"Filmophile" wrote in message
...
I've never been what you could describe as a fan of Bose equipment, I
don't like the way any their stuff sounds, normally speaking. My father
breifly had a set of "Professional" 802s on a very powerful 2 channel
amp and they sounded OK, but he had gotten them for free, so we weren't
being really picky, we just wanted to hear them. Last night though, I
was treated to what I thought was a surprisingly good performance from
a pair of 901s, a speaker which is similar in design to the 802 and
which I'm not particularly prone to liking.

These 901s had been laying out of use for over a year, but were in
perfect working shape. They were hooked up to a Denon AVR-5805, which
has a 170 watt per channel amp and "Audyssey MULTEqXT"
calibration/equalization which uses a Texas-Instruments chip to
determine speaker phase, position and freq. response as well as the
number of speakers present, room acoustics and listening position and
than EQs itself based on the data aquired, it also adjusts the
crossover point and calculates based on if a sub is present. A Denon
DVD-5910 was feeding the reciever and was connected using toslink
optical. The Denon equipment is going to be the basis for a
multi-channel system but is currently being used to power the 901s. The
room is fairly large although is of "normal" height and the speakers
were placed approx. 10 feet apart. The system was equalized using the
Denon hardware prior to being listened to. We fed the system at
different points with 3 CDs, the SACD version of "Every Breath You
Take: The Police Greatest Hits", "Dire Straits", the band's debut
self-titled album, and "Bridge Of Sighs" by Robin Trower (the
remastered disc made from 24-bit remastered tapes - we listened to the
SACD's 2-channel SACD layer. I'm not going to write up every last
detail but I can honestly say that listening through this setup when in
"Stereo" mode it was much better than I had expected, the Denon's EQ
system combined with the 901s outboard EQ seemed to work quite well,
the Denon's advanced electronics did quite an admirable job with a
not-so-great speaker. No, I'd not buy the 901s, but I was impressed
with the fact that given the right (expensive) hardware to work with,
they sounded pretty good.

I quite liked the 901s for their frequency response and perceived low
distortion, although with the 11% direct, 89% reflecting system, they
wouldn't image properly whatever you did. Nevertheless, they produced
pleasant sounds with a high-power amplifier behind them.

S