Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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27 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
They last, October 6, 2005
I have owned this model of speaker for about twelve years. I would add to the above review that if you have a good equalizer in addition to the active eq, you can make these speakers put out unbelievable bass. Basically, the speakers accurately reproduce the sound on the recording, nothing more or less. They have the capability for lots of bass, as several of my present and former neighbors can attest to.
The 901s do take a lot of power and generally aren't as loud as other speakers would be connected to the same set-up. Loss of stereo separation is only an issue if you are unable to set them up properly. They don't go right in the corner or right next to each other, and they don't sit on the floor. The stands, unless you can build your own or intend to suspend them from the ceiling, are necessary.
If you plan to listen mainly to music and have a powerful component system, these are great speakers. Bose used to make a matching center channel speaker for surround sound applications (back when they were only five channel) but currently don't have anything specifically matched to the 901. This makes them a poor choice for someone really into home theater. Also, if you don't have an adaptor or tape loop for the active EQ, the sound will be very fat in the midrange. These aren't speakers you plug into one of those DVD/Tuner?Surround Sound all-in-one units.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Stellar Audio Icon, October 18, 2008
As a professional musician I have known about BOSE for most of my 28 year career and wondered what all the controversy was about the 901's so I decided a year ago to give them a try and see for myself. I also own other mid to high end audio components. Through extensive listening sessions I have experienced both good and bad aspects of these speakers. 901's when properly set-up, which only took me about an hour and when used with quality components are capable of producing spacious sound stage, detailed imaging with depth, positioning with excellent sonic clarity.
Hearing minuet differences with musical sources such as CD, SACD, DVD and other digital sources as well as using different audio components, even when switching audio interconnect cables of the same brand and grade are not usual. On quality recordings such as Telarc CD's and SACD's, I regularly hear vocal and instrument musical details that I have not heard with other speakers like my Polk SDA's and Martinlogans. If your ear is trained well enough and when used with quality components, you can actually hear whether or not an acoustical sound sock was used on the vocal mike or just a nylon mesh. Also, low frequency bass is very tight, detailed and defined down to frequencies you can feel more than hear. When lower frequency notes are not present bass disappears as it should. Listening to the TelArc CD of the 1812 Overture, when the cannons fired, the 901's vibrated and rattled all the windows in my living room. Even at low volume these speakers perform with most of the musical detail intact. High frequency notes are handled equally well with depth, detail and clarity. Mid frequency content on quality disk are razor sharp. If you listen close enough one can actually hear individual pulsations of vocal chords, not the variations in pitch but the vocal un-pitch air moving across the vocal chords. Like wise, acoustical guitars are so vibrant those not only hear the guitar strings acoustical footprint but the body of the guitar reverberating with slight acoustical sounds. The 901's reproduce all of the musical content imbedded in your digital media reproducing nothing more and nothing less!!!!
Surround sound applications such as Dolby 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 work well considering in general 50% of surround information is directed to the center channel, 30% is dedicated too front channels (901's), the remainder to the back channels. Taking this into account the steering effects of Dolby and DTS are adequate and should yield satisfactory results on most DVD or Blue-Ray formats.
As for the negative aspects here is what I encountered. Positioning is more of an effort than other designs but not a big pain. One draw back that particularly annoyed me is the fact the speaker terminals are on the bottom of the speakers unless you rotate the mounting then the speaker connections are visible from the top of the speaker. So to solve this connection/mounting problem I purchased two inexpensive CD cabinet/stands and drilled 2-1/2" access holes in the top for speaker cable connection. Also the speaker terminals are thumb screw binder post type. With a little ingenuity I managed to drill and tap banana style terminal post and mount to the speakers binder post to make a secure tight connection that works really well and allows for maximum signal transfer. Also, if you intend to use higher quality speaker cables don't bother buying the BOSE speaker stands as most of these higher quality speaker cables such as Monster Z Series will not go thru the stands center section due to the cables diameter and terminal configurations. Pedestal stands cover the speaker terminals when mounted to the 901's allowing cable access only through the center section of the stands. Use of common stranded cables with these stands would most likely be okay.
In conclusion, for the price of the 901's you might be able to find other manufacturers that sound somewhat similar as the 901's like Polk, MartinLogan, Infinity and many others but I doubt that you will find any capable of sounding as musically defined across all the musical spectrum as these units do because of the unique BOSE technology.
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16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't mess with the rest, buy the best!, January 26, 2006
I have been the proud own of my 901's for 15 years and when I go out to do a comparison with what is presently being sold nothing else stands up to the 901's. These must be accompanied with only High output components and an array of accompanied Bose speakers such as center channel front and rear and subwoofer. A top of the line bose system should run you about $3,000.00 but worth every penny and they will last forever. Also, Bose has a program through the factory in which you can send your product to them and they will do a FREE diagnostics on them and if the proformance has sucomed to age or wear they will fix or replace anything for just the cost of shipping! If the speakers can not be fixed they will replace them for FREE! No other manufacturer stands behind their product like Bose. They also come with a 7 year warranty right out of the box. Simply worth every penny!
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