Digital Ready

Cost a pretty penny. Not the best styling.

The Bose 901s are the best speaker period. They can handle anything you throw at them! I have owned a lot of speakers over the years and have never been satisfied...until I heard a demo of the 901s. Everyone talks about Paradigm! I'd have to admit, they provide good bang for the buck, but they are also very overrated. Lots of advertising and good reviews. Hype! Use a good source, amp, cables and you'll be amazed by what these produce. Proper placement is a must. Take time to experiment. It will pay off.
Ignore the Bose bashers! Trust your own ears! Bose #1!

Similar Products Used:

Paradigm,Energy,Sound Dynamics,Advent

Why is it that the Bose defenders seem to make fun of accurate music reprodution as a basis for measuring speakers? All that anyone looks for when assembling a top-notch system is a lack of coloration, believable soundstage, and accuracy. Money really isn't the point. It becomes the point, however, when you are paying large dough for garbage! I GUARANTEE a $5000 cable will not make a huge difference over a $1000 one, but a $600 pair of Paradigms will absolutely embarass ANY Bose on the planet! No, we shouldn't worry about Bose's profit margin- that's not our concern. We just wouldn't complain if the results were worth the cost.

The most revolutionary undertaking mankind has ever accomplished.

I can't seem to find equipment good enough for them.

When I was choosing a new stereo system, I decided that since the reviews written by John Kantor and Chris Reine made so much sense, I would be crazy to buy anything other than the BOSE 901. I didn't even listen to them first; I just figured, since Bose says they are the most natural speakers in existence, then they must be right.

Nevertheless, I took a few measures to make them even more natural. I built a room onto my house just for the 901s; I call it the "901 room"; or "Room 901" for short. It is 30'x30'x30' and has solid granite floors and walls connected with a glass ceiling. I figured this would be ideal for added reflections. There are no soft furnishings or carpeting whatsoever, as this would take away my precious reflections. Now, there are opponents to the Bose theory that like to say that recordings ALREADY HAVE reflections, so doing 89% reflected sound is overdoing it. I have to date found 21 of the 36 people who have said this; they are locked in my basement now. I am actively in search of the remaining 15. You can run, but you can't hide.

Anywho, once the "901 room" was completed, I had the arduous task of finding the perfect stop for them. I used my older equipment (Denon integrated amp, Marantz CD player) to run tones through them while finding just the right spot. We worked for 5 weeks straight (me and my smell-hound, Geach) and finally placed them so as to get that perfectly natural sound out of them. They ended up 5 feet from the back wall, 7' up from the floor, and about 7' in from the sidewalls. Since they need a sturdy base to support their massive weight of 35 lbs a piece, I constructed solid aluminum cylinders about 8" in diameter, 7' tall, and weighing about 3200 lbs a piece. Quite a bargain; I figured it only cost about $18000 to have them made, but at least they have Bose 901s on top of them!!!

Now for source I needed the best, and as Tom below me so eloquently put it, "give em' the best!!" I ended up buying a Wadia 861 CD player. This player was chosen because Geach concluded, after exhaustive sniffing, that the Wadia had the most natural smell of the lot. Fortunately, it also seemed to sound the best out of all other CD players on those crappy Proac Response 4s they had it hooked to in the store; those Proacs are no match for mighty Bose 901s!!! I told the salesman what I was doing for my Bose 901s. He was impressed, but he seemed to be laughing an awful lot ¡¦. (Must¡¯ve been something he ate).

Anyway, the next task was to find an amp powerful enough for the mighty 901s. I first chose the Mark Levinson No. 336 in 1999. NO WAY!!!! Sounded OK, but just didn't have the kind of power I needed. Next stop was the Krell FPB 650s in 1998. More along the lines of enough power, but it still seemed lacking slightly. Finally, I found what I needed to do. I daisy-chained (bridged) 2 Pass-labs X1000 monoblocks per channel. Then I called in my audio-guru friend Bert, in order to have him help me with the installation of my dishwasher. Now I have 3500 watts per channel!!!!

Now I can sit in my comfy folding chair (I don't want it to absorb any reflections) and enjoy pure sonic bliss. The imaging is amazing. I can now place instruments within +/- 5' of their location in the production. Those reflections are just what makes a natural listening experience. When I pause music, (with the aid of my specially designed room), the sound continues to direct/reflect for 5 minutes!!!

I also discovered that I could crank this baby up and blow away my pet ostriches. They had their heads stuck under the floor for a week after I blasted "Hot Cross Buns" on the HIGHEST POSSIBLE VOLUME EVER CONCEIVED. You WISH you could get a system this good!

Natural Balance in Music, Nice Bass, Treble, and Midrange

None

I have owned the Bose 901's since 1988 and I enjoyed them them over the last 13 years! The secret to the 901's is proper speaker placement, CLEAN SEPARATES, CORRECT CABLES and Interlinks! For those of you who are attempting to push the 901's with a receiver, the 901's are not going to sound good. For example, In 1988, I used a 100 W Pioneer Integrated Amp to push the speakers. Well, the results were good, but no cigar. Then, in 1992, I switched to a 100 HK Integrated Amp and the results were better. I kept the HK connected until 1996. I then purchased Two Carver Power Amps, and a Carver Pre-Amp. The results were less than the performance of the HK! Finally, I kept the two Brigded Carver Amps (300 watts each amp in mono mode) purchased an ADCOM GFP 710 Pre-Amp, MSB Link III, MSB Power Supply, MIT Terminator 2 Speaker Cables and Interlinks. The results were outstanding! The Adcom Pre-Amp 710 has an option to bypass the signal so that the music is not played through the tone controls! Therefore, the BASS, Treble, Mono switches are not engaged! Again, the sonics and reproduction are outstanding! I have never clipped the Carver Amps at all! In other words, you need more than 100 watts to push the Bose 901's! I encourage each person to evaluate the following if the 901's is a consideration for a system:

Power!
Separates (PRE-AMPS and POWER AMPS!
Sources (Interlinks, Cables, CD Players/Transports, DAC's)
Speaker Placements!
Size of Room!
Budget!

I know there are other speakers in the market that will outperform the 901's; considering the size, design, and price of these speakers, you can not go wrong with the appropriate equipment!

My System

2 Carver TCB-15 Bridged Mode 300 Watts each amp
Adcom GFP 710 Pre-Amp
HK 5 Disc Changer
Musical Fidelity Single Cd Player
Onkyo Integra TA 2600 Casette Deck
Pioneer AM/FM Tuner
Bose 901 VI Active EQ
Sony DTC 700 DAT Player
MSB Power Base
MSB 24/96 Link III
MIT Terminator 2 Speaker Cables
MIT Terminator 2 Interlinks on each component

Similar Products Used:

None

Teenagers take note, they Can play very loud!

No upper range extention and the soundstage is way to unbelievable

My old high school used to use these to support the jazz/string ensemble for concerts in my senior year.
The string players( violin and viola and cello) players would complain about them not giving any of the intruments natural harmonics and high frequency range making the violins especially sound screechy. Our soundstage was way beyond what was normal, our stage was about the size of a symphonic orchestra, not exactly accurate, we only had a small jazz section and about 8 string players. The crowd wouldn't normally notice these problems but when we got a chance to listen to the group individually we were shocked at what they did to the ensembles sound! The director finally decided to not amplify the group until they found a better setup. They do have the capability to play loudly which the kids in the audience liked. No accounting for taste among teenagers, the louder the better. kids in the school liked them though. I think that for HT they might be ok, real diffuse sound, but for music they are terrible, I'm a musician who has played in many orchestras(viola, please, no viola jokes) and I know what a good orchestra sounds like. There are things called harmonics and on the Bose 901 there insn't any!Save yourself the money if you listen to music go see a live performance of a good symphony a few times(at least, its awesome) and then look with your ears open and eyes closed, don't buy what the jones' buy to impress. that is boses trump card, snob appeal.

Similar Products Used:

JBL monitors

Nice bass, seem to image pretty good

Pricey

Well, I can't say that I hate these speakers. I still like my Heresys better, particularly with the Speakerlab woofers, but these aren't bad. I'm used to the horns being a little more "forward" now, the highs are more prominent, but the 901 IS easy to listen to.

To those that are complaining of lack of bass: What?! The 901s do bass very well, especially considering the enclosure size. Flat off a McIntosh C-28 amp and Kenwood THX amp at my neighbor's house (the 901s are his), the bass is perhaps TOO strong. And I like a fair amount of bass, not tinny cut-off-at-50-Hz kind of stuff. I wouldn't pay $1300 or $1400 for them, but they're not a bad speaker... the lack of bass may be due to placement, but it's not missing at ALL on my neighbor's pair.

I'll give it a value rating of 3 due to the price.

Similar Products Used:

POS Sony towers, Klipsch Heresys (mine), Heresy with Speakerlab W-1208R woofers (mine), among a couple other things

Nice bass, seem to image pretty good

Pricey

Well, I can't say that I hate these speakers. I still like my Heresys better, particularly with the Speakerlab woofers, but these aren't bad. I'm used to the horns being a little more "forward" now, the highs are more prominent, but the 901 IS easy to listen to.

To those that are complaining of lack of bass: What?! The 901s do bass very well, especially considering the enclosure size. Flat off a McIntosh C-28 amp and Kenwood THX amp at my neighbor's house (the 901s are his), the bass is perhaps TOO strong. And I like a fair amount of bass, not tinny cut-off-at-50-Hz kind of stuff. I wouldn't pay $1300 or $1400 for them, but they're not a bad speaker... the lack of bass may be due to placement, but it's not missing at ALL on my neighbor's pair.

Similar Products Used:

POS Sony towers, Klipsch Heresys (mine), Heresy with Speakerlab W-1208R woofers (mine), among a couple other things

I can simply not believe this. This site has been up for almost a year, and now that people can no longer just slam the AM-5, here we go on the 901's.
What is it with the mental state of people who think blowing $5K on a speaker cable is a legitimate thing? I guess they have been taken by so many "fly by night", "Here today and gone tommorow", snake oil salesman---that the fact that a company like Bose can exist in this world (and god forbid even have an ADVERTISING BUDGET) just does NOT sit well.

Even though the technowunderkinds with all this audio measuring equipment tell these snobs that their 5K cable makes no measurable/detectible difference in the signal AT ALL (except in perhaps some ultrasonic way), the snobs detect a "breathable, lush, wider soundstage". Horsehocky!

So here comes along a speaker system that works well for literally hundreds of thousands of people, sells like ice cream on a sunny spring day, and out comes the attack. What is really SAD is that this is so obvious to everyone. I mean, if the Bose 901's were so bad, why wasn't the FIRST review sent in until the AM-5 site was closed for any additional submissions?

I'm posting this review with a 1 star rating, so that when the "editors" at the Audio Review see this that MAYBE they will leave it up. If people are so childish as to slam one product without any reason, this site is totally meaningless. These babies that come on here and just want to have fun by slamming Bose ruin the credibility of the site.

I'm sure this will be deleted before a few days go by, and the flurry of "1 star" reviews will march on, BUT THINK what the ultimate price is. Your disinformation and perpetually keeping a Bose product on the "HALL OF SHAME" (which is in effect what has now happened to the AM-5...how fair!) may acutally cost Bose a few sales when a newbie buyer logs on, but to anyone with a brain it is amusing.

Not that the Bose speakers are 5 star products, but they aren't all bad either. I have heard MUCH worse, and would honestly give the 901's a 3 star rating. I remember the first time I heard them (until I started really analyzing what I was hearing) I was really impressed with what they were DOING to the sound. HEHEE....so if 'accurate reproduction' is your critera, maybe "1 star" is appropriate, but they honestly don't sound THAT bad.

I've had numerous friends tell me that their 901's sound as good as my KEF Ref. model 3's. Being an audio fanatic I've always been open to opinion depending on the over all stereo system. But I have decided that no matter what drives 901's, they will never have the capability to meet any Audiophile expectation. The only reason why Bose is a big name in the general consumers world is due to advertising. When a company has to buy advertising and is unable to let the product speak (no pun intended) for itself, then that should answer any questions about quality and sound reproduction about the speaker. For $1,400, I can, off the top of my head, think of speakers that would blow away the Bose 901 speaker. Besides, I've always thought that direct radiating sounded better than direct reflecting. Then again in all honesty, Bose 901's don't even meet the criteria for direct reflecting, like a true dipole speaker (Mirage Speakers).

First let me start by saying that the Bose 901 speakers are not simply speakersbut include an active equaliser box that modifies the signal sent to the power
amp to account for weaknessess in the speaker cones. Herein lies a worry.
Your sound signal is modified before it even gets to the speakers so you can
never say they are "transparent".

Nevertheless, the sound these speakers produce is exceptional in speed, clarity
and definition. After listening to many recordings of my favorite CD's, I've
come to the conclusion that they are perhaps a tad bright, and lower-middle
frequencies tend to be a little underpowered, with lower tom-drum smacks lacking
a little strength compared the overall volume. Bass is incredible, especially
considering there are only 4.5" cones present (9 of them though). Bass is
well defined and musical, though at times certain notes come across extremely
strong. I am still yet to determine if this is the speakers or my room at play
here. Mid to upper ranges are clear, with vocals and piano work coming across
with great clarity and realism. Bells and shakers are extremely well defined,
but upper midrange notes tend to be a little bright and harsh, although this
could be a lack of sound dampening in my room.

The power amp is a DENON POA-2800, using a DENON AVR-3600 as a pre-amp (it
drives my center and rears for the surround sound effects - the main amp in
it is not being used). The CD player is actually a Sony MDP-V1 laser disk
player (also capable of playing CDs) and does a commendable job.

The main drawcard (drawback?) of the 901's is their direct/reflecting game.
1 code points forward, while 8 point backwards and bounce the sound off a
backing wall, which in turn will bounce towards you from the center, and again
off the side walls to expand the stereo image dramatically. Near surround
sound can be had with this effect. Speaker and furniture placement is
absolutely critical with these speakers, and moving them around even small
amounts can have a dramatic effect on the clarity and quality of their sound,
although the good thing is that this sound tends to be uniform around the
entire room. I understand some people don't like the expanded stereo image,
some saying it's unnaturelly large, but I find the dispersed sound that these
speakers produce to mask the directional quality that I find annoying in so
many speakers.

Getting back to that pesky active equaliser box. A problem here is that it
generates a certain amount of hiss. Sitting it between the pre-amp and
power-amp (as one must) it's output is fed straight into the power-amp (which
is naturally going to amplify this background hiss to its full potential).
At anything above very low volumes, the hiss is not an issue, but it is audible
at very low levels. The problem here being that the more powerful your power
amp, the worse this background hiss will be. Alternatively, if you can put
the equaliser behind the pre-amp (and have the pre-amp go direct to the
power-amp), then the hiss will become proportional to the volume and you won't
hear it at all (except during complete silence in the input signal at very
high volumes). I'm guessing the hiss is about 10dB quieter than the lowest
volume setting on my amp. ie at lowest volume (-60db) the hiss is about half
as loud as the signal in my current setup. At -40db (ie. 4 times louder signal)
the hiss is not noticable at all.

Overall, these speakers produce exceptional quality sound right through the
frequency range with a few minor quirks. Purists will hate the thought that
the sound signal is being modified. Others don't care as long as it sounds
great. I fall into the second category. My gripes metioned here are more
minor gotchas that major problems, and aren't bad at all, just not perfect.

Would I recommend these speakers? (given that I own them). I'd say they do
the job very well, exceptional a lot of the time. I'd warn of the quirks I
mentioned earlier and say "make up your own mind". I'm not 100% happy, but
I'm greater than 80%, so it's 4 stars.