What old brands have become

Nigel Goodwin said:

Not in the HiFi world, it's always been considered (VERY) over priced and of relatively poor performance and quality, it's no coincidence that Bose advertise in 'Life Style' magazines and not HiFi magazines, nor do they ever have reviews done in the HiFi magazines (as poor as they are for reviews anyway).

Bose is usually said to stand for Buy Other Sound Equipment

To be fair though it does tend to have interesting facilties, and appeals to it's target market, where accurate and quality sound reproduction isn't a concern.

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TBH, yes Bose home entertainment (probably a more accurate description) equipment leaves a lot ("no highs, no lows, must be a Bose") to be desired... but they also continue to make pro audio amplifiers which are good amplifiers. a few years ago i worked on one of their vintage receivers (from about 1980) which had an interesting feature, a servo connection to the speakers. basically it works like the sense wire on an open frame power supply, the amplifier feedback network takes it's feedback from the speaker terminals rather than internally to the amplifier. the effect is that the amplifier's low output impedance is present at the speaker terminals, and negates the wiring resistance between the amplifier and the speaker (it also has a tendency to easily pick up RF if you live within a couple of miles of an AM radio station). but their more recent home entertainment stuff is overpriced junk. they make very heavy use of "tricking the ear" with a DSP trick that uses mid-bass with some even harmonic distortion to make the brain think there's actually some real low frequency sound being reproduced.

as far as their pro-audio stuff goes, if you see one of their 1801 series amps for a good price, it's worth it. they are 900W/ch amplifiers, and very compact (i know the Series V amp actually fits in a 1U rack space). they also use XLR/quarter inch combo connectors on the inputs. if you see one of their classic model 1800 beasts, it's a good amp, but a bear to fix if a channel is blown.

I also researched several noise cancelling headphones.
The best (meaning the most noise cancelling feature) were the Bose ones. I chose the wired ones, not the Bluetooth.

I have a Klipsch iFi, which is hooked up to the lounge TV, along with a Klipsch iGroove, which I use in the garage/workshop.
Both were bought at the same time, back around 2003/2004 and still work great, but I did have to replace caps in the iFi PSU section a few years ago.
A couple of weeks ago, I dumpster-dove a pair of Niles OS7.5 indoor/outdoor speakers, which had obviously been used outside:
The cross-over PCB's had quite a bit of corrosion on the cap leads and the coils were disconnected due to corrosion. I spent a couple of hours repairing both, de-soldering and cleaning everything from the PCB's and unspooling/re-spooling the coils (only lost about 1 or 2 turns from the coils). These speakers are now being used inside the garage/workshop, connected to a Denon AVR-4310CI, which also came from a dumpster-dive.
A DVD player is connected along with a portable HDMI pocket projector, which is projecting on a 4' x 7' cloth, hung from a tube between a wall and an i-beam.

I bought the Bose QC35 noise cancelling headphones a couple of years ago and have been very satisfied with them. They almost-completely block out a floor-standing fan about 5 feet away from me, as I type this message - the result is kinda like white noise turned down very low. They don't block out a wife and a teenager though.

I've not been bothered with hifi for a long time, but I went through a period where I was, at the time my weapon of choice amplifier wise was crown, I liked them a lot, they still make Pa not sure if they still produce domestic gear.

I've still got a Kenwood KA-660 - an excellent amp. Prior to that I had a Leak Stereo 70, an amp I was very fond of - I only changed it as I couldn't get it to work very well with my 3 head cassette deck.

I still have a kenwood something or other, been in the cupboard 15 years.
I've repaired a couple of leaks, if I remember right shorted speaker coupling caps where an issue.

dr pepper said:

I've not been bothered with hifi for a long time, but I went through a period where I was, at the time my weapon of choice amplifier wise was crown, I liked them a lot, they still make Pa not sure if they still produce domestic gear.

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all of their stuff has been pro audio as far as i know... somebody at Crown has a good sense of humor though, as their website has had this spec sheet on their website for many years: Crown BF-6000

dr pepper said:

I've repaired a couple of leaks, if I remember right shorted speaker coupling caps where an issue.

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I can't say I've ever seen that, in any amp - although it's certainly possible with capacitors of that advanced age.

Unsurprisingly the same customer needed a new bass driver for his mordaunt shorts.
Bzzzzz, pop, smoke.

Crown is now also owned by HARMAN Group...

Thats interesting Unc.

dr pepper said:

I've not been bothered with hifi for a long time, but I went through a period where I was, at the time my weapon of choice amplifier wise was crown, I liked them a lot, they still make Pa not sure if they still produce domestic gear.

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I mentioned Harman, co-founder of Harman Kardon, now owned by Samsung, they also own Crown.

unclejed613 said:

somebody at Crown has a good sense of humor though, as their website has had this spec sheet on their website for many years: Crown BF-6000

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Amusing.

JimB

And very likely, the model number BF-6000 itself is related to an inside joke.

Only those “in the know”, happens to know the true meaning.

unclejed613 said:

no highs, no lows, must be a Bose

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I totally agree. I have a quite comfort 15 noise canceling headset and the above fits. I had two other previous models. You should see the negative comments on the or new bluetooth models. maybe the definition of model of "A small imitation of the real thing fits"

I heard the Bose 301 and the Bose 901 speakers and initially they didn't sound too bad, but it wasn't for any length of time.

It doesn't make any difference anyway. CD's sound like crap. I gave up listening to "music". I used to enjoy it. I have it on for company on the car and hot the off button when some commercial is selling cars and screaming.

MUTE is my favorite button.

With computers what annoys me more than anything is that the 0 db reference level is not the same anywhere.

Another way of saying it is the gain that should be applied to the audio stream before it distorts should be the same for all digital sources. Audio level is in Richter Scale units where every source has a 0 db level at some different unit.

I think you should listen to a demo system to see if you like it. The written spec's are absolutely worthless. The speakers are spec'd to produce a frequency range of 46Hz to 21kHz but it does not say how many dBs they vary. At 46Hz the level might be almost nothing (no bass) or VERY pronounced which makes a boomy sound. The midrange might be almost nothing or shrieking much too loud. The level of the highs is your guess.
A good speaker will be spec'd to produce full power from 30Hz to 20kHz, plus or minus 3dB. The plus or minus 3dB is a small variance that can be leveled with tone controls.

audioguru said:

The written spec's are absolutely worthless.

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actually, Sony's specs are good for a laugh or two... when Sony sells a boom box, it has a 50 watt power supply inside it, but they claim 650 watts in big print on the box. or, on the other hand, when Sony is a little more realistic in their output power specs, they print something like "100 Watts per channel* " and somewhere else on the box or the spec sheet you find the asterisk means "at 10% THD", which in reality means closer to 90 Watts before it goes into clipping (and still nothing in print that says how much distortion just before clipping).

audioguru said:

At 46Hz the level might be almost nothing (no bass) or VERY pronounced which makes a boomy sound.

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this can be partially corrected by using an amplifier with a reasonably large damping factor, and using heavier gauge speaker wires. "damping factor" is the ability of the amplifier's feedback to maintain control over the voice coil movement. a good amplifier will not have it's "own sound", and will minimize the tendency of poorly designed speakers to have their own sound. long and thin speaker wires (like the approximately #24 wire that comes with most cheap speakers (100 feet of #24 wire is about 2.5 ohms in series with the speaker) will change the damping factor, and will increase the effect speaker construction has on the sound. starting with a DF of about 80, which is probably close to what many amplifiers are capable of (output impedance of about 100 milliohms), when we add 2.5 ohms from the 100 feet of #24 wire we get 8/2.6=3.08.

i agree, many of the "off the shelf" audio systems or "all in one" systems sound awful. no thought goes into the speakers or the electronics. they get slapped together as cheaply as can be done. as far as the manufacturers are concerned, it only has to last one day more than the warranty.

Not like the Good Old Days.
Here is one of my 3/4 Scale Karlson Cabinets.
Custom Made Coaxial Speaker Gives GOOD SOUND and BASS.