Bose 901 Review Well Done.

Hey old_ears

I visited the RM Audio/photo club in 1974/75 when I was stationed in Darmstadt at Ernst Ludwig Kaserne. Bought my Nikkormat camera there, heard 901's and the Linear Design Lab copies. LDL went out of business when Bose sued them. They were pretty much a direct copy of the 901.

I didn't get my 901's until I got out in fall of 75. Bought them and Crown DC300A in early 1976. Many loud parties for many years. I had buddies with the planars, also DQ10.s. All had their attributes.

These started my hi fi journey.  Still on it 50 years later. 

It's a fair review of a classic 70's speaker.  For those that look down their nose at the Bose (see what I did there), HiFi is about what makes you happy, and since speakers in particular are very personal in terms of expectations, 901s had (I believe) 4 iterations and every one sold well.  So they did something right.

Heck, I still have fond memories of a pair of Sansui speakers (LM 330's?)  I bought in high school along with a Marantz 2235B receiver. 

I'm pretty sure Harry Pearson started The Absolute Sound in 1973 because he thought the Bose 901 was overrated and there were better choices. I was an early subscriber and bought Marantz tube and Rogers LS3/5A speakers. A very good system.

In 1974 I lived in an apartment building in Somerville, MA. This was long before it became gentrified and housed artists and hipsters. My next door neighbor was an architectural photographer, a few years older than me.* I learned a lot from Bob. He had a pair of whatever the big Bose speakers were at that time (901s?).

I was young and 100% ignorant about audio, but had loved music my whole life. He knew I liked classical but wasn’t in touch with 20th century modernism. So one day he put the Bartok Violin concerto on those Bose speakers and proceeded to utterly blow my mind. I’ve been a huge of fan of Bartok and modernism ever since.

I thought those must be the best speakers in the world. 10 years later when I was putting together my own high end system, I was kind of surprised to learn that Bose speakers were detested by many in the high end. It wasn’t the last time I was surprised by the intersection of music, audio technology, and social perception.

*Bob moved to Hollywood to pursue work in film making. He probably started out as an assistant cinematographer or something like that (he was a superb photographer with his big 4" x 5" view camera), then later became a director. Among the films he directed is the cult classic, HITCHER; and a bunch of very entertaining JESSE STONE films starring Tom Selleck. Most recently he directed 23 episodes of BLUE BLOODS for TV. A very talented man.