In the early Seventies, I had an audio store, that carried from budget entry level stuff (university town) to Audio Research. I loved Bose. They marketed 901s like crazy, because that what Bose is good at and people walked in or called asking for Bose so we got the line. We sold none. We demoed them and said they are $500 and need a lot of power so a pricey receiver. Then we demoed Large Advent speakers and jaws dropped, The universal comment was that the Advents were a lot better so how much more do they cost? The answer was $178 and a cheaper receiver. I love Bose because they sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of systems for us. And yes we sold the Bose to someone who insisted on it. We dropped Bose and went out and paid retail for another pair for demo.
Later I had Bose in several cars because I couldn't get the model I wanted without it. I listened to it to see if it was good enough just to use in the car and then drove to a car stereo dealer to get it replaced.
Bose is great at hype and marketing, but he bottom line is it doesn't sound good at all, and the prices for plastic basket, paper cone speakers stamped made in China is simply a rip off. It's easy to get better sound than Bose, and for a huge amount less.
