[Kevin Haskins]

Thanks for stirring the pot Kevin!

No problem... any time.  

I agree though... Bose is doing something right.   I'm sure the marketing is a large part but that requires deep pockets.    It took them a long time to build the name recognition.  

I think the other part they get right is they emphasize that they are building solutions that people want.   Most people don't want visible speakers in their room.   They don't want speakers that dominate their living space.   Bose is smart enough to provide people with a product they want.

When I show my speakers to non-audiophile friends most don't want something as big as I have.   They acknowledge the performance is awesome but it's just not as important to them or their spouse as is the size.    

That is part of the reason I've been working hard on small speakers.   My other goal is small speakers without limited bandwidth and output.   Yeah... you have to pay a price.   There is no free lunch in the world of engineering.   But if you make smart tradeoffs you can get a pretty awesome setup shoehorned into a small space.  

Here is a rendering of our new speakers we will be showing at CES.   They have an anechoic f3 of 40Hz (get into the 20s in-room) and they are designed for near or on-wall mounting with flat panel TVs or for projector set-ups.  They are 5" deep, 14" tall and 8.5" wide at the front.   Since they are tapered they are 6.5" at the rear and slightly shorter.   They are actively amplified with the Hypex UCD-400 modules and a custom EQ curve to compensate for the small box.  

We also have a center channel MTM version with two Extremi.   That center channel is important!   Same bandwidth.  

You can have them for only slightly more than the Bose system and you don't need a stinking sub.  

Now we just need to work on our marketing.  

[kfr01]

I won't rip Bose's business acumen at all.  They've done a lot right.  I just don't like their sound for the money; at all.  

Smaller speakers with bigger and bigger sound probably -are- the future.  If you can pack the same sound in a smaller package, and avoid having the WAF conversation, why wouldn't you?

Indeed, Kevin, the direction you're heading is probably right on.  Especially with dedicated HT rooms becoming popular.  When you're making millions selling these, keep releasing a floor-standing tower design evey once in a while for those of us that kinda enjoy looking at imposing towers in a room.  

Wish I could get to CES this year!

[smargo]

I won't rip Bose's business acumen at all.  They've done a lot right.  I just don't like their sound for the money; at all.  

Who cares about the sound when you get it home! Its what you think it should sound like when you read about their technology and the excitement of buying and maybe having a demo in one of their stores. (I  think their demos sound pretty good)

How many times have you bought high end gear after a review and hype maybe even heard a demo and the demo wasn't that great, but you convinced yourself that the gear wasn't broken in, so you bought it and brought it home and your still waiting for it to break in - because so far it sounds like shit!

happy holidays
smargo

[Kevin Haskins]

Indeed, Kevin, the direction you're heading is probably right on. Especially with dedicated HT rooms becoming popular. When you're making millions selling these, keep releasing a floor-standing tower design evey once in a while for those of us that kinda enjoy looking at imposing towers in a room.

Ha... my eyeballs are not that big.   Millions are not my goal.   I'd like to live a sane life with time to spend with my family. In my experience, people who try and make millions, spend little time with their family.  

I'm perfectly happy with the way I live right now.   I like my old truck, worn jeans and unfinished warehouse.   If I had more money I'd just adopt more kids and buy more expensive tools.    The tools I have now are perfectly adequate and I don't know where we would put another kid.   I'd need a to buy a bigger van for the wife, a couple more bunk beds and a larger dining room table.   I suppose we have room for one more at least.

I'll probably work on designs as long as I live.   It's the fun part of this business for me.   The marketing is work.   Paying bills is work.   Packing orders is work.    The design work is fun.   There should be no shortage of designs as the years pass.  

[Meltz]

All semi-joking aside, Bose is a remarkable company.  Sidney Harmon, CEO of their chief competitor, mentioned in an article a few years ago that he has never met Dr. Amar Bose and doesn't know what he looks like and it's like competing with a ghost.  It is about the most tightly held, good sized private company that I know of.....M & M Mars coming a very close second.
 ...

Well, Dr. Bose was an active professor at MIT for a long time.  All Harmon had to do was sit in Bose's acoustics class

[ctviggen]

Supposedly, Bose worked 80 hour weeks for a long time.  He's also developing a suspension for cars:

http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,69692,00.html?tw=wn_14techhead

[miklorsmith]

This might be the only thread I've read where Bose is cast in primarily complimentary light.  Leave it to the openminded community here to look at the other side of the stone.

Bose is about choice.  It's an option that is easy to buy, easy to set up, and easy to live with for people that value form over function.  It's classic free-market in action, targeting a large percentage of the buying population.  Large SUV's are very popular the same way that big vans and big wagons used to be.  To me, that's a sledgehammer-to-thumbtack approach to personal transportation but the market demand is there, thus supply is created.

The cube/sub system is awful sonically, but how many buyers complain?  It's only us that have different criteria (function over form) that castigate them.  We fail to comprehend what the buyers are thinking but how different is this from the rest of your life?  Mariners hate Yankees, Sox hate Yankees, A's hate Yankees, Yankees look down their noses at everyone (gratuitous shot).  Al Quaida hates America, America hates Saddam, you can't stand your neighbor's yard maintenance or their kid's loud car.  Church leaders molest children, Republicans are spending money like it was free, AIDS persists.  Ultimately these are all functions of preference and choice at some level, i.e. one's choice differentiated from those made by others.

The point is that we people can't understand Anything that Any of us do, really.  Bose is just another page in the Unabridged Book of Headshakers.  Just my opinion, of course.  

[Watson]

Interesting discussion!  Kevin's new designs look great.

Another thing I was thinking about:  Bose introduced the concept of bipole/dipole speakers to the consumer market with the original model 901, yet non-monopoles were basically ignored by most mainstream speaker manufacturers (except planar and ribbon vendors) until fairly recently.  Now dipole speakers are gaining in popularity.  Perhaps Bose was 30 years ahead of his time with that concept.  

It's interesting that the two concepts Bose championed (single driver crossoverless speakers and non-monopoles) have ended up becoming mainstream, even though they faced a lot of resistance and criticism for years.  Part of that criticism was undoubtedly fair (the Bose products were never great quality), but there is clearly more to the Bose story than just the mountain of criticism they've garnered over the years.