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| Find out which products use this technology by clicking on
the products at the end of the detail |
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From the power of a symphony to the intimacy of an acoustic guitar, the experience of a live performance is unmistakable. The challenge for Bose engineers was to re-create this listening experience in people's homes.
The concert hall became our laboratory and an unconventional line of thought evolved. Most of the sound at a live performance is reflected off walls, ceiling and floor, but most conventional speakers radiate sound directly into the room. We set out to create a speaker system that would deliver primarily reflected sound.
This radical thinking ultimately led to the discovery of patented Bose™ Direct/Reflecting® speaker technology — and the entire versatile product line it inspired.
Challenge
Think about why you like live music performances so much. You're surrounded by sound. You're not only listening, you're feeling the music and the emotional impact it conveys. You become immersed in the experience.
Because conventional speakers had traditionally fallen short of delivering on this experience, Bose engineers set out to fully understand how sound acts and reacts during a live performance. Their goal was to recreate, as closely as possible, the experience of a live performance through speakers in your home.
The path to this solution ultimately led to what is still the Bose flagship speaker: our 901® Direct/Reflecting speaker. This solution, however, didn't appear without preliminary discoveries along the way.
In an early attempt to understand the relationship of reflected to direct sound, Bose developed the 2201® speakers. This pair of wedge-shaped enclosures contained twenty-two 5-inch drivers. They were designed to fit in the corners of a room, using wall and floor surfaces to reflect sound into the room.
"It worked, but there was a problem," John Wawrzonek, an engineer on the project noted. "Certain sound characteristics still didn't behave in the manner you'd expect from live music." Select instruments sounded harsh when played through the system.
So it was back to the lab. "We didn't really know what we were looking for," Wawrzonek stated, "but one of the big lessons you learn over the years is to pay attention to surprises."
Solution
Developing a loudspeaker to recreate the way music sounds and behaves in a concert hall posed numerous challenges to Bose engineers.
"It seems so simple and obvious today," recalls John Wawrzonek, an engineer during the project, "but doing what's never done before is the biggest obstacle."
While testing the original 2201 speakers, Bose engineers first began to understand why the ratio of reflected sound to direct sound is so important to live music. Their experiments revealed it was the spatial characteristics of the concert hall that gave music its live quality. To get the same effect from a loudspeaker, they'd have to emulate those characteristics.
Thorough experimentation ensued, and in 1967 a pair of pentagon-shaped enclosures, each with nine drivers, emerged from the lab. But it was their unusual configuration —eight drivers pointing to the rear and only one to the front—that was the breakthrough.
The team had learned that a desired ratio of reflected to direct sound was about eight or nine to one. Because the majority of its drivers faced the rear to reflect sound off the walls, this unconventional speaker system delivered sound similar to that of a live performance. Years of research was finally realized with the launch of the 901® Direct/Reflecting speaker.
Learning Applied
For over 35 years, the unconventional thinking Bose brought to the original 901® Direct/Reflecting speaker system has been carried forward to new applications and several families of innovative products. The pursuit of lifelike sound and exceptional realism continues—from floorstanding to bookshelf to small cube speakers you can hold in the palm of your hand.
Today, Direct/Reflecting technology helps support complex movie soundtracks that deliver new realms of entertainment. Surround sound technology and multichannel sources mandate systems that can re-create the listening impact you've come to expect in movie theatres. Incorporating Direct/Reflecting® technologies in Lifestyle® and Acoustimass home entertainment systems re-creates those dynamic audio experiences in your home.
The search for Direct/Reflecting technology set the precedent for all subsequent technologies from Bose. Our engineers still engage in research that leads to new and innovative solutions—making the difference in everything you listen to.
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901® Floor Standing Direct/Reflecting® Speaker System
201® Series V Direct /Reflecting® Speaker System
301® Series V Direct /Reflecting® Speaker System
Acoustimass® 15 Series III Home Entertainment Speaker System
Acoustimass® 10 Series IV Home Entertainment Speaker System
Lifestyle® 48 DVD Entertainment System
Lifestyle® Homewide Powered Speaker System
Lifestyle® T20 Home Theatre Speaker System
Lifestyle® V25 Home Entertainment System
Lifestyle® V35 Home Entertainment System
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