[rdnzl]

Oh I dunno…..back in the 80's in addition to tons of other audio gear I already owned, I came upon a used pair of Bose 901's and the equalizer box. They sounded great in the right room, and when driven HARD. Definitely king of the virtual soundstage back then.

[Phlogiston]

Why did they need an "equalizer box"?

[rdnzl]

Why do receivers have tone controls?

It's OK to bash most of Bose's products. but until you've heard a vintage pair of 901's pushed by 165 watts RMS per channel, set up in a large enough room, and properly placed, you are missing out on the one thing they did OK on.

[morzh]

I could hardly imagine something smaller than a stadium that needs 370W of power to sound OK. Not a room anyway. Unless of course the speaker is in some low 70-s dB/W*m efficiency.
To me mid 80s to low 90s is what's acceptable. At that level of power one of us would have to be in a different building.
Klipschorn is 105dB. Cornwall is 102. 40 Watts will make one deaf.

[rdnzl]

I won't get into a long discussion about why lots of power is a good thing. But I will say this....you don't run it at full throttle to sound good. I'll leave that discussion for an audiophile forum.


I had Carver power amps with 250w RMS per channel that ran just about any speaker I owned. I spent the better part of my wages from the 70's on audio gear. Hundreds of pieces of gear, including many amps and receivers. High powered amps don't need to break a sweat to sound great.

[morzh]

When you sad "pushed by 165W of power" you then meant the amp's capacity and not the actual power. I'm an EE, I take this things literally.
Of course, a big amp will sound better at smaller power.

This said, I'm an apologist of no particular technology, many things will sound well. But I prefer higher efficiency. If I could make something sound as good and loud with 3W of power instead of 40W, I will.

[Phlogiston]

Why do receivers have tone controls?

It's OK to bash most of Bose's products. but until you've heard a vintage pair of 901's pushed by 165 watts RMS per channel,  set up in a large enough room, and properly placed, you are missing out on the one thing they did OK on.

So your receiver did not have tone controls? I don't know, I usually run everything flat. If I was building a receiver it probably would not have tone controls. What kind of cut/boost does the equalizer have?

[rdnzl]

Uh oh.

The "flat vs. tone control" debate.


I'm outta here. LOL


Later guys.

[Electrothaumaturgist]

Have any of you played around with any Acoustat equipment? My brother has a pair of 3 1/2" X 6' tall black monuments here in the living room. Has a mammoth amp, pre amp and interfaces, with a Denon turntable. He worked for the company for 13 years, and assembled these speakers. He wants me to go through all of the units, but I know it'll get REAL pricey, looking at some of those high voltage/uf caps in there, and not to mention difficult (if not impossible) to get schematics for these non production-run units. These type electrostatic speakers were reputed to have extremely low distortion and db/W*m efficiency.  They scare me to death...

[Phlogiston]

With good reason. The ribbons/connections might be very fragile today.



Bose, might have made some good products at one time but at some point, marketing became more important than engineering - and that is what this thread is about - isn't it?

[morzh]

Rdnzl

Personally I, when running my run of the mill Kenwood I bought in 92, used its equalizer. Many settings. One for chamber music, one for bands like Jethro Tull, one for bands like Deep Purple, one for big band jazz, one for organ music......

Then 2 years ago I bought Cornwalls. That was shortly after I moved to the new house and I forgot about the fact that the equalizer memory got reset. So I brought them in, hooked them up to, well, same Kenwood system (at the time I did not own any tube amps) and to give it a listen I put in Orgel Buchlein CD. The sound literally blew me away. I listened to several pieces, then decided to look at the EQ setting to see what made it sound so good. Imagine my surprise when I saw it was flat as a pancake.
Even more surprising to me was the fact that I liked it for all sorts of music.

This was the moment when I decided to get some tube equipment to see if this makes further improvement (to tell the truth, even if it did, it was an order of magnitude smaller difference compared to the speaker change).

Ever since I listen to my amps either flat or with the bass increased by no more than one click.

[morzh]

Russ


In all honesty marketing was, is and will always be more important than engineering.
Everyone was suffering from it. Of course the quality was good. But then when exception happened, like with the Atwater Kent, they chose to close.

[Phlogiston]

Yeah, they did but labor relations had a hand in it too.

You bet, everybody has to earn a living, but when it comes to art (music and reproducing music) it is a shame to have marketing in control - of course, there are only a few that notice.

That tone based epiphany is one I have also had. At some point your hardware became good enough to impress without tone controls. They are there to compensate for some issue with the reproduction OR the recording (see topic) with the one exception that happens to most of us - - age.

[Ron Ramirez]

...Ever since I listen to my amps either flat or with the bass increased by no more than one click.

I experienced the same thing with my Bozak E-300s. Since I discovered how good they sound with the tone controls set at flat, I leave them that way. Same with my Bozak Urbans in the living room.

Current home office setup: Fisher 600-T, Bozak E-300 (B-302A)
Current living room setup: Fisher Coronet 100-T tuner/preamp, one of those little Parts Express Lepai power amps, Bozak Urban (B-302A)

About the Lepai, don't laugh; it actually works very well for what I use it for - TV viewing plus occasional background music. And I don't need hundreds of audio watts for TV viewing or background music. Best of all, the Lepai gets along with the Bozak Urbans very well.

[morzh]

Until now I didn't know what Lepai was

As for the Hardwarevquality / listenig, I'd really be interested in finding out how much listening experience was affected by various pieces of equipment: speakers, amps, preamps....Monster cables

It'd be an interesting poll.