Our original review of the Bose 901 in September 1968 was one of several that month in Julian Hirsch’s Technical Talk department. The 901, with periodic improvements, remained continuously available from Bose right up until 2017, when the company finally suspended production. Back in ’68, the 901 review appeared without fanfare and was mixed among the several featured each issue in Hirsch’s “Technical Talk” department, which always began with a brief essay (not reproduced here), followed up by a handful of product tests. In 1998, when SR celebrated its 40th anniversary and Hirsch was asked to reflect on the most noteworthy products he’d encountered, he cited the 901 right alongside such classics as the original Shure V15 cartridge, the Marantz 10B tuner, and the Dynaco A-25 bookshelf speaker. While the review retained Hirsch’s usual dispassionate and professorial voice, it was certainly as close to a rave as he ever got. It has been suggested by some observers that few factors beyond Bose’s own advertising contributed more to the speaker’s huge commercial success. In the legend and mythology of the Bose 901, the review we’ve reprinted here, written by Julian Hirsch for HiFi Stereo Review’s September 1968 issue, looms large. Gordon Holt, founding editor of our high-end sister publication Stereophile, noted in a 1971 commentary that the 901 “produces a more realistic semblance of natural ambience than any other speaker system, but we would characterize it as unexceptional in all other respects.” My own mentor, Harry Pearson, Jr., told me in the early 1980s that he bought a pair of first-generation 901s after reading the positive reviews in the mainstream audio press and was so disappointed that it prompted him to found The Absolute Sound as an alternative voice. Some sophisticated audiophiles bemoaned a perceived lack of detail and veiled quality to its sound.
Bose 901 equalizer drivers#
With its pentagonal cabinet that faced eight of its nine identical 4-inch, full-range drivers at the reflecting wall behind the speaker, its designer Amar Bose sought to have it mimic the way we hear in concert halls and imbue its sound with a giant soundstage and spatial realism that was unsurpassed.īeyond any success of its spatial trickery, the 901 had its issues - the combination of its small cabinet and unusual dispersion pattern required equalization at both ends of the frequency spectrum, and it was (not surprisingly) room and placement sensitive. Introduced in 1968 by a then four-year-old concern named after its MIT-educated founder, the 901 neither looked, nor sounded, like any speaker that had come before it. There may be no singular product in modern audio history that has generated more accolades, derision, or pure controversy than the Bose 901 loudspeaker. Julian Hirsch’s review of the Bose 901 in 1968 helped set off one of the greatest and longest-lasting audiophile debates.
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