Remember when Dr. Bose argued that Consumer Reports didn't account for "direct/reflected sound" in their review of the 901 speakers and sued? The court ruled that proof of "actual malice" was necessary in product disparagement cases and the reviewer won.
The second sentence is accurate, there was no actual malice and freedom of press is very paramount.
On the other hand, the complexities of the case are worth reading since Bose won before losing at the Supreme Court. The thing that is missed in most modern discussions is
this
[Bose] “points out that on June 15, 1970, Seligson and a man named Bertram Menden entered into a contract granting Menden a right of first refusal on Seligson's loudspeaker. The contract also called for Seligson and Robert S. Lanier to build a model of Seligson's loudspeaker in return for $2,000 " to be used Only for the purpose of building a model for demonstration purposes . . . " (Seligson Deposition at 357). The fact that Seligson entered into such a contract calls into question his testimony that he had no realistic hopes for the commercial use of his invention.”
Seligson is the reviewer. So he patented and is making his own speaker at the same time he is tasked with reviewing a “competitor”. He claimed it was just a patent that he wasn’t going to commercial and in the lawsuit it showed that he was paying a lot of money to create prototypes. $2K in 1970 is a lot since the average house in 1970 was $23k. 1979 $2k is also $16K in 2024 dollars when accounting for inflation.
Since Seligson is smart and an engineer, they took offense with two major statements. The first was the compliant that you needed “rather gigantic amount of power” (50W)
“The defendant's article reviewing the Bose 901 loudspeaker also states, " If you do consider buying the system, note well this fact: The Bose requires a rather gigantic amount of power. CU recommends you have an amplifier of 50 watts per channel for the deepest bass response." In his deposition Seligson explained how he arrived at the conclusion that the Bose 901 loudspeaker required a " gigantic" amount of amplifier power. (Deposition of Arnold L. Seligson (hereinafter Seligson Deposition) at 196-211). Dr. Bose states in his affidavit that he examined the deposition testimony of Seligson. Dr. Bose also states that if his understanding of Seligson's testimony is correct, Seligson was proceeding on an assumption or theory which was invalid, and that any competent audio engineer would have known that that theory was invalid. (Bose Affidavit at 6-8).”
That’s true. Erin has shown that the 901’s are 84 dB/W on the NFS, and so once you include the wall gain, it is pretty easy to play loudly.
The other part is Seligson wrote that “individual instruments heard through the Bose system seemed to grow to gigantic proportions and tended to wander about the room." The affidavit of the president of Bose Corporation, Amar G. Bose, which was submitted in support of the plaintiff's opposition to the motion for summary judgment, states that the phenomenon of widened and wandering instruments described in the defendant's article is a scientific impossibility.
Which is also true. The 901 might widen the phantom center but things don’t move around like a dynamic Atmos mix. Again, because Seligson was an actual engineer, he would know that it’s impossible. In later testimony, Seligson would try to say that he didn’t mean that wander with that standard definition/meaning in the English language.
The other complaints do include that only one driver was measured anechoically rather than all 9 simultaneously (potentially true because the lawsuit showed that the 901 tested had been tampered with) and that Seligson who set up the single blind listening test instructed the listeners to rate which speaker was most similar to the reference direct firing radiating speaker as opposed to rate their actual preference. But then the article makes it a preference discussion.
So as much as Bose is maligned for suing consumer reports for a “bad review” it was very different than the Tekton scenario. Most of us in 2024 would recognize that a review with such a clear conflict of interest should probably have someone else review it or declare the conflict of interest. Back then, there was no website or social media to publicly try to defend themselves (as Arcam did with the ASR review). Likewise, Bose wanted Consumer Reports to publish a correction to address some of these and they didn’t.
Nowadays, Consumer Reports has clear policies on conflicts of interest (which they didn’t back then)
Super interesting. I used to think “no highs, no lows, must be Bose” but became a huge fan of the company once trying the 901’s “just for fun” on a whim and being very impressed!