Interesting survey on Brands

Arjun,
you are certainly trying very hard to get a reaction from the various members w/ a post like that!

How credible is that PC website? I personally do not know it at all & so I can't put 100% of my faith in what's published there. Maybe the info is correct?

People voting for Bose are the masses, which out-number you & me by atleast 1000:1. We don't have a chance in hell to make Electrocompaniet or Wadia or NAD or B&W show up on that chart!

In a modest contradictary tone: there was an eye-opening article that I read on Sat in the latest Sensible Sound magazine about Bose. It told me things about the company Bose & Dr Amar Bose that I had no idea about. For example, at their Farmington, MA HQ, the speaker torture test chambers are underground 'cuz they do not want to disturb their neighbours. It is supposed to be a huge room where they use a total of 20KW of amplifier power to test a myriad of drivers! SOme tests are destructive tests while most others are torture tests. The author was given a tour & was writing the article from that experience. He wrote that people w/ heart conditions & small children were prohibited from entering that test chamber. Those who entered wore heavy duty ear mufflers. The article also mentioned that the Bose HQ has 6-7 rooms that look like the average living room in the USA where Bose engineers install speaker systems & test the overall delivered sound. A 3rd thing that the article mentioned was w.r.t the Bose MusicWave system (that CDP + radio). It said that Bose makes each of the MusicWave's components that Bose thinks influences the sound. So, they (Bose) end up manuf the chassis, drivers, electronics, PCB. The rest gets out-sourced. Yet another thing mentioned in the article was Dr. Amar Bose's refusal to attach any freq spec to any Bose speaker system. The article goes on to say that Dr. Bose quickly reaslized that if he did not play the spec game, he could address a far wider audience (the masses) as opposed to his competitors. Dr Bose believed & still does that the overall music experience is what customers are looking for & that's what he was going to sell to them. The article admitted that Bose has a very crafty advertising department & that this dept carefully & strategically hosts events/promos to launch & advertise Bose's products. I've read on other audio forums I visit that even the (snooty) audiophile & associated (snooty) hi-end manuf admit that they can learn the marketing game from Bose.
Anyway, FWIW. YMMV.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a Bose product owner. I do not own Bose shares. I do not represent Bose in any way, shape or form).

Dr Bose is quite a crafty guy. He definitely has the know-how to make very hi-end loudspeakers which will satisfy any audiophile. But he cleverly steered himself out of this territory because serious money is on the other side of the fence. He then studied psycho-acoustics and the typical living room conditions, build a bullet proof brand-image and cleverly produced speakers which will satisfy the average audio-enthusiast/music lover (who constitutes more than 80 percent of the typical loudspeaker speaker buying public) and successfully sold them. Very clever guy indeed !
I am a ex-bose owner and I have a number of friends who still own different version of his direct-reflecting crap. The one serious selling factor for his speaker is their ability to create a wall of listenable mid-fi sound in practically any living room even if they are placed haphazardly. This is a boon for most and they love them. You start to hate bose when you turn into an audiophile who has the time and inclination to carefully place speakers and start listening to music done with real instruments. Then you notice how poor they are when it comes to natural timbre and tone and musicality. But Bose knows the rest of the masses outnumber audiophiles 1000:1 and he is laughing all the way to the bank.
I wonder what his personal music system is

bombaywalla schrieb:

(Disclaimer: I'm not a Bose product owner. I do not own Bose shares. I do not represent Bose in any way, shape or form).

That one really cracked me up ..but I guess the only shape you can be to represent them is cubical

bombaywalla schrieb:

How credible is that PC website? I personally do not know it at all & so I can't put 100% of my faith in what's published there. Maybe the info is correct?

This survey was done by Forrester research who many may know as one of the Two most regarded technilogy research/forecasting agencies..

bombaywalla schrieb:

People voting for Bose are the masses, which out-number you & me by atleast 1000:1. We don't have a chance in hell to make Electrocompaniet or Wadia or NAD or B&W show up on that chart!

True in fact the outnumbering may even be much more skewed than that !

To me this article meant two things
1. Most consumers talk of bose as being both 1. A great Brand with a great potential AND 2. one which they trust.
we folks tend to bash it for qualities which they never claim to posess and also forget that they were perhaps the first in many things like DSP, Sub Sats, direct Vs reflected etc etc.

but do not want to sound as the person bombaywalla is disclaiming to be ;)..other than owning one everything else holds good for me.. Although that is one stock one must Buy !!

[quote][quote="Arj
we folks tend to bash it for qualities which they never claim to posess quote][/quote]



They do claim to be the best loudspeaker in the world. Just walk into any bose showroom and ask for home demo. A friend of mine once asked and he was told “bose do not give home demos because they make the best speakers in the world”. They rep had the audacity to tell my friend that he will definitely be satisfied with the sound and there is no question of a refund if he wants to return it. Just one of the reasons why I hate that brand.

Arj schrieb:

bombaywalla schrieb: (Disclaimer: I'm not a Bose product owner. I do not own Bose shares. I do not represent Bose in any way, shape or form). That one really cracked me up ..but I guess the only shape you can be to represent them is cubical

what to do, baba? you have to guard against all sorts of folks who would want to assume that I'm some Bose fan!
better to put a disclaimer rather than get out my flame-retardant suit!

I am led to believe Dr. Amar Bose uses Magnepan MG.20 with ARC Ref 600 / Ref 2 amps. He's a classical buff!

audio_engr schrieb:

I am led to believe Dr. Amar Bose uses Magnepan MG.20 with ARC Ref 600 / Ref 2 amps. He's a classical buff!

Oh, that absolutely rich!!! the company's founder himself doesn't use his own products!
why is that, I wonder? all that tweeter reflecting off the back wall not good for classical music?
but it's OK to feed it to the rest of the world?

give the guy a break he creates lifestyle systems for people who want to use less space but create good (Average) music even if the placement is confusing and irrational by audiophile standards.

We folks who want to create accurate sound and are willing to spend the time and effort in placement/system matching obviously need not subscribe to it.. so i guess Dr AB falls into the our category..


And if he does use Maggies, it just means that he has the capability to understand music over and above the capability to make money as well as keep his customers happy !!!!

Now if he had used Bose systems then he definitely would not be an audiophile hence not the person to comment on Music

In the end of it.. bose is not really overpriced (Now B&O is really overpriced) .. his maggies would beat any Bose Stereo system in terms of Price and hence nothing really wrong if it beats it in performance as well.

Well - if you say B&O is overpriced, Mr. Subir Pramanik - CEO of B&O would tell you all this high tech aluminium extrusions, meticulous craftsmanship using expensive Danish labour (mind you, they dont have factories outside Denmark) is what you are paying for. A cutting edge electro-mechanical engineering!!! As far as I am concerned, I'm done with both BOSE and B&O slightly more than a decade back and I'm happy that I did.

audio_engr schrieb:

Well - if you say B&O is overpriced, Mr. Subir Pramanik - CEO of B&O would tell you all this high tech aluminium extrusions, meticulous craftsmanship using expensive Danish labour (mind you, they dont have factories outside Denmark) is what you are paying for. A cutting edge electro-mechanical engineering!!! As far as I am concerned, I'm done with both BOSE and B&O slightly more than a decade back and I'm happy that I did.

well you must hand over design to those folks.. they make Audio equipment with real sex appeal..but that cost much more than its sonic appeal

B&O makes SUPERB looking life style products.

Their recent DVD Player on a pedestal is straight out of a Si Fi Movie... but costs over Rs 1 L .

On the other hand, Every B&O owner that I know has had a malfunction on the mechanical moving components - Sliding door, Tracking arm etc....

Wonder if that is a coincidence or the same observed by others too ?

Arj wrote:

well you must hand over design to those folks.. they make Audio equipment with real sex appeal..but that cost much more than its sonic appeal

rightly put arj,
i have been a design student and a designer for a decade and all my folks swear by B&O and apple designs.

regards
anirvan