04ctd

got a friend with an old 901 set they want to use. they are still in teh boxes from the last move.

(I have not inspected the foam for dry rot, Bose had a good plan for re-doing the foam a few years ago, not sure if that still exists.)

IIRC, the Bose 901 individual drivers were so unfit for the application, that the equalizer had to be used in the "tape loop" monitor to push the bass & treble to exuberant levels

and you could not use any normal speaker on the other outputs, due to the bass & treble being distorted.

and you usually could not use the surround sound, because the tape loop was before the surround decoder (to ensure all channels/sound were output in case you were recording)

and the use of an Eq prior to the Dolby decoding, mixed everything up.
IIRC, the center channel was in phase with the two main channels, and the rear was out of phase.
something like that, anyways, the EQ destroyed the phase relationship between the channels, and the decoder could no longer extract the surround sound data.



so my Q is this:
since a Dolby Digital signal is broke down in the digital domian, then passed to analog/audio path, putting an EQ in the tape monitor loop should NOT affect surround sound processing.

so the main front channel should be EQ'd,
and the rear and center would be fed striaght from the Dolby decoder's output.



so now, what about when you watch TV, and it is analog (news) or even dolby analog surround (old movie)

then, will you be back in the situation of the EQ over boosting the rear & center channels?

Commatoze

What's not clear to me: Are you using the 901's processor with the loudspeakers?

04ctd

i was talking about the old analog Dolby,

the Bose 901 Equalizer is an "external processor" to the receiver, basically just a very high level equalizer (a regular EQ is 12db, and maybe a bose EQ is 24db)

the audio streams (in regular audible format - but very low voltage) left the receiver and went out the OUT RCA jacks of the "tape loop" or "tape monitor"

and came back in via the IN RCA jacks.

so the audio stream made this detour, out of the receiver for processing (be it a regular old EQ, or a Bose EQ, or what ever)

and came back in to the receiver to be amplified.



well, in my old pioneer receivers, the dolby decoding happened AFTER the tape loops.

so the EQ bungled up the dolby encoding, so you could not use an EQ to compensate for room acoustics or cheap speakers.



the digital dolby will derive all the channels digitally, and then send them out as analog audio,

and that analog audio signal will route out the Tape Loop, to be Eq'd by the Bose EQ.

i just did not want to cut holes, run wires, mount plates, hang speakers,

and then go DOH!! it sounds like crap when you do _______ (fill in the blank)

it's much better to ask BEFORE you drill holes in someone else's house

berner

If the receiver you're using has pre-outs for all 6 channels, you could hook the 901 EQ into the front pre-outs and run the output from the EQ to another 2 channel amp. Drive the 901's off of this second amp.

For optimum sound, speakers should be "timber matched", which means that sounds should sound the same through all 5 speakers. It's really noticeable when you have a sound panning around the room and the speakers all sound different. I don't know if you can find center and rear speakers that will be close to the 901's. The EQ should help some.

Those 901's won't be shielded either. If they're too close to the TV the picture may act up due to magnetic fields. You can buy shielding material and wrap the magnets. Or move the TV away since you have to set the 901's up in the corners of the room.

901's are the ultimate cool speakers. Very impressive to watch them sway when pouring the power to them.