Bose is closing more than 100 stores worldwide

[JBT]

I remember when Circuit City went under and the experts we're all saying Best Buy would be next. Shoppers would go to Best Buy to see TVs and then buy them online. I would never buy a TV online. Best Buy's stock closed at 89.82 today.

[80B]

Originally Posted by cleeds

I am actually sorry to read that Bose is closing stores.

As audiophiles, most of us have little use for Bose. But for many people, Bose represents quality audio. It cannot hurt - and can only help - for them to be exposed to audio systems, and the biggest issue with Bose is value, not quality. There are many audio products substantially worse than Bose, even though there are many that have much better quality and are more competitively priced.

Seeing a Bose store in a mall can only heighten awareness and prompt conversation about audio systems, and that's a good thing. I have a "big tent" approach to audio, and think there's room for Bose under the tent even if it has a low "desirabality index" for us.

I have a Bose system, btw. In my car. I'm not crazy about it.

+1. I had a pair of Bose Roommate speakers (one passive speaker while the other contained an amp and used a headphone jack as input) while a grad student, which were a cut above a boombox and worked with a Sony Discman CD player in a tiny apartment many years ago. It did the job well.

[W9TR]

I liked to visit the Bose stores in airports to see if their latest headphone offerings could best my Westone IEM’s. Never did.

Amar Bose was a prolific inventor - probably the first to apply psychoacoustic principles to loudspeaker system design on the Bose Acoustimass system. Lots of trickery in that one.

Tom