Bose dissing may help change my opinion on the (current?) product itself (or the company or it's marketing schemes), but it ain't never gonna change what i heard that day. And as much as i love my iPod, i would love to have any CD player that would give me the same sound i heard coming from that Bose. Now, if some of you want to get into a "Ford is better than Chev" argument over this, go ahead. I'll just sit on the curb and watch the religious debate. With my iPod plugged in, of course.

I never bit into the 901 stuff way back when.  I kept considering their smaller bookshelf stuff the 501's and 301's or whatever.  But still never went that way.  With the 901's, I was mystified as to why speakers needed a processor just to work properly.  I understood crossovers and their function, but those were hardwired into the speakers as part of not prior to. 

All my buddies had either A / R or JBL's back in the day, that had impressive sounding rigs.  By the time I was able to have my own place and afford my own stuff, I ended up with 3 way Cerwin Vega's powered by a Marantz 2020.  Couldn't afford acoustic suspension, so I went the bass reflex way after much consideration and listening.  Still have the Vega's, but the surrounds are rotted out.  They're huge, sitting in the garage, in their boxes, as they have been for the past 15 years, at least.  Don't know what to do with them.  Now the primary speakers are 15 year old Radio Shack Optimus (polypropylene surrounds) with the dual Mylar ribbon dipole tweeters with a passive 12 or 15 inch subwoofer in front of them.  I got a second pair of the Optimus' along the way, but they were made in Malaysia while the first ones where Japanese.  I could hear an audible difference immediately and the Malaysians were the rear channel for the old pro logic surround and now are back in their boxes, just listening in 2.1 stereo.

Back to the Bose.  Lived downstairs from a friend who had their clock radio CD box and listened to it for about 5 years while I lived in that house.  I was always impressed with the sound from the little thing and he was very happy with it.  The price IMO was not worth it, but he was happy so that was all that mattered and it was pretty decent overall.  He has since graduated to a Bose new unit with a separate subwoofer, which while sounding good, just didn't seem to sound better considering the price jump and time passed with technology and all.  But he is downstairs where I used to live and its a boomy space with hardwood floors and lot's of hard surfaces to reflect off of as opposed to upstairs that was a small room with wall to wall carpeting.  Downstairs was wall to wall carpet when I lived there, but he ripped it out.

If I had a small efficiency apartment or was living in a bus sized Bluebird motor home, the Bose would prolly work at an acceptable level. But that's it. 

To the mp3 part of this discussion.  Being broke, I went after improving the source material as opposed to the playback.  Imported vinyl and the best 8 track and cassette blanks for recording.  The better the source material, the better the final product.  Crappy speakers would sound better with a better signal source.  The old garbage in, garbage out route. 

Back in the day, music was processed for the end listener medium.  Disregarding classical music, Mono AM radio with a 10k cutoff at first.  The music was 'mixed' and engineered for playback on a large one way low res speaker.  We were all used to it and accepted it not having heard anything better, so we were all happy.  Then came Mad Man Muntz and his 4 track carts that gave way to the 8 track.  IIRC the 4 tracks were used for decades as commercial carts in broadcast radio up until very recently (10 years ago in some cases ?)  The Beatles went into the studio one day as the legend goes and Lennon or McCartney asked Martin what this switch was for.  The pop EQ vs. Classical EQ on the master console.  From that point on, the treatment of the original product changed forever.  Tracks for 'pop' music were considered for different new ways of playback on new fuller resolution and stereo playback devices.  The user / listener had something new to chase.  None of this was new to classical and jazz listeners who had r2r and decent vinyl rigs all along.  Both sides of the equation were rising their standards to exceed present.  Finally the limits were reached in the 70's and flash forward to the CD in 1980.  Finally there was a universal standard playback medium that was full rez and would sound the same every time.  Then came computers and file size issues.

Algorithms, yada, yada to .mp3 to deal with file size issues.  Forget the copyright stuff.  The market changed.  Terradio was dead or dying, the Ipod arrived and people were willing to sacrifice a lot, to have something better and portable.  Sales for CD's dropped and purchase of single song .mp3's increased.  The bar was lowered in the industry to mass produce something that would sound better on the crappy new medium and sell.  So if that's Neil's argument, then I get it.  But, I see hope down the road.

As someone said earlier, storage or file size will no longer be an issue.  The excuses for compression will no longer be valid.  What's the industry gonna do ?  They sure as hell are not going to sell us wav. files.  They are going to want to hold back and sell us something of lesser quality.  What will be the new acceptable level ?  flac. ?  Will CD's disappear, lowering the maximum rez end user available source ?  We get back to the oldest of industry games, how good will they let us have it and what's it gonna cost ?  Its hard to see the listening end of technology getting any better, short of implants in our cortexes.

I guess the mass produced American Idol flavor of the month stuff will be mixed for deaf kids and young adults listening to earbuds.  That's where the money is.  Those of us who can still hear and know better and care will soon die off.  Our standards will no longer matter.  It will be up to the artist to set standards for themselves and market directly to their listener.  That's were the good stuff will be available.

Bands can have a kiosk at their concerts where a spectator can walk up and buy a password for a download, including artwork and skip the brick and mortar end of the business altogether, ala I-Tunes.  Interesting.