As has been said elsewhere, Bose’s primary assumption---that listeners at a live concert receive around 89% of the sound they hear not directly from the stage, but rather after being reflected off the walls, ceiling, and floor of the live venue, and that a loudspeaker should therefore mimic that ratio---one driver in the 901 facing the listener, eight facing the wall behind the speaker---is fatally flawed: It assumes a recording contains direct sound only!
The 901 ignores the microphone arrangement of any given recording made in a concert hall. There are many different recording techniques, all capturing different ratios of direct and reflected sound. If a recording contains both direct and reflected sound, and the 901 then adds 89% more reflected sound, it is not reproducing what’s on the recording, it is trying to add reflected sound to a recording already containing that sound, in effect doubling it. See what I mean? No wonder the 901 sounds so diffused, confused, and blurred! It also destroys imaging, and makes instruments sound humorously over-sized, a piano or drumset the size of the distance between the speakers.
For the 901 to work as intended, a recording would need to be made either in an anechoic chamber, or with one mic capturing the direct sound from the stage in a hall, and eight capturing the sound reflected off the walls, ceiling, and floor of the hall. Then, a nine-channel hi-fi would reproduce each channel separately, one speaker per mic. Ain’t gonna happen.
And what of recordings made in a studio, as most are? The concept of 89% reflected sound does not apply here AT ALL. The 901 makes studio recordings sound completely ridiculous---grossly bloated and smeared. I know, I had a pair in 1970-1. Hated them, got a pair of Infinity 1001’s. Half the price, much better speaker.
