I do not consider his speakers to be high fidelity in the least but his design is a clever hack (and a great marketing job) that allowed $30 of really cheap raw loudspeakers, $30 of cheap veneered wood-loaf and $30 worth of electronics to be marketed as $600 high fidelity loudspeakers.
Of course the liberals fell for it -- he is from MIT and the marketing was sexy.
They were good-looking furniture. But I digress -- this nice news from MIT news:
Amar Bose '51 makes stock donation to MIT
Dr. Amar Bose '51, Bose Corporation's Founder, has given to MIT the majority of the stock of Bose Corporation in the form of non-voting shares.
MIT will receive annual cash dividends on those shares when dividends are paid by Bose Corporation; those cash dividends will be used by MIT to sustain and advance MIT's education and research mission.
Under the terms of the gift, MIT cannot sell its Bose shares and will not participate in the management or governance of the company. Bose Corporation will remain a private and independent company, and operate as it always has, with no change in strategy or leadership. Dr. Bose will remain Bose Corporation's Chairman and Technical Director.
Dr. Bose received his bachelor's degree, master's degree and PhD from MIT, all in electrical engineering. He was asked to join the faculty in 1956, and accepted with the intention of teaching for no more than two years. He continued as a member of the MIT faculty until 2001, making important contributions to the Institute's teaching of undergraduate electrical engineering.
In 1964, Dr. Bose founded Bose Corporation. From its inception, the company has remained privately owned, with a focus on long-term research.
SET GEEK = ON Bose speakers use frequency equalization to correct for the poor frequency response of their drivers and of their enclosures. To the novice, this seems to be a win/win situation -- have a dip at 800 Hz? Boost the signal at 800 Hz to compensate... The problem is that boosting one frequency at the expense of the others introduces a phase distortion and it is the phase of the signal that determines where we place it on the sound stage. With a good set of amps and speakers, you can close your eyes and pick out the locations of the musicians. With Bose speakers, the cellist playing around the 800 Hz note will appear to float across the soundstage at random depending on the frequency of the note they are playing. Bose equipment is installed in a lot of stage theaters (never cinema). Stage presentations are generally mono and psychologically, if an actor is at stage left and is speaking, our brains will locate the amplified speech at stage left as the visual cue is stronger than the auditory one. Their smaller products (WaveRadio) have speakers so close together that you will never experience a 'sound stage' and will, instead be charmed by the rich "full" (cough-craptastic-cough) sound of the $400+ box with $20 worth of plastic, $20 worth of electronics and $10 worth (made in China these days) of drivers... Their car audio systems depend on the soundstage being drowned out by ambient road sounds -- after all, you are not going to close your eyes and visualize the Los Angeles Philharmonic while driving down I-5 at 70 mph... SET GEEK = OFF
A wonderful and generous gift though -- MIT is one of the gems in our educational system and needs to be supported.
