Audiophiles rag on Bose pretty hard. It's easy to see why if you look at their product line. They have home theater systems, but all of them use tiny plastic cube speakers that trade sound quality for unobtrusiveness. They have soundbars and waveboxes. Bose 901's are arguably their "flagship" audiophile product, but these are designed to bounce additional sound off your walls to make your room sound like a concert hall. The problem is that nobody masters recordings for speakers that intentionally add reverb. These gimmick speakers are designed to wow in the showroom with the right tracks, but do you really want everything you hear to sound like it's in a concert hall?

Bose simply doesn't target audiophiles. They don't make audiophile products. However, they've carved out a niche for themselves that makes them billions every year. That niche is basically one step removed from snake-oil. Bose has somehow managed their image so that people think Bose really can cram audiophile-grade performance into precisely the kind of tiny, plastic boxes no other audio company can get halfway decent sound out of. Bose fails as hard as anyone else at that, but somehow people believe they've succeeded and line up to buy their products. Whatever Bose is doing for advertising, it's elite. This article is probably an example of what they're doing.