Bose 901 Series VI Main / Stereo Speaker

My husband is a very opinionated, and a highly studied audiophile. Audio is his life. Just so you know, I do have a little bias on this subject matter. My husband is starting his own company, Crowley Acoustics. He will be building high efficiency, low impendence, full range speakers. In other words, he will be building speakers that will sound louder than a jackhammer on one watt of power. His speakers will be driven by 3 - 4 watt tube amps.

Don't get me wrong... just because I'm related to a speaker builder, doesn't mean I can't appreciate beautiful sounding, well made speakers. In fact, my all time, world favorite speaker is the Tannoy Churchill. When we took that speaker for a test drive, The Rites of Spring brought tears to my eyes.

As part of his research for his company, we often go and listen to high-end audio equipment. We do this for two reason... 1) To see what the competition has to offer and 2) Keep our ears tuned to reality. If you listen to any speaker long enough, you will think it's the best speaker in the world. So it's important for us to listen to the Crowley prototypes with "fresh ears".

One day we wondered into the Bose store. I went right for the Bose 901's. My husband warned me that I wouldn't like them. He knows my taste pretty well and while we don't always agree on what we like; he knows enough about audio to pick out what I will like based on their specs.

At first, I thought he was wrong. My first impression of the speaker was good. When you first start to listen it sounds bright. I stood there in the store for a few minutes just taking in the sound. But then it started to get too bright.

The highs were shrill and kind of screechy. The lows are not tight. But they were boomy and somewhat overpowering. The midrange is muddy. It seems to me this speaker was tuned specifically for rock music. But even then there is such shrillness to the music. I found that after just a few minutes the speakers were hard to listen to.

I was also disappointed that the speakers did not provide any sound staging. The vocalist didn't pop out in front of me. I mostly listen to Jazz and classical, but on occasion I do listen to popular music. When we listened to the Churchill's I also played Fiona Apple. If I closed my eye's listening to the Churchill?s Fiona Apple was in the room. She popped out of the speakers and was standing right in front of me. I could point to her. I could also pick out the location of each of the members of her band. The Bose 901's had a flatness to them. There was absolutely no sense of the music space.

With good speakers, the cymbals shimmer, the violins float, the attack of the drum is sharp and ends quickly, voices are not nasal, and the music sounds alive. The Bose 901's were dead, dead, dead!

I was also very disappointment with the customer service. At most high-end audio stores, customers are taken into private listening rooms. The sales people know audio and they can talk intelligently about watts, amps, impendence, push-pull, tone, and all that other stuff my husband mumbles about in his sleep. At Bose, all the speakers are set up on one wall in the middle of the store. Customers are expected to evaluate these speakers standing in the middle of the store with a zillion other customers buzzing about. The store also has a poor selection of demo music.

These speakers are not cheep. They're in the thousand-dollar range. For that kind of money, you could go to a real audio store, sip espresso in a private listening room, and hear great speakers.

In addition to the poor listening area, the store did not provide knowledgeable sales staff. I'm an audio newbie, and I asked a few basic questions. The salesman looked at me like I had two heads. He had no clue what I was talking about. I might as well have asked the question in Latin. They also couldn't provide any information about the best placement of the speakers or the appropriate cabling and interconnects. I may be wrong, but I think they were using lamp cord (audiophiles will be shuttering right about now.)

All in all, the Bose 901 speakers were very disappointing. If you are considering these speakers, I suggest you take your money and listen to a few other speakers before you make up your mind.