An Alternative Approach to Stereo Imaging.(Evaluation)

I have long wanted to give a pair of Bose 901 speakers a really serious audition in my 3400-cubic-foot listening/viewing/testing room. The 901s have been demonstrated to me in assorted and often very substandard dealer demo rooms over the years (this goes all the way back to the original, in the late 1960s), and in each case I felt that the locale had the potential to color the sound more than the speakers deserved.

I once tried to get a pair to audition from Bose, but the company wanted me to jump through more corporate-arranged hoops than I cared to in order to get a pair shipped down to my place. The Bose people obviously are very sensitive about the 901s, particularly when it comes to letting any product reviewer loose with a pair. I got the impression that they first wanted to make sure that I was not a tweak-audio crank with a Bose-bashing agenda.

I am not a Bose-basher, but I can certainly understand their concern, given the way the company has been treated by some members of the high-end press. However, I was not in the mood to be treated all that much differently from typical consumers who obtain a pair and set them up in their living rooms. When I get a product to review, I prefer to fiddle with it unassisted, so that I can see just what customers will experience during the set-up and auditioning stages.

Consequently, I had just about given up on ever hearing a pair of 901s in my room, or in any other good room, until a real fan of the Bose concept, Gary Eickmeier, invited me down to his home to see what his particular setup, which includes the latest Series VI incarnations of the 901, had to offer.

Like me, Gary is a regular participant in several audio-related internet newsgroups. Unlike me, Gary has caught a lot of flack from assorted newsgroup Bose-haters, who have often vilified him for even having a set of 901s in his home, let alone praising their sound. It seems that the speaker is not particularly popular with those who frequent the audio chat groups. This appears to be the case even if some of them no doubt dislike the speaker mainly because of the monumental commercial success of the Bose Corporation (some audio buffs seem to be paranoid about big, successful companies), rather than because of their sound. Indeed, I get the impression that many of the more emphatic Bose 901 haters have either never auditioned the systems at all, or at best have only heard them in the same kinds of less-than-perfect dealer environments I have experienced.

Anyway, one weekend I packed my car with my AudioControl SA-3051 RTA, some test and music discs, and an open mind, and headed for Gary's place, 270 miles away. When I got there, Gary almost immediately showed me the speakers and the room. And what a room that room is!

Over the past three decades, I have seen a lot of high-end audio gear set up in rooms that were not much more spacious than oversized closets. (Years ago, I heard the original Infinity Servo-Static, sub/ satellite system in a room that probably was about 15 feet square.) However, Gary has his system set up in a room that a lot of high-end enthusiasts would be willing to kill for.

How about these dimensions: 21 feet wide and 31 feet deep, with a ceiling that is 8 feet high at the sides, with a 10-foot peak?! Total enclosed space: about 5800 cubic feet.

Not only that, but this is no large "family" room with a bunch of large glass areas, furnishings, and doorways flanking the speakers, and maybe with a kitchen or dining room off to the side. Rather, it is a dedicated home theater room, with no window openings whatsoever in the front and side walls, with minimal furnishings at the speaker end, and with a plush carpet covering the floor area.

It has a high-quality, ceiling-mounted, Sony CRT projector aiming its beams at a 9-foot screen on the 21-foot wide front wall. The equipment array is in an adjacent room (controlled mostly by an RF remote control), which not only gets a typically unsightly stack of equipment out of sight, but also eliminates any chance whatsoever for microphonic feedback to add colorations, even at high listening levels. (Note that neither Gary nor I believe…