Quote Originally Posted by RGA
Patd

He said nothing surpassed it or was the equal to it ---- what does that say to you? It says to me nothing is is better and nothing is as good -- which means it is the best.

1968 -- please there were good speakers abound.

Yes I heard the original ones and two newer sets...and all were no good.

In fact I don't know much about him just that his name gets mentioned -- Until you said it I didn;t know he worked for Harman...but since all the Harman speakers and copy cats I've heard over the last 15 years -- well it's not surprising to me that he likes Bose!
Sometimes I wonder whether you remember what you wrote. " And they have technical white papers out of MIT telling you why nothing is as good and so does Harman--" You are bringing in Harman, which is where Dr. Toole works now, even though it has nothing whatever to do with Bose or the Bose 901. You also like to bring in Paradigm when it has nothing to do with the subject at hand.

You've really lost it suggesting Julian Hirsch worked for Harman. I've never seen it in accounts of his career, which you can look up as easily as I can on the S & V site. Now, logic is not your strong point. You quote Mr. Hirsch as saying it was the best speaker he had listened to in his home--but he certainly did not listen to every speaker in the world in his home. He also said, "I am convinced that it ranks with a handful of the finest home speaker systems of all time." No matter how you cut it, RGA, you can't interpret him as meaning it was the greatest speaker of all time. But in 1968, you have to look at the competition, and it sounded better in a good set up than most speakers.

FYI, it was not only Julian Hirsch and his colleague, Gladden Houck, who thought highly of the original 901. High Fidelity magazine liked it a lot, so did Consumers Reports, and for that matter, so did J. Gordon Holtin Stereophile. But what did it have to compete with? Not a great deal, though there were some, such as the Klipschorn, the Quad ESL, the JBL Paragon, Altec VOT, Infinity Servo-Statik, Acoustic Research AR-3a and maybe some others. Nowadays, there are dozens and dozen of very fine speakers that are more better sounding and more accurate than almost all speakers back then, many of them have greater power handling (post-digital, you know), and may of them cost less, inflation adjusted.

FYI, it was not just Julian Hirsch and his colleague, Gladden Houck, who thought the original Bose 901 was a very good speaker, but High Fidelity Magazine, Consumers Reports, and even J. Gordon Hold did. But you have to look at the competition back then, and the Bose 901 could compete very well then. You apparently have never heard them in a good set up..