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My expectations Bose 901 and setup

Frank Sol said:
Then what are they ?
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A second pair to use with the first pair that has the EQ from the first pair. Bose sold a pair of 901s as a separate item without and eq for that purpose.

Otherwise, as Kent said they are midrange speakers that handle a lot of power without the EQ.
 
KentTeffeteller said:
All midrange. Bose depends heavily on that equalizer to get anything close to proper frequency response.
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I am somewhat of a fan of the 901 speakers. No other speaker can sound like it. But at the same time, it has limitations and I would never want them as my only speakers.

I see the drivers as being fairly limited, and being pushed to do what they do.
Even as a mid driver, they are not ideal or even very good. They are adequate and with EQ they sound fairly good.
 
whoaru99 said:
I believe Bose also made a receiver or two with 901 EQ function built-in.
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They did. We had one suffer near destruction when struck by a Luxman R-1070 that fell from the shelf above. Owner of the store had to plead with Bose for some credit after that one when back.
 
From my perspective the 901 Series II was the pinnacle of the 901 line. Other series I've listened to are the IV and V. Neither come close to the sound of the II's in my ear.
My brother bought a Pioneer SX-1010, 901 Series II and Philips 212 back in I believe 1974. A year before I joined him at Penn State for "higher" education.

He's had the 1010 gone over and has them lighting up a 20 x 30 room and they sound rather good 4 feet above the floor. I believe the SX-1010 mates with the 901's really well and has plenty of power. FWIW

Cheers
 
I had the series 1 Bose 901 with EQ. They filled the house pretty good, the base was fine for that. The top was not. I think I ran the Bose off speaker A and Realistic super horn tweeters off speaker B with a capacitor. It helped.
 
Lombardo said:
FOR upper HIGHS- In ceiling speakers for highs or some type of small bookshelf. I have no idea what, I was even thinking of making some just using a tweeter or horn?
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If I were building a frankenspeaker setup around the Bose 901, I think I would try to maintain the open, airy, big sound qualities of the 901. So I would not be thinking about in-ceiling speakers which limit opportunities to move them around by definition. I would also steer clear of a boxed small bookshelf speaker. I would look at the Heil AMT to supply the highs, knowing they probably need to be turned down a bit to match the sensitivity of the 901s. Hope your experiment works out.
 
wmgwizard said:
I'm with you, I think experimentation for the sake of learning is what has made this hobby so popular. But I must caution you, you're standing at the top of a deep rabbit hole.

While some may think the no highs / no lows is a bad thing, there is an upside. When properly EQ'd and fed sufficient power they can be listend to for hours and hours at very high levels without becoming fatiguing. Not many other speakers can do that.

On key is sufficient power. With all those individual drivers and the extreme boost applied by the EQ the 901's suck up some serious current. While the Spec series of Pioneer is certainly some nice gear, it is not a particularly high current design and that may be the achilles heel of your setup. Since this is an experiment, I'll leave you to discover that on your own.

The other items that will greatly impact your experiment are the selection of your subwoofer and high frequency drivers. Soft dome, hard dome, horn loaded, paper cone and other tweeter designs all have their compromises, which ones fit your experiment will take some time to sort out. Subwoofers are a rabbit hole all on their own. I prefer smaller driver, high power, sealed enclosure subs(plural) YMMV.

Always remember, YOU are the only one who has to like what your system sounds like. We all hear and listen differently, different rooms, different gear, different music, in the end your system has to work for you.

Carry on my good man. Enjoy yourself and keep us posted on your progress.
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I have to agree with every word. Part of the reasoning here is to power these bose with at least 120W RMS through another amp and use my receiver amp as a power for high range. I've heard this many times that power is the key. But sure, ever there is a rabbit hole of sorts... Different amps, different sounds.

I totally agree with the sub woofer. I quickly grabbed a $50 deal on FB Market on a barely used KLH 10" and I don't like the sound at all. But I do believe a decent sub(s) would do the trick here. It did fill the bottom more of what I was looking for, but the bass was muddy and undefined, (if that even possible) and buzzed at higher volume. I'm no Audiofile, but all I can say is that sub sounds like garbage to my ears, so I may tear it apart and try to use the amp and possibly new speaker in a custom box or buy one if someone hear knows one they can recommend, or two as you mentioned. I actually thought the same thing, because I really don't like that super low base. BTW, I'm playing on Travertine floors on concrete slab, with block walls so the buzz definitely comes from the box itself. The speaker cone appeared in good shape with full foam, but I can't be sure because the damn thing is not accessible.

I decided to make a pair of tweeters myself from a couple PRV Audio TW350Ti 60 Watts RMS 8 ohms. I'm totally guessing and going off reviews. I may be completely wasting my time and money, but I don't care, this is fun for me. We'll see...

I did heed some advise on checking and cleaning my EQ. The caps look flat and I cleaned the slides and buttons with deoxit, as well as put on some better cables. Call me crazy but I think I noticed better sound!

The last thing I'm going to do with this adventure is to spread out my 901's to either corner of the room and position them at a 45 degree to the main listening area, and play around from there. Just trying to sell a piece of furniture to make room first.
 
whoaru99 said:
I believe Bose also made a receiver or two with 901 EQ function built-in.
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Those were the Bose 550 and 551 receivers. I believe both were originally made for the Bose 901 series IV speakers, but probably work just fine with the other 901 series speakers.
 
Adding a subwoofer to the mix should be pretty straightforward. Adding speakers in the ceiling to augment the highs will likely result in some pretty audible phase shift because of the physical separation of the mid and high frequency drivers. Moving the high frequency drivers close to the mids is preferable.
 
knotscott said:
Adding a subwoofer to the mix should be pretty straightforward. Adding speakers in the ceiling to augment the highs will likely result in some pretty audible phase shift because of the physical separation of the mid and high frequency drivers. Moving the high frequency drivers close to the mids is preferable.
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Yeah I abandoned that idea and I'm going with tweeters sitting on top of the 901's. I plan to make myself from a pair of these PRV Audio TW350Ti 60 Watts RMS 8 ohms.
 
For the highs I would try a Ads L300c on top of each 901. With the adjustable crossover you could probably blend the mid frequencies pretty well. Also can play with toe in/out easily. They have a wonderful tweeter and mid. They are also not expensive and are great by themselves if the experiment doesn’t work out.
 
Lombardo said:
How do you guys feel about this for powering the 901's ?

Yamaha PC2002M
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I (currently) power mine with Yamaha P-2200. I think it works well, but even with 240wpc it is easy to put the meters at max.

A while back I measured 80-85dB(a) @ ~13ft and the meters are peaking around 100W. Push it a few dB more and the 240wpc is all used up.
 
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To me, there is a very simple solution that doesn't require any crossovers and likely won't require any EQ either.

For lows: Add a powered sub, driven by the receiver pre-amp left/right outputs (don't use the left/right speaker outputs to drive the sub if you are applying EQ to the 901's). The sub has a built-in crossover and level control that will allow you to tune it to blend with the Bose 901's -- that's all you need for the bass. The external crossover does not help you at all for the sub, nor does EQ, either one would make things worse for sub performance. Sub requirements: 1. Sub must have left and right RCA inputs (some subs only have a mono LFE input). 2. Generally, a sealed sub is better for music than a ported sub (ported are more efficient, but tend to have group delay that makes it more difficult to time align with mains). 3. Probably better to have a phase knob rather than a phase switch (for time-alignment with 901's).

For Highs: Add a super-tweeter with adjustable crossover and adjustable level (this will allow you to fill out the highs and tune them to blend with the 901's (e.g. the Super-tweeter takes over where the 901's start trailing off). This will give you much better control and better quality treble than trying to blend in bookshelf speakers with tweeters. Unfortunately super-tweeters (powered by speaker-wire) will pick up any EQ you do on 901's, but you won't need to boost highs with super-tweeters in the system. The Aperion Audio Planar-Ribbon Super Tweeter (back panel control picture shown below) are $299 a pair on Amazon.

For Mids: Power 901's with the receiver speaker outputs, you likely won't need any EQ with a sub and super-tweeter tuned properly. If you do decide to add EQ, you can buy some high quality 10 or more band eq's for not very much on auction sites since analog EQ's aren't really in favor these days (for whatever reason). I've got to imagine that a 10-band can give you more control than the bass/treble Bose EQ (<- but I have NO experience with the Bose EQ unit, so hopefully somebody will correct me if I'm wrong).


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