Bose always had nice sounding drives.Their problem from an audiophile standpoint was one of coherence and imaging. While people like Jon Dahlquist were working time alignment to lock in an accurate soundstage, Dr. Bose was pointing drivers in all kinds of directions at once which of course got sound to you in all kinds of confusing time differences because of the different length of the paths traveled. The drivers themselves were actually decent quality. I have a pair of Bose Roommates hooked up to my PC. The each contain one of the Bose 901 drivers and actually sound quite nice.
While Bose did not produce an "audiophile product, he actually produces something that was quit sellable to the mass market. Bose realized that most speakers of that time did not have very accurate tonal response. By building a speaker with relatively good tonality he got the attention of the mass market consumers. he also realized that most people did not have a room that they could set up for sound and therefore would never be able to set up a pair of stereo speakers in a manner that would give them good imaging. By using his direct/reflecting philosophy he was able to get sound from a large area. Even though the speakers did not project an accurate, distinct or stable sound image most mid-fi people were impressed because it was "big". By giving people "more" sound (although not "good" sound) he was able to suck in a lot of mid-fi consumers. Along the same line, how many people will go to an all you can eat buffet were the food is all cheap junk and think they are getting a bargin because the get a large volume of (crappy) food, but wouldn't take that same amount of money ad spent is on a 9 oz Fillet Mignon because it is to small. It is the old quantity vs quality argument. And while we can argue that Dr. Bose did not know how to build speakers that sound good from our perspective, we have to admit that he found a market and was very good at building and selling speakers to his target market (which wasn't to audiophiles). Put another way, Bose will never be Usher, but then again they never wanted or tried to be.
So when looked at from the perspective of who his products were designed for and what they did for that population (as well as how well they met the needs of and sold to that target market), I think that the Bose speakers are much more successful than audiophiles give then credit for. They don't meet our needs simply because they were never intended to in the first place (remember that old saying that there is a lid for every pot.)
