Bose founder makes big stock donation to MIT
web.mit.edu
web.mit.edu
He's been good to MIT over the years (MIT students, faculty and affiliates get substantial discount) and this is another example of him giving back. I hope this encourages MIT to resurrect some of their acoustics programs (aside from a couple of projects coming out of the Media Lab and a telephony class or two, acoustics has been dead at MIT since the late 1990's) but I suspect they'll just use it as a cash cow.
His work today in no way lessens the impact of an audiophile's criticism of his company's products. Not only are they overpriced in consideration of value delivered, they are in many respects poor implements for faithfully reproducing sound.
But those criticisms are criticisms of product and market, not criticisms of people and principles.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...
I own a pair of Grado phones, and a pair of Sennheiser, high end. There's a pretty big difference between the two.
The Sennheiser is, for lack of a better word, "transparent". It's like the sound is coming not from a pair of cans, but from "out there". It's very easy to forget you're wearing phones. It's like they don't have any personality of their own.
The Grado, OTOH, is very different. The sound is very much "in your face". Can you hear all sorts of tiny details and nuances? Sure, but that's because they were magnified a lot, to force them to become obvious. A look at the response curve tells you why: Grado likes to crank up the high-frequency response on their cans. They are great, though, if you're mixing audio tracks and are keeping an eye out for tiny mistakes.
The Sennheiser is like a wide-screen TV. The Grado is like a microscope. Both are useful, but for different purposes.
But you'll have to try them out, all of them have several lines with different sounds, and each company has distinct characteristics.
You'll need to try them out.
I also discovered Headfonia ( http://www.headfonia.com/ ), a nice blog.
After reading http://www.headfonia.com/closed-cans-shootout-m-50-esw-9-t50... and many discussions on Head-Fi, I bought a Sennheiser HD-25-1, and I'm really happy with it ;)
This does not directly answer your question, but I think it may still be of interest.
It helps to have access to decently-equipped wood shop, but if you don't you can try asking a local custom-cabinet maker if they will cut and assemble the box for you. IME they are receptive to these types of projects since they can often use scrap from their other projects which allows them to make some money from material that would typically be wasted.
Some resources:
http://www.parts-express.com/ (full disclosure: I am a PE reseller)
http://www.amazon.com/Loudspeaker-Design-Cookbook-Vance-Dick...
Pair with heavy-duty 2-channel amplifier like the Onkyo M-282, or a decent Denon, Harman Kardon, NAD, etc. home theater receiver.
Speakers (as in, small-mid-size near-field monitors, from very expensive to why-not cheap): Genelec ($3000), Adam ($2000), KRK ($750), Logitech ($100). Tastes in speakers vary a lot, and it makes a difference where you will be using them. These numbers are for the upper-middle end of the range. I like KRKs for their clear but slightly forward sound. I don't need a pair of Genelecs, but they are amazingly good. Some people swear by the Adams, they don't evoke any strong response from me. At the cheapie end the Logitech stuff strikes me as having a surprising level of bang for the buck, but it's been a while since I listened carefully to anything like that.
Buy powered speakers. Don't waste money on passive + amp combinations unless you have strong opinions on the electronics of different amplifier classes, in which case you probably want to build your own at some point.
Headphones: Sony MDR7506. The end.
Definitely. I've recommended them on HN before. They're the best 'pro' headphones at a very fair price that the companies making overpriced 'amateur professional' products don't want you to know about, including Sony themselves.
That's a testable statement. It would be difficult to ABX headphones to prove it, but do you have any objective quality comparisons?
I have a pair of Bose speakers. They cost me $100. I wouldn't use them for pro work, but I don't feel ripped off by them because when I put my TV out or music through them, they deliver on the ads' promise of "room-filling sound".
I have to admit, though, "faithful reproduction" sounds like a great platform for Republicans in 2012.
For anyone interested in reading about underwater ocean acoustics:
[1] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/323/5922/1734.full?ijkey=t...
[2] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/311/5761/660.full?ijkey=bc...
Although he has given them majority shares they are nonvoting only. The terms of.the gift forbid them from selling the shares or participating in any management or governance of the company.
Bose is remaining a private / independent company still run by said founder. This is essentially a gift that should pay nice stock dividends for MIT.
The likelier problem is management controlling the board and creeping up exec comp.
There will always be a trade-off between dividend payments and re-investment, but presumably here the voting equity's interests are basically aligned with the non-voting minority.
Beyond those small perks, his stories working with Norbert Wiener and his inspirations have completely transformed and shaped my personality and how I solve problems. Above all, the highest integrity one would have with his/her work, has been my #1 beacon thanks to Dr. Bose. I will always cherish that end-of-term field trip at his corporate headquarters where I witnessed amazing demos (including the active automobile suspensions), and heard even more stories that made me believe that anything is possible when you put your mind and heart into it.
Bose often told the story of the initial encounter, in which he spent 6 months fearing for his life because his level of math versus that of Wiener was equivalent to a child who knows basic arithmetic versus someone well versed with Calculus.
They worked together on a wide variety of projects, including bio-engineering projects where they measured brain signals of hospital patients who lost, say, their arms but was asked to pretend to move their fingers as if their arms were still attached.
According to Bose, Wiener was a total genius who had an amazing memory. He fully memorized AND understood the human anatomy down to every detail, and often corrected experienced Harvard doctors from mistakes, large or small.
Wiener told Bose that he resented his upbringing because his parents wanted to see if they could raise a genius. By age 7, Wiener's eyesight was nearly shot from so much reading, but his parents pushed on and made Wiener do everything in his head instead.
I have Weiners book "Cybernetics: Or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" (unfortunately not in the hardback version) and although I don't understand the math in the book I still read it to the best of my ability.
Another book that I did understand and which made me understand Weiners book a little better conceptually was Valentino Braitenbergs "Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology" a fantastick book for math morons like myself.
Thank you so much for your little story.
Looks like they were pretty successful.
Unlimited time and free food is a good thing? I went to Harvey Mudd and the only thing more terrifying than an unlimited time exam was an unlimited time exam with free food. It was a surefire indicator that you were about to lose a significant chunk of your time working on a nigh-impossible exam. I guess it's just weird to find out that this isn't universal.
If you knew your materials, it would have taken about 1 to 1.5 hrs to finish the exam. The vast majority finished within 2 hrs (typical duration of MIT night exams). But indeed there were a few who stuck around for 4-5 hrs. At least one TA had to stick around too.
This isn't really the usual case (most of the unlimited time exams are take home exams rather than proctored), but it's still terrifying.
In one of our exams, there was supposedly a student who remained in the hall until 3 or 4am. It was unlimited time and s/he decided to take advantage of it. I took the class pass/fail (I was an Mech E so I didn't have a great background in the advanced EE stuff underpinning some of the concepts) so I always left sooner than I really should have since I didn't sweat the small stuff.
So how did he fund the company initially? According to Dr. Bose, Lee handed over his entire life savings because he firmly believed that Bose would succeed!
Dr. Bose has always felt that MIT was good to him and so he gives back. It is what it is.
BTW, Bose does have a Corporate Contributions Committee that people can solicit for donations if they feel they have a worth cause: Contributions@bose.com It didn't work for me (EAW generously stepped in) but others may have better luck.
But, shouldn't you have instead said, "Wasn't Bose a bootstrapped company?" if you were talking about how the company was funded?
Seems like Bose is at least one counterpoint to this view: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2338140
I think maybe it's a hard thing to figure out because there are so few Googles, Amazons, and Apples in the world. If you only have a few extreme outliers to look at as your data, your conclusions might be completely wrong, even though they fit the data perfectly.
Regardless of the lack of an exit, the Bose founders are extremely rich today, and they don't have to remain involved in Bose for it to continue to operate and grow. I believe the original use of the term "lifestyle" implied an ongoing requirement for the founders to be involved to keep the company going, but it's come to mean "a company that did not raise huge sums of money and did not choose to exit via acquisition or IPO within a few years of founding".
In short, I don't like the term, as it provides little useful information about a company, and is colored by the most common users of the term (VCs).
Interesting way of donating your fortune to a school.
Assuming a decent P/E ratio, total stock value is probably in the 10s of $billions minimum (I know, as a private company things are different, I'm just thinking off the top of my head).
every time i hear that i'm surprised what a fairy tale! Of course politicians forced to say comfortable "we need more spending" than the suicidal "we need more working", yet it is obvious for any sane normal person what only increased productivity and efficiency can get us out of this small hole-in-the-road current recession and the really big crises looming tomorrow - healthcare, energy, education - and the day after tomorrow - social security. Look at who's leading the recovery - the companies reporting large profits without much increased sales, if any. I.e. increased productivity and efficiency, less waste. The waste in the business is still extremely large, yet much smaller than compare to heydays of 2005-7. Instead of being wasted, at least some part of these profits would get invested and thus would spread around in the economy and help overall recovery.
What you want is more demand. (Which depletes natural resources.)
If you want, you can have "well off poor". That's someone who is poorer than his neighbors, but due to efficiency still has everything necessary for a comfortable life. Due to human nature people don't really like this.
it means less of mundane and low productive, time wasting jobs. More value produced by less people. That increased amount of value allows for more investment (and spending as well) which creates more jobs.
Following your logic, the 20000 years ago was the golden era of employment - everybody was employed full-time gathering edible roots and hunting.
>If you want, you can have "well off poor". That's someone who is poorer than his neighbors,
Due to some unfortunate law of the Universe there is always a half which, by whatever criteria you choose, is worse off than the other half.
Unfortunately not everyone can do less mundane jobs, especially when the skills needed change within a generation - there isn't even time to go to school to learn them.
> More value produced by less people. That increased amount of value allows for more investment (and spending as well) which creates more jobs.
Maybe. But only if the investment creates more demand. It doesn't always.
> Following your logic, the 20000 years ago was the golden era of employment
Certainly. But who said employment was the only goal? It's _a_ goal, but not the only one.
> is worse off than the other half.
Yup, which is why people don't like it. But your plan (of higher productivity) won't fix that.