Dear Apple

[dwenius]

When your flagship product has a well established and independently verified reputation for poor bass output, it shows exceedingly poor business judgment to license your product to Bose, so that they can create another crappy sounding product, then saturation-bomb the planet with advertising. Just trying to be helpful.

P.S. Dear Bose: Your ad, which by my count appears 342 times in various parts of the BART system, features words of praise from Forbes magazine. Forbes. Because god knows, when discerning music lovers worldwide want the absolute last word on audiophile quality portable sound, the FIRST place they turn is to a second rate financial magazine/corporate pimp.

Comments

[eac.livejournal.com]

Of course, then there's the rest of us, who are incapable of hearing the difference in the bass (or caring about it) but who would never buy the damned gadget from Bose anyway.

;)

[catbear.livejournal.com]

The truth of the matter is that Bose is actually very smart. Their market isn't audiophiles OR geeks. Their mastery is that of psychoacoustical marketing -- they know how to make products that sound "better" to people who don't know how to listen to music but have lots of disposable income. For example, the Wave radio throws out of phase stereo backwards through its torturous ports to get an "everywhere ambience" that "sounds great!" if you don't actually LISTEN to the music or CARE what it sounds like. Another example: most of their speakers have bass responses humps that make them sound louder (==better) than more accurate speakers.

Bose's advertising in, and quoting from, Forbes is perfect -- No one with real money reads Forbes, and no one who actually does their own thinking reads Forbes. It is a magazine for people who are all about style over substance -- people who have wads of disposable income but don't know how (or care to learn how) to spend it -- exactly the sort of people who buy Bose products.

Even further along the Bose curve is Bang & Olufsen. If it costs THAT much, it MUST be FANTASTIC, especially since it has almost NONE of the features that make consumer-grade products usable!

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

I am very familiar with Bose's faked "good sound". I think I saw an article once that showed the response curves of 4-5 different Bose speakers, and all of them had boosts at 120Hz, 800hz, and somewhere in the 3K range.

They are also adept at that most difficult and important speaker feature: "My wife likes it." Those shitty sounding little cubes are sold all over creation because they don't take over the room you put them in.

All of this just furthers my longstanding desire to kill all marketing people in the name of TRUTH.

[tongodeon.livejournal.com]

Thank you for saving my aching hands from typing the long version of "Bose = Bollocks".

[catbear.livejournal.com]

I really want to audition the Yamaha YSP series. If it works, and sounds good, they'll have stomped all over the "wife acceptability factor" in getting good sound into lots and lots of listening rooms.

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I hadn't seen those. Are you familiar with the Anthony Gallo line? His Reference AV line (announced but not yet shipping) are going in a similar direction to the YSP in terms of fitting into a plasma-screen TV setup; if the AV sounds anything like the jaw-dropping Reference 3 that preceded them, they will kick all known ass.

[wisn.livejournal.com]

Don't wanna split hairs on this one, but I notice his ranking of the iPods' bass output inverse to their age. I infer Apple's improving the bass response on their product. In any event,

One audiophile tenet is that we're most sensitive to midrange frequencies. Some gorpons go totally overboard on this idea and invest thousands in tube amps and handmade mini monitors that have neither bass nor treble. I think, though, that I wouldn't give a rat's ass about whether a device has solid bass if it can't get the midrange right. Particularly on headphones, where the physicality that makes bass what it is will be missing, even in ideal circumstances.

Then again, I usually listen with a pair of Sony earmuffs specifically because they boom. Sometimes when I'm working I need my butt rocked. Both my Grados are better in terms of sound quality and tanking underpowered amplifiers.

As for Bose, if you like that sort of thing, that's the sort of thing you like. I can't get my dudgeon up to rail against people for their choice of luxury products any more. Especially when I'm not subjected to them.

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

What you say is true, but...

We are talking about marketing, where reputation has as much to do with reality as anything. You know how it goes. Windows is insecure. Gremlins/Pacers explode. Ipods have weak bass. It takes a lot to counter those memes.

[http://users.livejournal.com/christopher_/]

So, who's the first-rate financial magazine and corporate pimp?

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

Financial Magazine: hm, probably the Economist. Their agenda is obvious, they don't hide it nor apologize, their commentary is often global in scope, and I haven't noticed them deferring to advertisers.

Corporate Pimp: Hell, there are dozens; any Industry specific magazine pimps better than Forbes. PC Week. Guitar World. Keyboard. Those kinds.

[naomi-traveller.livejournal.com]

point taken, but i still think it made a nice change from all the ads for *cars*. ;)

[sambushell.livejournal.com]

Do you mean iPods in cars? We should maybe do some research on iPod adapters for bikes, no?

[sambushell.livejournal.com]

This guy's research makes me feel so happy that my friend found my lost Shuffle.

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it does seem like Apple has improved the situation with every releae so far. Makes me wonder how the Nano sounds. Not enough to buy one, but it's a healthy curiosity.

[sambushell.livejournal.com]

Well... maybe. He hasn't exactly tested different generations of the same product for comparison.

yabbut

[(Anonymous)]

The headphone bass response is a problem, but linking the Bose product to that is probably a nonsequitur.

The Bose thing appears to use the ipod dock connector. I think audio signals in that connector are line level signals, not powered signals, which likely means Better Bass.

This is why people buy little dock dongles to hook up ipods to stereos. Better fi.

That said - of course I need ipod thumps in hifi on a bone fone! (http://www.pocketcalculatorshow.com/magicalgadget/index3.html)

gnee gnee gnee,
billbill