Paul

I was just wondering if it was worth it upgradeing to the bose system from audi's original setup. I was planning to get new speakers and deck anyways, should I bother getting the bose upgrade?

Jim De Arras

Otherwise, I understand the Bose speakers are 2 ohm, and basically crappy speakers.

That's not to say I buy the Quart speaker myth, but you can do better than stock drivers.

And the Bose Amp is quite marginal, but it does centralize the wiring in the trunk for easier upgrade.

Grant

Let's clear up the confusion here. Incidentally, I design high end and pro audio amplifiers, and have done (under contract) quite a few of the products sold under other names.

What BOSE *claims* to do is the following: systems integration. They begin with an acoustic model of the specific car, model speaker locations, and match two critical things:

1) the frequency response of the system to the car's acoustics, and

2) the amplifiers (power, output impedence, etc) to the individual speaker *systems* (who cares about the individual drivers, since the crossovers impart most of the impedance anomolies?)

In fact, some BOSE systems bi-amp, eliminating the high power passive crossovers generally used to split amp power between the HF and LF drivers.

Now, does Bose do a good job? IMNSHO, sorta. I find the BOSE system far better than stock, if a little over-based and "syrupy". For car audio, its fine.

I'm no fan of Dr. Amar's home stuff (they're generally, um, in my opinion, dog waste), but their car systems do an OK job with far better installation and wiring than you're likely to get from a shop.

Yes, MB quart, B&W, ADS and others use better driver materials. But that's not engineering. Bose's value - if you believe it exists - comes not from polypropolene, heavy rare-earth magnets, or anything tangible, but from the systems matching that they claim to do. Fascinating AES paper about 10 yrs ago on their initial car acoustics research.

Grant

Ben E

They also land you with a system that is entirely closed and incompatible with any desired upgrades.

I just tore out the whole thing and replaced it with MB Quart, Alpine, Rockford and Sony components.

NOW it sounds exceptional, not just acceptable.