What is the worst speaker you've ever heard?

[Doodski]

I feel like I could stir up some annoyance by pairing the 901s with some audioquest cables hehe

Sigh* That would be amazinggggg. Sarcasm* I have to admit when I was in my late teens attending a college study I bought a 4 channel Bose car speaker and amp system. It sounded fine but it was gutless and compared to the Japanese car audio gear it sounded horrible.

 

[fpitas]

They look very cool.
Well the two sets I heard must have been broken because they certainly didn’t sound like this! But Bose gets no respect generally from audiophiles.

bose 901 - Google Search

Bose is too busy coining money from their demographic. Who can blame them if they laugh at us.

 

[Mal]

These terrors ... :
View attachment 230493
I tried to give them away, but nobody would take them. Enough to put you off HiFi for life. Now they are used as sacrificial speakers for intermittent fault amplifier testing. I was able to give away the tower version to my Dad. He uses them as pedestal stands for bookshelf speakers.

Ouch! I thought A Jones was supposed to be "the man". What was wrong with them? I'm not happy with my Wharfedale Diamond 9.0s, but I will not condemn them completely until I'm sure my amp (Aiyima A07) and Dac (Topping 10s) really are as good as people say... and on that note, I'll start a "what are the best small, budget speakers you ever heard?" thread...

What are the best small, bargain speakers you ever heard?

That is, speakers around the size of Wharfedale Diamond 9.0 and KEF LSX, but sounding like the latter, and costing like the former.

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[NiagaraPete]

Sigh* That would be amazinggggg. Sarcasm* I have to admit when I was in my late teens attending a college study I bought a 4 channel Bose car speaker and amp system. It sounded fine but it was gutless and compared to the Japanese car audio gear it sounded horrible.

I had a factory Bose system in my Acura Legend. It was horrible but it didn’t stop me from buying the car.

 

[Kachda]

I will have to name 3 - Paradigm Studio (forgot which one, the treble was ear piercing), Audionote some garbage speaker at Ny Audio show, and a Zu audio something.

 

[Mr. Widget]

Three in my case:-
Linn Kan, Lowther Acousta and Audionote, whatever was their top 'speaker some years ago. All three were nasty, coloured and unpleasant to listen to. They were 'different', so I suppose they could be sold on the basis that they're right and everyone else is wrong.

Can't say which models, but I have heard several different Lowthers and they all have a distinctive sound. Obviously some people like THAT sound... not sure why they would.
It is so extremely wrong sounding that there is something going on besides marketing hype.

 

[mhardy6647]

Lowther drivers are funny --- they can sound scarily real with some recordings (e.g., well recorded acapella choir) but unbearably shrill and unbalanced with (most) others. They also require fairly exotic alignments because the Qts is so low.
Given their (high) cost, I've never had much interest in actually ever owning any of them.

 

[atmasphere]

Lowther drivers are funny --- they can sound scarily real with some recordings (e.g., well recorded acapella choir) but unbearably shrill and unbalanced with (most) others. They also require fairly exotic alignments because the Qts is so low.
Given their (high) cost, I've never had much interest in actually ever owning any of them.

They have breakups associated with the whizzer cone. If you don't set them off they are quite good as long as you don't have any excursion from bass frequencies (then Doppler Effect distortion causes them to sound congested).

 

[PappyBlue]

Worst that I've owned : Totem Hawk. 6 years later, my ears are still bleeding.

 

[whyfi]

Bose 301 circa 1994.

 

[Doodski]

Bose 301 circa 1994.

I compared a set of trade-in 301's in a sound room and man alive did they sound hollow and flat compared to the other speakers.

 

[mhardy6647]

They have breakups associated with the whizzer cone. If you don't set them off they are quite good as long as you don't have any excursion from bass frequencies (then Doppler Effect distortion causes them to sound congested).

Good points.
One is reminded of the '98 cent Lowther tweak'*.

Re: Who has "treated" the cone of a 'speaker driver with... - Tightwad - Tweakers' Asylum

Re: Who has "treated" the cone of a 'speaker driver with... - Tightwad - Tweakers' Asylum

www.audioasylum.com

the ur-URL is long gone, but most of its content may be seen, e.g, here:

Modifications

_______________
* Which I have used with some other tizzy whizzer loudspeakers -- i.e., loudspeakers with whizzers that tend to sound tizzy... which is not all of them, although maybe it is most of them.

This wasn't me, but at least it illustrates the approach

source: https://audiokarma.org/forums/index...t-lowther-mod-or-similar.413978/#post-5729123

 

[komhst]

I had a factory Bose system in my Acura Legend. It was horrible but it didn’t stop me from buying the car.

On the contrary, the factory Bose system on my mazda 3 sounds excellent!

Mazda3 Hatchback | Bose Automotive

Available with a premium Bose system, complete with 12 high-performance speakers and BassMatch, AudioPilot, Centerpoint and SurroundStage technologies.*

automotive.bose.com

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Ouch! I thought A Jones was supposed to be "the man". What was wrong with them? I'm not happy with my Wharfedale Diamond 9.0s, but I will not condemn them completely until I'm sure my amp (Aiyima A07) and Dac (Topping 10s) really are as good as people say... and on that note, I'll start a "what are the best small, budget speakers you ever heard?" thread...

What are the best small, bargain speakers you ever heard?

That is, speakers around the size of Wharfedale Diamond 9.0 and KEF LSX, but sounding like the latter, and costing like the former.

www.audiosciencereview.com

Andrew is certainly capable of designing decent speakers if he's not budget-limited. That wasn't the case for the pioneer series. Both the BS 21 and 22 series, along with the center and towers, were hobbled by poor tweeters. The 21 tweeter had inadequate output, although the woofer driver and circuit were fine. The 22 tweeter was colored by a poorly executed wave guide. I sold hundreds of modded 22's, C22's, and 52's with replacement tweeters and crossovers.

 

[Penelinfi]

Klausen Audio - I've heard white van speakers that are 5x better than these - just about everything is engineered to be the cheapest and least material possible.
One cap on tweeter. Tweeters have hardly any treble, maybe the neo coin has corroded?
"Midrange" not in separate chamber, run full range.
Even worse, middle woofer with real aluminium dust cap is run full range. EW
Lower woofer seems like a passive radiator.
All in the same ported enclosure made from 1/2" crapDF
Binding posts made from some cast alloy with hardly enough material for threads or to not snap.

As for Bose 901's, they actually sound ok with the EQ.

 

[Beave]

Klausen Audio - I've heard white van speakers that are 5x better than these - just about everything is engineered to be the cheapest and least material possible.

Those ARE white van speakers, are they not? Clearly fake knock-offs of B&W speakers. Klausen Audio comes up in various lists of white van scam speakers.

 

[sktn77a]

Harbeth LS5/12a. Awful! Replaced a pair of Rogers LS3/5a. What a mistake!!!

 

[GXAlan]

I really like my Bose 901 Series VI's and I own the JBL 708p's and Magnepan MG-III. My 901's were new-old-stock units and I really do wonder how many 901's have been set up incorrectly or damaged?

I feel like I could stir up some annoyance by pairing the 901s with some audioquest cables hehe

The real way to stir up annoyance is showing everyone this Spinorama

Best case Bose 901 with perfect EQ versus Revel F328 un-EQ'd

In-room estimated response

Easily compare loudspeakers measurements

www.spinorama.org

In-room estimated response

 

[jhaider]

The real way to stir up annoyance is showing everyone this Spinorama …
In-room estimated response…

Except…that’s not a Spin. It does not include a single component of a Spin - on axis and listening window FR, DI, and so on. It’s a “PIR,” a type of graph that has gotten popular on the internet because it’s simple, but does not provide much if any useful information on its own.

Put another way, showing that two speakers have the same PIR does not tell you anything about their respective sound quality.

 

[fpitas]

I really like my Bose 901 Series VI's and I own the JBL 708p's and Magnepan MG-III. My 901's were new-old-stock units and I really do wonder how many 901's have been set up incorrectly or damaged?



The real way to stir up annoyance is showing everyone this Spinorama

Best case Bose 901 with perfect EQ versus Revel F328 un-EQ'd

In-room estimated response

Easily compare loudspeakers measurements

www.spinorama.org

In-room estimated response
View attachment 284632

You've only shown you can EQ something flat at one point in space. No one has questioned whether that can be done. It's not a Spinorama, and we have no idea what the polar pattern looks like. In an anechoic chamber, at that one point, the speakers will now sound alike.