array Bose has from the install line. The phenom was observed in the 50's but brought forth by L Acoustics in the 90's as a commercial concert system. While output levels don't hit super high spl numbers, the L1 is a really good sounding system. I typically hate the usual wedding DJ system but if I see an L1, I know it will sound decent and won't be loud enough to kill. Some really talented people in this group, some go back to when I was there.
 
OK, I'll admit I haven't read all of this thread yet, and I'll come back to it, but anyway...

Loved the 901s, and were the 802s the live sound version? Man, those were the most natural sounding PA speakers...
 
OK, I'll admit I haven't read all of this thread yet, and I'll come back to it, but anyway...

Loved the 901s, and were the 802s the live sound version? Man, those were the most natural sounding PA speakers...
802's were like the 901 just turned around and didn't have the single driver on the other side. So 8 instead of 9. Not sure the significance of the 2.

I had 2 sets of 802's along with Community fully horn loaded long throw speakers when I did live sound. Could be difficult to deal with feedback depending on room and setup. Great for guy or gal with guitar gigs but the two pairs stacked along with dual 18 subs, it could carry a good size venue. Crown macrotech 1200 bridged and later QSC RMX2450's as they were a bit power hungry.

When I sold HiFi gear, we were a Bose dealer. When the rep for Bose came out there was this bit they did in the presentation with the 901 to demonstrate power handling. They would connect an AC cord to the speaker inputs and plug it into the wall outlet. The speaker would pump out 60hz and if you did the math it was a lot of power handling.
 
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