My wife inherited a brand new set of Bose 901 v6 from her deceased uncle (RIP). After reminding many of the haters on here that the historical reviews on this and other audiophile magazines were honest, but not really all that bad, I have an chance to listen to them in my own system, in my own listening room.
The verdict: All the reviews pretty much hit the nail on the head. Rumors of them sounding like all other Bose speakers are greatly over-stated. They are not a big Wave Radio. They are not a 401 (which is a fair enough bookshelf speaker BTW, that was actually designed to be plopped, if you can imagine, on a bookshelf (gasp, what, no!). They are not a Nissan Maxima with fuzzy speakers and a rebranded Clarion or Kenwood or Denso OEM CD head unit. They are actually about what you'd expect from a good 1400.00 (cheaper in practice, of course) large standmount speaker.
First, amplification isn't that important - how often do you hear THAT?! Sort of anyway. Make sure you are using an amp that is coherant across the frequecy spectrum and doesn't give short shrift to the low frequencies - more about that later. Power isn't super important and current isn't SO important. They have no basically no crossover to drive and rely on a line level equalizer to make them work anyway. I don't know why this is so controversal. We use dynamic sucking inductor/resistor ridden passive crossovers in our audiophile wonderkins, and we know THEY SUCK. And we use them anyway! The idea of using a quality analog EQ to make a speaker work with your room makes as much sense to me as using a big inefficient speaker with a big inefficient crossover and then deciding, you know this doesn't work well in my room, I should add a DSP unit! Oh the incoherant sound, from this incoherant non-sense!
Second, positioning matters - more than any speaker I've tried in my room. If you set them up as the manufacturer and fans of the speakers suggest - fairly close and straight ahead and working them toward the corners until you get the bass response and image size you're after, you'll likely have very good imaging results. Also keep them pointed basically right at you or just behind your head at the listening position - like an electrostatic.
Third, use good cables. I used my Wasatch. The speakers are more revealing than they are given credit for.
The good: Very coherant presentation. And this jives with one of my primary belief about loudspeakers. Either use one speaker for everything, or use the same KIND of speaker for everything. Besides eliminating the crossover and making them easier to drive, it means the timber of the presentaion stays the same. When you spend time with lots of familiar music adjusting the EQ to a flat response, you'll end up with a very wide and spacious sound, that only lack a little specificity compared to a traditional forward firing speaker.
The bad: The low bass is soft and basically non-existant below 50hz without cranking up the LF EQ and hitting the bass button (like a loudness button) party style. This is only disconcerting because the midbass had an only slightly soft (like and EL34 in and old receiver or a non mil-spec 6L6 in my old GTA SE-40) but wonderfully textured leading edge with a nice believable decay. Piano is actually made wonderful because of this, so it's a sin of ommission. Non-the-less, it's not nearly as good in the mid/low bass region as my B&W Matrix 3 s2's. Also, the upper midrange has a slight hardness, that sets in with voices but doesn't present itself as excess siblance or nasty cymbals. But it's there. That said, I DIDN'T use my uber smooth and detailed Wasatch interconnects with the EQ unit, rather the cheapy ones that Bose ships, so there's that.
The ugly: Well, they are to my aestetic, ugly as sin. And the stands need to be taller. It's not 1976 anymore and we don't sit in 13" off the ground low slung corduroy sectionals and deeply leaned art deco leather chairs. Although the corduroy couches were awesomly comfey as a kid, so maybe it's US that need to go back. That said, if the Bose company is going to keep making these things, make some 24, 30, and 34" stands. They represent a good, but not great value. If you are in the 1000.00 market, look at them. You may agree with me that they aren't my favorite, but they aren't bad. Maybe as a joke, they could be slightly restyled, shipped with stainless steel stands, and make the cabinets out of fancy Corian or some other such non-sense, and badged Mark Levinson by the Harman Corporation, and of course have the price raised to 50,000. Then more fellow Stereophile readers would at least give them a chance in the audiophile market.
Until then, rev up your flame throwers, haters.
My wife inherited a brand new set of Bose 901 v6 from her deceased uncle (RIP). After reminding many of the haters on here that the historical reviews on this and other audiophile magazines were honest, but not really all that bad, I have an chance to listen to them in my own system, in my own listening room.
The verdict: All the reviews pretty much hit the nail on the head. Rumors of them sounding like all other Bose speakers are greatly over-stated. They are not a big Wave Radio. They are not a 401 (which is a fair enough bookshelf speaker BTW, that was actually designed to be plopped, if you can imagine, on a bookshelf (gasp, what, no!). They are not a Nissan Maxima with fuzzy speakers and a rebranded Clarion or Kenwood or Denso OEM CD head unit. They are actually about what you'd expect from a good 1400.00 (cheaper in practice, of course) large standmount speaker.
First, amplification isn't that important - how often do you hear THAT?! Sort of anyway. Make sure you are using an amp that is coherant across the frequecy spectrum and doesn't give short shrift to the low frequencies - more about that later. Power isn't super important and current isn't SO important. They have no basically no crossover to drive and rely on a line level equalizer to make them work anyway. I don't know why this is so controversal. We use dynamic sucking inductor/resistor ridden passive crossovers in our audiophile wonderkins, and we know THEY SUCK. And we use them anyway! The idea of using a quality analog EQ to make a speaker work with your room makes as much sense to me as using a big inefficient speaker with a big inefficient crossover and then deciding, you know this doesn't work well in my room, I should add a DSP unit! Oh the incoherant sound, from this incoherant non-sense!
Second, positioning matters - more than any speaker I've tried in my room. If you set them up as the manufacturer and fans of the speakers suggest - fairly close and straight ahead and working them toward the corners until you get the bass response and image size you're after, you'll likely have very good imaging results. Also keep them pointed basically right at you or just behind your head at the listening position - like an electrostatic.
Third, use good cables. I used my Wasatch. The speakers are more revealing than they are given credit for.
The good: Very coherant presentation. And this jives with one of my primary belief about loudspeakers. Either use one speaker for everything, or use the same KIND of speaker for everything. Besides eliminating the crossover and making them easier to drive, it means the timber of the presentaion stays the same. When you spend time with lots of familiar music adjusting the EQ to a flat response, you'll end up with a very wide and spacious sound, that only lack a little specificity compared to a traditional forward firing speaker.
The bad: The low bass is soft and basically non-existant below 50hz without cranking up the LF EQ and hitting the bass button (like a loudness button) party style. This is only disconcerting because the midbass had an only slightly soft (like and EL34 in and old receiver or a non mil-spec 6L6 in my old GTA SE-40) but wonderfully textured leading edge with a nice believable decay. Piano is actually made wonderful because of this, so it's a sin of ommission. Non-the-less, it's not nearly as good in the mid/low bass region as my B&W Matrix 3 s2's. Also, the upper midrange has a slight hardness, that sets in with voices but doesn't present itself as excess siblance or nasty cymbals. But it's there. That said, I DIDN'T use my uber smooth and detailed Wasatch interconnects with the EQ unit, rather the cheapy ones that Bose ships, so there's that.
The ugly: Well, they are to my aestetic, ugly as sin. And the stands need to be taller. It's not 1976 anymore and we don't sit in 13" off the ground low slung corduroy sectionals and deeply leaned art deco leather chairs. Although the corduroy couches were awesomly comfey as a kid, so maybe it's US that need to go back. That said, if the Bose company is going to keep making these things, make some 24, 30, and 34" stands. They represent a good, but not great value. If you are in the 1000.00 market, look at them. You may agree with me that they aren't my favorite, but they aren't bad. Maybe as a joke, they could be slightly restyled, shipped with stainless steel stands, and make the cabinets out of fancy Corian or some other such non-sense, and badged Mark Levinson by the Harman Corporation, and of course have the price raised to 50,000. Then more fellow Stereophile readers would at least give them a chance in the audiophile market.
Until then, rev up your flame throwers, haters.