The Secret Behind Bose Sound Revealed!

[Music] hey how's it going this is Joe and tell and today I want to talk about why some people like bows and why audio files don't so if you don't know a Marv Bose is the creator of Bose products and he was actually a professor at MIT leather implies different okay it's impossible to do anything that to make anything better unless you do it differently clear okay not the other way around okay the arrow doesn't go backwards now it's the difference that implies courage it was a very interesting guy so you may want to look at some of the videos I'll link down below to some of those so I was inspired to make this video from a video I saw from this does not compute and he did something where he talked about why audio files hate bows I found it very interesting he talks about how Bose uses DSP instead of perhaps using better parts things like that I'll link to that video also very interesting what I wanted to talk about in this video though is more of a middle ground not necessarily why audio files hate bows but more of the reason why a lot of people seem to like them so here's an interesting fact from audio holux and they stated that in the 90s Bose actually captured 30% of the market with their acoustic as setup not their entire line just this one set of speakers that's pretty crazy so what that tells me is that they're able to capture a segment of the market that the typical audio companies are not focused on the folks over at Bose are targeting non audio files and the way they do that is partially in how they mark it but also how they design their products a lot of Bose products seem to focus heavily on convenience and ease of use and that's something that's not typical of most audio products another thing that they do is they focus on the design a lot of boses products look different than typical audiophile speakers for example take a look at their acoustic setup the bosu cousteau master were some of the first speakers that were a satellite system meaning they had the small speakers and then they had the base module tucked away somewhere else at the time that was very innovative also take a look at the Bose 901 this is a very different and interesting design where it had a bunch of small drivers facing backwards and so they had something called direct reflect it was something that Bose focused on and it was supposed to give you more of a live experience many would argue that it affected the imaging of the speakers and we'll go into that a little bit later on another thing that I noticed is a lot of Bose products have a different sound signature and we're gonna go into more detail about that but typically they have a little bit more bass and the treble is a little bit more rolled off another thing is that Bose happens to make some pretty decent headphones and Bluetooth speakers so they came out with some headphones that had the noise cancellation I think they did a really good job a lot of people still give it very good reviews now there are a lot of different headphones that do the same thing and maybe are more comfortable with a little bit better sound quality but Bose was one of the first ones to come out with that technology and they happen to make some pretty decent Bluetooth speakers also I've had a few different ones I actually own these this is the Bose Soundlink 3 and for a Bluetooth speaker I think it sounds a lot better than some of the other Bluetooth speakers that have had now that's not saying much but what I found is that there's not much to complain about for a Bluetooth speaker yes it's more expensive but the build quality and the sound quality I think is a step above some of the other Bluetooth speakers that have had now I know for myself when I think of Bose the first thing that comes to mind are those old acoustics that we talked about earlier so the problem with that system is that they had these small Bose cubes that were supposed to take care of the mids and highs and then they had a Bose bass module that you tuck in the corner now the problem with that is that there were holes in the frequency response so there were certain frequencies that the bass module could not handle and there were some lower frequencies that the mid-range in the treble couldn't handle also the bass modules didn't go extremely low and the cubes didn't really have the highs that you'd expect and that's why a lot of people say no highs no lows must be both the other reason a lot of audio files didn't like Bose was because a lot of their stuffs proprietary so you can't just take speakers from this acoustic as set up and start using them on your ABR receiver they really relied heavily on you using all Bose products so if one thing broke you kind of had to get a whole new system the other issue that audio files have with this is the price Bose products are not inexpensive and for the same price people would argue that you could get better gear maybe it won't look the same maybe it'll be a little bit bigger but sound quality wise it's gonna be superior to the boast product the other problem that people have with bows is that they don't really allow you to compare between bows and other speakers even at some of the big-box stores that have demos but they wouldn't be in the same place as the other speakers that have their own separate location just for Bose products they also don't show specs on their website regarding frequency response and that is kind of an issue because you don't know what you're getting but we're gonna fix that because I've taken some measurements of some speakers that I have here that happen to be both speakers another problem that I have with Bose is it seems like people don't really move on from Bose once somebody gets a Bose set up they think it's the greatest thing in the world and so they're not even open to trying out different speakers because to them Bose is the best so here I have a Bose 301 and it's one of the older models and these don't sell for too much they're around $300 so nothing crazy but very interesting design one thing you'll notice is that it's designed to be placed horizontally another thing that you might notice is that this is a relatively small enclosure not huge not small but somewhere in the middle but they were able to fit an 8 inch woofer now this is incorporating what they call direct reflect which means that it does have tweeters that face the rear and so it's meant to reflect off their walls and kind of supposed to sound more like a live environment according to both from my experience it just kind of smeared the soundstage so I didn't get a solid Center image and so that was my issue with these is it does scatter the sound but not in a way that I think is pleasing or accurate so here I've taken some measurements of these Bose 301's so as you can tell here this might give some insight as to the Bose frequency response maybe their own personal sound signature and perhaps why people seem to like both so it's real easy to dismiss people and say oh you like Bose that's crap blah blah but in reality what you'll notice here is that Bose tends to bump up the bass so if you were to compare something from Bose versus something with a flat frequency response to somebody who's not an audiophile they're gonna say the Bose seems to sound better it has more bass well that's how they design the speaker to have more bass and they're not the only ones doing that beats is popular because they're basic phones the other thing you'll notice is that does have rolled off highs and that's partially because it has those tweeters that are facing to the rear and not facing directly forward there are other speaker manufacturers like those from elac that kind of have a similar sound signature with a top-end that's kind of downward sloping and a lot of people seem to find that pleasing because it sounds less harsh less fatiguing for long listening periods but there is a point where the highs are too rolled off and so here I would like to compare these with some SBS speakers these are the SV s prime bookshelf speakers and take a look at the frequency response between these two now the goal for most speaker designers is to create a sound signature that is flat and as you can see from these graphs it doesn't look like poses trying to do that whatsoever at the end of this video I'm gonna be doing a sound demo and you can listen to the difference between the original track the Bose 301 and the SV s prime bookshelves alright so I was editing this video and I realized that I had some bows two O ones that I had in the ceiling from when I was doing a dolby atmos set up here in my shop so these are some older Bose speakers and I wanted to see if they had a similar frequency response to the Bose 300 ones that I had now looking at these these are using looks like a 6-inch driver maybe six and a half and it also has the tweeter that faces towards the rear and it's interesting because if you look at these the tweeter is not what you'd normally expect to see it looks more of like a small full range driver and it's running free air that just means that it's not in a box another term is open baffle and I also thought it might be a good idea to measure the Bose Soundlink three that I have here just because I wanted to know if this is just Bose a sound signature or if it was just what these older speakers and the thing that you'll notice with this Bose Soundlink is that they used ESP to flatten out the response so the Bose Bluetooth speaker doesn't have the same roll-off as the older speakers and that's likely due to some of the DSP that they now have access to that they didn't have before sorry for the noise in the background here mm-hmm so I did a blind sound test where I played these two speakers and to let people in the comments judge whether they liked the green one or the blue one better the green one is the S vs the blue is the Bose and out of 49 people I found that 92% liked the green the SVS better and 8% like the bose better now a comment that i got a few times was that the green was actually louder and in reality it is not [Music] it's just that the way your ears perceive things and the way that a microphone or the software perceives it is different so these are equal and the reason why it sounds like it's not as loud is because the SVS does not have as much base as the Bose one so loudness on the computer what it's judging is the SPL or how much energy the speakers have and bass tends to have more energy than treble the way that that would work out in a normal listening environment is you may end up turning up the Bose louder than the SVS the result of that is that the Bose will have more bass and in comparison the SVS will sound like it has anemic bass and in reality the SBS is actually more accurate but you can see why a lot of people would look at the Bose and say well that one sounds better it has more bass so in conclusion what I figured out is that Bose knows their target market and their target market is not the typical audiophile their target market is the person who is not an audiophile the person who just wants decent sound that knows really nothing about audio at the end when I do the sound demo notice that the Bose does have more bass so that's nothing to scoff at they were able to fit an 8 inch driver into the small enclosure so it kind of makes sense people do like more bass most audio files would even say that this is exaggerated bass but people seem to like it so the lesson here is that a lot of people do like Bose and for decent reasons and audio files don't like Bose and they have their own reasons I'm hoping that some of these audio file focused companies start learning a little bit from Bose with regards to maybe ease of use or maybe even enhancing the sound signature or giving people the option and hopefully Bose can learn from the audiophile companies and be a little bit more open with their specs so as with all speakers I review I have to put them on the leader board let's see how they place so these are the Bose 301 version for that cell maybe a little bit under $200 right now on Amazon this is the older model so let's see where it places as far as best bookshelf I would have to place it hmm pretty far down on this list I'm gonna say towards the bottom but above the mica oh and threes but below the Ben Q's yes huh that's pretty harsh mmm that's pretty harsh hmm yeah you just see what else is here you know what yeah I'll have to put them there all right so as far as uh in the five hundred dollar price range oh I guess these are under $200 so I'm gonna have to put them slightly below this video sound bar so at the very bottom and then for Best Overall I'm gonna put them down let's see here home pod Micah and b42 I'm gonna put them right here below the traval oh that's very harsh let me let me hmm I'll put them slightly above that I'll put them above the Travolta on this one and I'm gonna have to go back and just put them back up above the travaux lows as far as best bookshelf now the Micah mp40 2 X's will not have as much base but at least they have a flatter frequency response you know I I just can't I can't stand the treble response on this most 3:01 myself personally so that's where they land let me know if you disagree in the comments so there you go those are the bose 301's hope you enjoyed the video if you did make sure to LIKE subscribe ring the notification belt to be notified when I upload new videos and also I have a podcast on patreon calm for us lies Joe and tell link is right here so anyway that's it take care enjoy the sound demo [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] in the drill again you see follow on this side now your name [Music] comes around your knives and play and full of you all a bath here our fool [Music] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Joe N Tell

Views: 2,384,268

Rating: 4.5817475 out of 5

Keywords: bose, secret, revealed, why audiophiles hate bose, dr. amar bose, amar bose, bose 301, bose 201, bose soundlink, bose bluetooth speakers, bose headphones, bose acoustimass, bose lifestyle, bose speakers, review, bose exposed, frequency response, frequency response tests, frequency response charts, frequency response analysis, sound demos, sound demo, bose sound, bose products, audiophile, audiophiles, joentell, joe n tell

Id: RR10zEqVRvI

Length: 20min 2sec (1202 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 21 2019