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Bose use Genelec

Vintage57

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sweetchaos

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On the stereo side, the speakers that we use are Genelec. Some may wonder why we don’t use our own speakers. The first reason is that Genelec is a very well-known and respected studio monitor. In addition, it is not a competitor of ours, and Bose does not specialize in studio monitors. Lastly, Genelec makes world-class speakers and has a very similar engineering philosophy to Bose, which allows us to accurately measure sound.
I fell off my chair when I read that last sentence. :oops:
 

sweetchaos

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Bose is the opposite of Genelec.

Bose is the marketing king of speakers. They sell speakers by the boat load. They don’t care about quality. They only care about selling you a story. Their story. A story of how everything is better with their ecosystem. Once you bought into that, audio quality is secondary or third on the list.

Genelec, on the other hand, makes quality #1 priority. Hence, Genelec is the opposite of Bose, in terms of their philosophy.
 

andreasmaaan

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I presume because the engineering philosophies are not at all similar.

EDIT: oops, @sweetchaos beat me to it.

FWIW, I actually think Bose has come up with a number of worthy engineering ideas (the main one that comes to mind is noise cancellation), so I wouldn't 100% agree with you @sweetchaos that they don't care at all about quality.

In the early days, in particular, Bose was a highly research-driven company whose main goals were quality and innovation. Current Bose, not so much, although IMHO they do make some decent headphones and earphones.
 

richard12511

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I presume because the engineering philosophies are not at all similar.

EDIT: oops, @sweetchaos beat me to it.

FWIW, I actually think Bose has come up with a number of worthy engineering ideas (the main one that comes to mind is noise cancellation), so I wouldn't 100% agree with you @sweetchaos that they don't care at all about quality.

In the early days, in particular, Bose was a highly research-driven company whose main goals were quality and innovation. Current Bose, not so much, although IMHO they do make some decent headphones and earphones.

Bose does a ton of research...marketing research :)
 

Pearljam5000

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My dream speakers as a kid lol
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napilopez

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Bose is the opposite of Genelec.

Bose is the marketing king of speakers. They sell speakers by the boat load. They don’t care about quality. They only care about selling you a story. Their story. A story of how everything is better with their ecosystem. Once you bought into that, audio quality is secondary or third on the list.

Genelec, on the other hand, makes quality #1 priority. Hence, Genelec is the opposite of Bose, in terms of their philosophy.

Last few years Bose seems to be really upping their game. Their recent headphones and earbuds seem to track the harman curves pretty closely:

https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/bose/700-headphones-wireless

https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/bose/quietcontrol-30-qc30-wireless

https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/bose/soundsport-wireless

I've not seen any measurements of their recent speakers.

I currently have the new QC Earbuds in for review. Haven't measured them yet but they sound quite good and the ANC is definitely the best I've heard.
 

infinitesymphony

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Their bookshelf speakers aren't bad, and they've had some car audio systems that weren't terrible (and some that were).

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they've had accurate measuring equipment this whole time and have intentionally designed a house curve with an overall bass tilt, peaking in the mid-bass, smiley-face EQ on the way up.
 

Harmonie

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andreasmaaan

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Sure they market & advertise the noise-cancelling very well. But what's the relation with SQ ?

Well, does the fact that they invented it not count for anything? :p This was an engineering innovation that changed the entire headphone landscape, and has since been widely copied by their competitors.

Moreover, they continue do it better than most. And the whole point is to (pretty drastically) improve SQ in environments in which background noise is unavoidable. Surely you wouldn't use them if they didn't offer better sound quality than the alternatives in the environments in which they're designed to be used?

Re: their current headphones/earphones, I haven't listened to a wide range of them, but a number of them are objectively good. My everyday in-ears, which I use mostly for videoconferencing, are Bose (these ones). When I researched the purchase, these were the best all-round performers in my price range (admittedly, they were discounted at the time).

I'm no fan of Bose in particular, and their reputation for selling overpriced micro 5.1 systems and portable speakers is largely deserved. But it's not the whole story.
 
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