"Arfa Daily" wrote in message
...

OK. Well, I'm not about to argue this one into the ground with you.
Long, long ago, I learned from participation in other groups that those
who perceive themselves to be audiophiles, push their views with a
similar level of evangelical fervour to that of Jehovah's Witnesses,
to the point where they feel that they can justify ridiculously priced
cables and amplifiers which cost more than a small car. That said,
I will address a few of the comments that you have made.

What does the relatively low quality of Bose products have to do with
audibility of cables?

My "evangelical fervor" comprises two points: One, the purpose of
high-fidelity playback is to sound like the original sound. Two, a
well-chosen component system can provide much more musical enjoyment than a
"packaged" or "all-in-one" system.

It is the people who rush to defend Bose products that need to justify their
point of view -- because it's generally unjustifiable.


No matter what the on-paper specs say, whether one piece of kit sounds
good to one person, and another does not, *is* a matter of their opinion,
in much the same way that any other comparison is - cars for instance.

"Sounds good" is indeed a matter of opinion. But whether a piece of
electronics -- including tape decks -- accurately reproduces what's fed into
it can be determined with a high degree of objectivity. Furthermore, people
familiar with live sound -- preferably those who've recorded it -- tend to
be in general agreement about which speakers do or don't do a reasonably
good job.


With reference to the opinions of visitors to my workshop, I think you
need
to take the time to read what I said a little more slowly. I was at pains
to
point out that these were not punters off the street -- what you have
taken
to be my customers -- but other service engineers. That is friends and
colleagues similarly employed as professional service engineers, and with
many years of experience in repairing the stuff. This does not necessarily
imply that they are pedantic audiophiles, but that they have a good enough
ear to know whether something sounds correctly functional, as designed.

Yes, I did misread you. But there's a difference between something being
"correctly functional" (which I interpret as "working correctly") and being
a high-quality product.


When I am describing the sound from the Wave Radio, I am comparing it
to similarly sized portable or semi-portable units, not mini hi-fi
systems.

Why? That has nothing to with the issue. The Wave is NOT a "portable or
semi-portable unit". It is a plug-in table radio.

My memory of what you said was that the description was absolute, not
relative. Regardless, how you (or I) might feel about the Bose's relative
merits has little bearing on the fact that Bose claims their crappy little
table radio can stand direct comparison with much-more-expensive equipment.
IT CAN'T. Nor does it produce anything remotedly resembling "concert-hall
sound", as the ads imply.


I am talking the likes of Sharps and Sonys and Panasonics, which also have
their speakers a foot apart, and many of which employ similar 'fiddle
factor'
phasing of the speaker signals, to make the speakers *appear* to be rather
more than a foot apart. When you do this sort of comparing apples with
apples, rather than your sort of comparing apples with oranges, the Wave
Radio leaves most of those other standing for both overall sound quality
and spatial definition. Maybe it does do this by artificial colouration of
the
sound, and maybe that doesn't rest easy with a purist such as yourself,
but in my opinion - there's that word again - it does make it sound more
pleasing than most other *similarly sized* items, albeit for a price
premium.

But that isn't the point. You're deliberately (as I pointed out above)
ignoring Bose's _claims_ for their product. If Bose didn't make such
ludicrously ridiculous claims, we wouldn't be discussing this.

Bose doesn't claim the Wave is better than other, similar products -- they
claim that it's as good as much more expensive products from other
companies. AND IT ISN'T.


I do believe that your view of Bose is slanted, because you seriously
believe them as a company, to be liars and cheats, so no matter what
anyone else may say or think, you and your audiophile chums will shout
them down with those beliefs. I don't know what you call that. I still
call it
"slanted".

I call it the truth. If you would listen to Bose equipment -- particularly
the 901s -- using high-quality recordings of acoustic music (that is,
recordings that reflect some sort of acoustic reality) -- and compare them
with comparably priced conventional speakers, you would quickly hear the
difference.

I don't need to shout down people who disagree. All they have to do is
listen.

You ignored my remark about QUAD. Have you ever heard QUAD speakers?


Did I start out knowing everything? Was my judgement never wrong? No, of
course not on both counts, but I fail to see how your story of having
worked
in a photo store listening to 901's every day for a year, thinking that
they
were better than anything else in the shop, explains how you then bought
some, took them home, and found yourself horrified by their apparently
poor
performance. And then took a further year to declare them "junk" ???

Yes. Because human beings can be stupid, self-deceiving, and deluded. But of
course, those things don't apply to you, do they?

(By the way, the 901s were accomodation purchases. I could not resell them
for at least one year. How this affected my willingness to stick with them,
I don't honestly know.)

The principal reason I made this mistake was that I failed to make a direct
comparison of the Boses with other speakers. (As we've know, this is how
Bose insists its dealers demonstrate their products.) I wish I could have
heard them against KLH Nines. I couldn't have afforded Nines then, but the
comparison would have firmly driven home the problems with the 901s.

I forgot to mention that the coup de grace for the 901s was a direct
comparison with Double Advents, which cost about as much as the 901s ($456).
The Advents utterly clobbered the 901s.

Why do you insist on attacking everyone serious about good sound
reproduction as an "audiophool"? What equipment do _you_ own, anyway?
(That's not a rhetorical question.)

I just looked at the Martin-Logan site. They have a "budget" hybrid
electrostatic that retails for $2000 a pair -- about a third more than Bose
901s. I invite you to compare them and decide for yourself which sounds more
like live sound (or the recording) -- which are the _only_ valid criteria
for judging quality. If you're truly knowlegable about sound, there's no
question about which you'll choose.


Bose's marketing is brilliant. They know that most people know bupkes about
sound reproduction, and don't like making decisions. So they sell a product
that can be operated right out of the box (which is not in itself a bad
thing), while telling the customer a lie -- that they'd have to spend much
more money to get anything even slightly better. It just isn't true.

My experience is that most listeners (not all), when exposed to better
reproduction, will hear its superiority. This seems most often to be a
recognition of improved clarity and detail, while not generally noticing
improved timbre or imaging. When people buy Bose, they deny themselves the
pleasure of really good reproduction.


As far as what I consider to be 'high end' goes, I am talking everyday
brands, that are purchased by everyday folks, but which lie at the top end
of the price range, and tend to be sold more by hifi shops than electrical
warehouse barns. I'm talking Jaguar rather than Honda, but not Ferrari or
Lambo. Most output from the likes of Sharp and Sanyo and Philips and
Goodmans and Samsung and Toshiba and so on, does not fall into that
category. Much, although not all, of Technics does.

Technics is not currently sold in the US. When it was, it didn't strike me
as high-end.


Much, although not all, of Yamaha does.

I'm one of those people who has a generally poor opinion of Yamaha's hi-fi
efforts. It hasn't produced many great or "classic" products. (I'm in the
minority on this, though.)


Most of Pioneer's efforts do. Some TEAC gear does and so on. The stuff
that you are referring to as "high end", I and most ordinary people would
would refer to as super high end, where the prices are nothing short of
of ridiculous for what you are getting.

Not at all. The NAD 3070 receiver of 30 years ago was considered a high-end
product, though it sold for $300. Ditto for the Advent speaker, and a number
of other products. Although "high end" certainly implies "expensive", it
seems to be more applicable to attitude -- "high end" companies are those
trying to produce genuinely superior products.


In fact I would say that it is a perfect example of the law of diminishing
returns. Many of the super high end tube amps that I have seen for repair,
are little different from a halfway decent amp that you would have found
on
the end of a tabletop radio, 40 years ago. And people are stupid enough
to pay $2000 for them... Now in my opinion, the companies that make and
market this sort of thing are the real liars and robbers, and the people
who
buy them are the real audiophools ...

The people who designed the tube equipment you so quickly dismiss (such as
Peter Walker and David Hafler -- both deceased, by the way) would be equally
quick to dismiss the idea that it bears a close resemblance to the
amplifiers in table radios. Other than possibly being push-pull.

My (grossly overpriced) Apogee speakers are driven by $2000 Parasound
amplifiers. They're not cheap, but they've gotten rave reviews from critics
accustomed to reviewing $20K amps. They're one of the best amps I've ever
heard -- in fact, I wish I'd had them 30 years ago.


As far as the differences between good and poor equipment being clearly
audible, I would not dispute that. I am a service engineer -- I mend the
rotten stuff for a living and have for 35 years -- so I have a great deal
of
experience listening to everything from Korean transistor radios, to the
most expensive amps you can buy. What I would dispute is that you
can hear a lot of difference between a Pioneer $500 rig and a Bloggs
and Bollockchops 9000 series Mark 64 monobloc as recommended by
Sebastion Cringeworthy-**** in Audiophile's Weekly, and costing $2500...

If the latter is a tube amp, you probably _will_ hear a big difference, if
only because the latter is a tube amp.

The broad answer is... it depends. I've heard expensive speakers and
amplifiers that just don't sound very good, and modestly priced equipment
that's excellent.

But this doesn't directly address the issue we were arguing. Bose products
don't sound very good, and don't represent value for the money.

Bose likes to run a review from some unknown newspaper person who says the
Wave system is as good or better than systems costing up to five times a
much. Rubbish. Give me $2500, and I'll put together a system that utterly
outclasses the Wave.

And that's the issue. People buy Bose and think they're getting something
good at a fair price. They aren't. And this needs to be repeated over and
over and over and over and over again.


And that's all I'm going to say on the matter for now. Except I knew
'reign' looked wrong when I typed it. Let's try 'rein' instead d;~}

One of the marks of a good speller (seriously) is that he has a good
intuition about what "looks right".