I Was Wrong About the Bose 301 IV

hey how's it going this is Joe and tell and last time I was wrong about the Bose 301 alright so I have to be straight up I don't really like being wrong I hate being wrong but I am the type of guy that will admit it when I am wrong so I made some mistakes on my last video with Bose 300 once the mistake that I made is that I measure them and I listen to them as if they were normal speakers and they're not they're actually designed very differently so most normal speakers are meant to be towed in slightly and these are actually meant to face forward they have tweeters that are actually angled inward already so that's the thing I can't measure these directly on axis facing forward because they weren't meant to be listened to that way and that's why if you notice from the sound demos a lot of people were complaining that the highs were really rolled off and that was part of the mistake that I made so as you can see here the tweeters are on the inside facing forward and now actually has tweeters facing the back as well the tweeters are facing towards you but they're not pointed in the place where you think that they would point so the left speaker is pointed not to your left ear but it's aimed more directly towards your right ear and same with a the right speaker it's aimed to your left ear not your right ear so kind of crosses over like that and it was actually a comment from one of you guys that helped me understand this and it was from somebody named Pascal Salerno and he wrote a comment on the previous video and I pinned it [Music] basically what he said is that the wreck reflect is meant to sound good kind of all-around like more omnidirectional rather than having that sweet spot in the middle that you'd expect from normal speakers and that makes sense because as I said in the previous video these speakers aren't targeted towards audio files these are targeted towards everybody else right people who don't know that they're supposed to point in their their speakers so these speakers actually do most of that work for you and instead of creating a solid sweet spot it creates more of a wider sweet spot and so you can kind of enjoy it no matter where you're sitting so having said that I can't record these on axis and I can't do the sound demos with the microphones on axis it has to be placed in a in the direction where Bose intends for your ears to be and that is slightly off axis one thing I forgot to mention is that these are pretty hideous with the grilles off so I assume that when they made these they tested them with the grilles on so the tests are with the grilles on I have another admission to make and that is that the sound demo sound demo was 0:04 was actually the same as 0:03 the bose versus the SVS the only thing that I did differently was I bumped up the sound of the Bose three decibels compared to the SVS in the source file and the reason I did that was because remember I said that Bose is sound signature made it so that kind of made you want to turn it up a little bit more people were saying that they thought that the Bose might have been a little bit lower in level than the SVS and I told you that that wasn't the case and what I did this time was eye level matched by ear kind of like what you would expect to do if you were demoing these speakers in a store and the result was kind of fascinating because last time eight percent of the people like the bose versus ninety two percent who like the SVS so this time it was a little bit closer it was twenty-eight percent of the people who like the bose versus seventy two percent of the people who liked the SVS and the comments were interesting as well because in the first one everybody was just pretty much saying like the blue one sounds terrible in the next one they said yeah the blue one is a little bit bass heavy but a lot of the comments were saying that the SVS sounded weak so that's the thing to be careful for is when you're testing speakers they have to be level matched and that's something that I'm very careful of when I do the sound demo make sure that they are level matched the other thing I forgot to mention is on the second demo that I did 0:04 I made sure to take out the reference track and that's so you couldn't compare the original track to the other speakers I wanted you to just compare the two speakers by themselves so next time you see sound demos on YouTube make sure they have the source clip because it's not really useful if you're comparing just the speakers by themselves you have to compare the speakers to another speaker and to the source to get the idea of the relative differences right that's the only thing that that's important is the differences that you hear it's not the absolute sound that you're hearing it's the differences here is something that I was right about though is that the base on the bows is enhanced the top end wasn't downward sloping as I had initially thought it's more of a v-shape the other thing I still stand by is that although direct reflect is supposed to make the soundstage sound wider and you can kind of listen to it anywhere it isn't as focused as some of the other speakers that I have here so to be fair I'm gonna go back to the speaker leader board and see if I would place these bows higher up okay so here we are at the speaker leader board and let's see where I place the 301's last time the real ones I placed slightly above the travaux low beneath the PB 42 X and MB 42 X and the MK 402s mmm let's do this so the reason I would change this is just because at first I didn't like the sound stage on 301's but knowing that their intention was not to have the most focused sound stage but rather to have a wider sound stage I think that they knew that they were making some sacrifices and I kind of have to respect that and the reason just being that this is not targeted towards audio files this is targeted towards you know just basically everyone else and you know I don't even consider myself an audiophile I'm an audio enthusiast so I have to respect their engineering and thinking here so let me see here I will put the bows 301 I would have to say let's put it right here above the Dayton audio MK 402 bTW so a little bit of an upgrade there now over here let's see where were they under $200 I put them underneath the vizio sound bar and just because the vizio had clear highs and more bass coming from that sub woofer that they had there you know what I'll just be fair and put it above the sound bar okay and then last overall sound I had it pretty low over here I think it'll get an upgrade bright again oops right above the Dayton audio so there you have it the revised speaker leader board so in conclusion I still think that the SBS is superior to the Bose in many ways the SPS is just more accurate the Bose did have more bass though and it still verifies my thinking that these Bose as well as other Bose products are targeted towards non audio files so there you have it for all you people who are saying that I'm hating on Bose I really am NOT I own a lot of Bose products and I try to be as fair as possible I hope you enjoyed the video if you did make sure to LIKE subscribe and ring the notification bell to be notified when I upload new videos that's it here's a revised sound demo with the mics placed off axis the way that Bose intended [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] in the drill again you see along on this side now your name [Music] [Music] comes around you're nice and play and full of you bath here our food [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Joe N Tell

Views: 180,345

Keywords: bose 301, bose 301 IV, bose speaker review, bose review, bose bookshelf speaker, bose, secret, revewlaed, why audiophiles hate bose, dr. amar bose, amar bose, bose speakers, bose exposed, bose sound, bose products, audiophile, audiophiles, joentell, joe n tell, joe and tell, sound demo, sound demos, frequency response, frequency test, frequency response test, is bose good, is bose worth it

Id: eMW1oPWrJkk

Length: 14min 5sec (845 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 28 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I was sort of wondering myself how the mic was positioned for the 301s in the first video. The 301 series 4 in the video and the latest series 5 introduced in 2001 aren’t worth it new for $328 a pair but because they are so old, you often see them for $50-100ish dollars on the used market. For that price it’s a lot of speaker and is really fun for stuff like The Books and classical music,

[u/joentell]

This is set to be public at 6am PST tomorrow, but I wanted to share with you all first.

I also reveal the speakers from my Blind A/B Test #004.

[u/peanutstring]

Pulled a bunch of the commercial version of these out of various pub/club installs over the years. Probably the worst sounding speaker you can buy for the money. Replacing them with JBL Controls has made plenty of people happy...

The Series III had awful paper cone tweeters driven with a basic 1st order crossover, something you'd expect from a cheap 1980s stack system from a supermarket. Oh and the magnet on the woofer is tiny, with a cheap pressed steel frame.

Bose are trying and failing to push harder into pro audio - I heard the commercial Series IV on demo and it's better than the III with actual dome tweeters, but you can still do a lot better for the money!

[u/Romando1]

I’ve always wanted to grab some cheap Bose speakers and throw some Dayton speakers and crossovers in them - add a ton of bracing, sound deadening material on the inside - and vinyl wrap the outside with a modern pattern. Hmmm...

[u/joentell]

Thanks to whoever gave the silver! 🙏🙏🙏

[u/bendekopootoe]

Something says to me that the difficulty to accurately measure them is not an accident