Amar Bose: Teacher, Inventor, Entrepreneur RIP

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Amar Bose: Teacher, Inventor, Entrepreneur RIP - 7/13/2013 4:55:54 PM

outlier

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I knew of him as a speaker designer but I was not aware
of how much affection and respect he elicited from students
and fellow faculty at MIT.

New York Times

MIT

He was one of a line of speaker designers to come out of MIT
each of whom, in his time, changed the public's opinion of what
constitutes excellent sound. Love his designs or hate them, there
can be no doubt that the general public thinks the name Bose is
synonymous with first class sound reproduction.

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RE: Amar Bose: Teacher, Inventor, Entrepreneur RIP - 7/13/2013 6:51:34 PM

angelikaJ

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OL, thank you for posting this.

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RE: Amar Bose: Teacher, Inventor, Entrepreneur RIP - 7/13/2013 9:19:18 PM

njlauren

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I work with people who had him at MIT in EE, and they said his classes were tough, even for MIT. I think the funniest story about him had to do with Consumer reports giving a bad review to his 901 speakers, and he sued them for malicious libel, and the case dragged on for over 10 years, until it was decided in the Supreme Court, where they ruled it was a matter of opinion....to which Dr. Bose said "What do you expect? The Judges are all a bunch of old farts who don't hear too well".

I did a profile on the company when I was in grad management school and it was fascinating. They took one of the worst brands of auto electronics, Delco, and created a sound system that was incredible. From my profile, I learned it was run as a company should be run, not like the typical public company, they were willing to do research and take the time to develop things, much as the Japanese are credited with, the wave system took almost 15 years to perfect, the noise canceling headphones well over 10 years, try to telling that one to a beancounter with a degree in Finance.

I am sure wherever he has gone, he will have legions of students to torture and music to make the angels stop crying and smile:)

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RE: Amar Bose: Teacher, Inventor, Entrepreneur RIP - 7/14/2013 8:39:23 AM

MasterG2kTR

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I was always amazed at the quality and performance of his designs and ideas.

RIP

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RE: Amar Bose: Teacher, Inventor, Entrepreneur RIP - 7/14/2013 10:49:29 PM

outlier

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I found another write up about Bose. This one in Stereophile.
It talks more about his litigious nature and opens up the discussion
to include people who consider his products to be "mid fi" not
the ultimate in quality.

Stereophile on Dr Bose.

There is a quote from review by J Gordon Holt in Stereophile
which was written some time ago.

"“If we were to judge the 901 in terms of the best sound available,
then, we would say that it produces a more realistic semblance of
natural ambience than any other speaker system, but we would
characterize it as unexceptional in all other respects.”

And that is close to the essence of the difference of opinion
about his speakers and their "direct reflecting" approach. They
do produce an wonderful ambiance and soundstage from anywhere
in a room if they are properly set up and the room works with them.

But there are those that hold that they do not reproduce every nuance
of sound as well as other speakers especially if you are in the so called
"sweet spot" of a conventional or traditional speaker system. You pays
your money and you are entitled to your opinion.

On some of the stereo and sound sites these disputes are very heated

Sometimes more like

And as njlauren has said Bose
was frequently right in the thick of it and in court.

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RE: Amar Bose: Teacher, Inventor, Entrepreneur RIP - 7/15/2013 12:16:24 AM

Termyn8or

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The fact is that Bose was never high fidelity, never close, never tried to be and NEVER CLAIMED TO BE.

I am one of the last true audiophiles and I wll tell you now, alot of Dr. Bose's designs sounded great, gave the listener a wonderful experience and reallt SOLD. My Mother has a pair to this day she bought in the 1980s. About 5"X5"X6", they shake the floor on twenty watts. they are also very clean, distortionwise. I will not fault Bose speakers on distortion, they are quite clean at reasonable levels. the 901s went to pretty high levels but they doi have the disadvantage of being a one way system, basically.

Bose was not the G-d some may make him out to be, but he was smart enough to forget about high fidelity in a room. You want flat twenty to twenty with no THD, get fucking headphones. that seems to be his attitude. Out in the room he did as much as he possibly could to bounce the sound all over the fucking place. Roy Allison kkicked his ass, but didn't have enough backing.

I want my speakers straight at me, which is why 90 % of 901 users turned them around. WTF ?

The ambience and colour of the original room was reproduced just fine by the original microphones in the recording. If not, you cannot replace that with the ambience in your own room and call it high fidelity. It is just fucking WRONG. HIGH FIDELITY. Look up each word separately. High means alot, fidelity means faithfulness.

Dr. Bose was NEVER about that, he was about good sound. He got tht ethereal sound from bouncing it around and people were more impressed with it sometimes than Carver's Sonic Holography or the old SQ or QS quadrophonic systems. as it made it sound as if there were more speakers than there actually were.

People were fooled and people were excited about it. And they bought.

If oyu EVER have a chance to put a Bose ANYTHING to a frequency sweep and measurement for flatness of response, it will be off the scale. the Man simply never cared about response. He would send midbass to the rear and hi mid to the side, whatever.

Us real audiophiles prefer all the sound to be coherent. COHERENT, look it up. That is the one singular thing that Dr. Bose avoided wwas coherence.

Enough. He is dead now. He could build almost good speakers as me, for less money for sure. Cuprous rest his soul.

(really cuprous is copper, and one of Bose's real innovations was to use aluminum wire for voice coils. After while he made them rectangular on an angle which put mor emagnetic density there, where it was needed. Actually that is his greatest innovation)

T^T

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