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I had a Honda Accord with Bose speakers (don't know what kind) and they were amazing! When I replaced that car I was distraught at having to leave those speakers... Have never had a car since with speakers that come close. Those speakers actually changed the way I listened to music. Sigh...I have a new car and the system is awful. What to do? I really need a good system.
Ummm ... get new speakers? Factory speakers are generally awful.
Go to crutchfield.com and put in your car year/make/model and they'll show you the speakers that'll fit your vehicle.
Ummm ... get new speakers? Factory speakers are generally awful.
Go to crutchfield.com and put in your car year/make/model and they'll show you the speakers that'll fit your vehicle.
I had a Honda Accord with Bose speakers (don't know what kind) and they were amazing! When I replaced that car I was distraught at having to leave those speakers... Have never had a car since with speakers that come close. Those speakers actually changed the way I listened to music. Sigh...I have a new car and the system is awful. What to do? I really need a good system.
I had a 1999 Nissan with the premium Bose system. Sounded okay except the sub-woofers never produced much bass. The head failed and I couldn't find a replacement so I had another brand installed. The Bose system is unique in that the head does not have an amp, each speaker has its own. I had to add an "integration harness" from the new head's pre-amp outs.
Later, one of these amped speakers failed and I couldn't find a replacement. I would have had to replace each speaker with common ones without amps and remove the harness, thereby using the head's amp. I just went without the speaker. I won't be getting another car with Bose.
In my home theater I use Bose 4.2 Series II reflecting speakers as my rears and like them in that situation:
I like the Bose system in my 2019 Buick Encore. It has HD radio, which is a must if you want classical music where I live. I also have the in-dash navigation system, which was a separate option. No CD player, though.
The old Bose 901s were great PA speakers if you didn't want to lug La Scalas or something similar.
The noise cancelling headphones are great, if you go for the full over-ear cup style, not the ones that sit on top.
The Bose PA towers work really well for a small PA assist, and what gets lost with inadequate PA is always the treble and upper midrange anyway so the inherently trebly nature of the PA towers is actually an advantage here.
Teeny bookshelf speakers, and devices that include them, are always going to sound crappy (overboosted bass and treble) compared to proper home speakers that use big cones to move big amounts of air. It doesn't matter who makes the teeny bookshelf speakers, because it's a matter of physics.
The gold standard, the Klipschorn, is actually a "compact" speaker of sorts (even though it's 4 feet high) because its required corner placement enlists the two corner walls to serve as extensions of the folded horn. So once again we see that the bigger speaker sounds better (all else being equal which it never is), in this case the "bigger" being supplied partly by its installation location.
Personally when I go to listen to live music I don't sit with one ear half an inch away from the guitarist's sound hole and the other one stuffed into the bass drum, and I don't want my recorded music to sound that way either.
I have a Bose soundbar for my television. The sound is great. Doubt it could be better. But why is it so damn complicated? Most of the time it works fine. But there have been times I have to spend 20 minutes trying to get it to work. It's just a speaker. Sometimes I think this hi-tech stuff is 'high' for the sake of being 'high'.
Having been in the AV field for many, many years, I saw that a lot of Bose products were looked down upon by many in the industry. 'No highs, no lows - must be Bose' was something you would hear when the name came up.
But their marketing worked, so you would always have people asking for it in retail locations, and I imagine the sales staff realized that their paycheck didn't suffer from just selling the gear rather than spending the time trying to show something different.
I did some work for Prema Bose (Amar Bose's first wife - they were divorced; he died in 2013) at her place in Massachusetts shortly before she passed. Although she had no affiliation with the company at the time, she did have a lot of Bose products in the house - the most noticeable was two pair of 901's suspended from the ceiling in the great room. I believe they might have been piano black gloss finish. When I commented on them, she said something like 'they look good, but I haven't been able to make them work like they should'. I believe during a later visit she said her son, Vanu (died late 2017) had fixed whatever the issue was with the 901's, although I never heard them play.
I did let her know how it was kind of a big deal to have the chance to meet her, since she was part of the long history of Bose in the AV industry - she seemed to find that humorous.
A very nice lady.
I had some Bose QuietComfort noise cancelling headphones. They were decent, but after a year or so, one of the ears stopped working. That made me question the quality of Bose products.
I replaced them with Sony noise cancelling headphones which are still working perfectly after 5 years.
I do have a Bose system in my car which is decent and I haven't had any problems with it going on 9 years of use.
Bose is highly successful at marketing a product and appealing to the masses.
But maybe the "hate" comes from people who feel like there are plenty of other good speakers and headphones from different brands that don't get nearly as much attention and sales.
But keep in mind, not everyone is an audio enthusiast. Most people are just fine with trying 3 different products in a bigbox store and picking the 1 they like best out of that 3. Not everyone has the time and money to try out hundreds of audio products.
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Bose car system
