Bruce Abrams wrote:

A very interesting issue comes as a result of David's comments below. Bose
has built an enormous business marketing the hell out of (generally) poor
sounding equipment and selling at exhorbitant prices. There are plenty of
"high-end" companies who sell much better sounding equipment at equivalent
prices. Why do you suppose that someone over at one of the high value
equipment makers (like Rotel, B&K or Adcom) hasn't partnered up with
someone
over at one of the high value speaker makers (like Paradigm) to put
together
and market a "Bose Killer" system? I'd think some combination of Rotel
electronics and Energy, Paradigm, KEF, etc. speakers that would clearly
outperform the $2,800 Bose Lifestyle 35 system, could be successfully
marketed as an alternative.

Well, anything can be successfully marketed if it's a good product and
you've got a sufficient marketing budget. But if you believe that Bose got
where it is today on the basis of a huge marketing budget, doesn't that
suggest that a smaller company or consortium of companies would have a hard
time competing with them? To make it work, you'd have to invest in getting
display space in every Best Buy and Circuit City in America, complete with
training their staffs to explain the advantages of your system--and don't
think Bose is going to make that easy for you.

Look, a lot of people buy Bose because they think (based on things they've
read and heard about it) that it's a quality product. But come to think of
it, a lot of audiophiles have bought a lot of much more expensive equipment
for no better reason. So I'm not sure audiophiles as a class can look down
their noses at people who buy equipment based on marketing and reputation.

And, as Tom Nousaine notes, many of the weaknesses of Bose products are not
really a function of bad design, but of design decisions that trade off
sound quality against other factors, like looks and ease of use. Once you
decide that your sats can only be 4 inches wide, there's no way your system
will ever be flat between 100 and 200 Hz. Sure, for $2K or so, you could
make a good little system out of a NAD L70 and a set of PSB Alphas. I
presume it would sound significantly better than Bose. But it won't look as
sleek (to your wife, not to you), and it won't be as easy to put together.
All the marketing bucks in the world aren't going to get your wife to love
it.

bob

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