For all you Bose 901 Haters!

Yes, everyone has a Bose story.  My roommate in college had these. We were both budding audiophiles.  We discovered if you turn them around and play them backward so the drivers are facing you, the imaging improves and they do sound quite good, in a way that most multiple small driver systems can sound.  I might add, in playing them backward you do not have to play them so loud and the overall sound is nonfatiguing.  They just lacked deep bass.

Yes @oldhvymec , my father had Jensen imperials with the flexaire woofers. When he got those I got the realistic Optimus 1s. He loved them. Couldn’t remember The model until I read your post. Thanks. 

I used to work at a mid-fi store that carried Bose in LA during the height of their popularity.

They sucked then, they always sucked, no amount of modern mods can polish those turds.

Lack of detail, flabby bass, and zero imaging and soundstage. 

We carried a cheaply built 'house brand' speaker that outperformed them.

During the height of their popularity I worked at a hi-fi store (Pacific Stereo).  We sold a lot of Bose speakers.  Not because we loved them so much, but because the public demanded them.  But my best Bose experience was during a product training meeting.  In a rather small setting of about 20 sales people, the product trainer was Dr. Amar Bose.  That was a real treat and a great experience that I remember to this day.

No.  Just...no.  I call foul.  I worked for a dealer in the late ‘90s who sold ATC speakers.  We happened to have a Bose speaker cone to show to potential customers, and when we showed it to a lead engineer from ATC he laughed out loud and said those drivers cost 3 pence — about 6 cents at the conversion rate at the time.  Bose is a marketing company that targets the everyman, and that’s fine.  But don’t EVER think Bose is a legit audiophile company.  They’re better at cancelling noise than reproducing it.