Ultimate Music - Review / Bose Wave Music System

The Bose Wave Music System is expensive, but then it’s worth every penny
LAST year, I went to a Bose outlet and reviewed their Wave Music System. But the price tag did not justify writing about it. That was until last week, when I actually splurged and bought myself one, only to be proved wrong in my earlier judgement. Now, I know that if you are a music fan, and would like your music the way it is supposed to be and not reproduced the way your player wants, and don’t want to keep spending on better speakers, amplifiers and so on, then you should also walk into a Bose showroom and do what I did.

I have to accept that Mr Amar Bose has got it right, and no one, trust me, no one, can come even close. If you are a tech junkie, then you may not really be pleased with Bose’s KISS (keep it simple, stupid) principle, but spend half an hour with the system — make sure you take your favourite CDs to the Bose Showroom when you go for the demo and not MP3s — and your opinion will change. The system plays MP3s, but data is lost in encoding such files and they never sound as good as original CDs.
The Wave Music System, has a CD player, plays MP3, and can store six preset FM and 6 preset AM stations. Nothing great you might say. So, what’s the take? What do I like other than the sound reproduction quality?

I love the speed with which it reads CDs, even MP3s, and changes from one track to another. The menu is simple, there is nothing much one can really screw up here — if the music sounds good, how many times are you going to adjust the treble or bass? The FM tuner is great — it is the first one that works inside my bedroom without an external antenna.

The station memory, clock and alarm settings are saved to a crystal clock inside — if you lose power in the middle of the night, it remembers the settings, though the alarm will not play. To add to the effect, the display dims when you turn off the room lights, and brightens as you turn them on. The other fine feature is that you can choose what music or station plays when it wakes you up in the morning. It uses a function called ramp up, which gradually increases the volume of the music, so you wake up gently and not startled out of your sleep.

The system is also child-proof in many ways, as there are no buttons on the player, just an LED panel that displays, time, song title, track and other information, two speakers with Bose’s wave guide technology and a simple slot load CD drive. I also like the fact, that the FM radio supports radio data service, which means that if your channel is transmitting information like station name, song title, artiste and album, the radio will display this in place of the frequency.

It’s not that I like everything about it. At the Bose store they have a stand for the remote control, I wish I had one. The player can’t play OGG, a multimedia container format, files and this is really bad, especially when we are talking about high quality music reproduction. And, I don’t like the fact that you have to pay Rs 7,763 for the iPod dock. But that is about it.

I wanted the silver version of the Wave Music System, but they have stopped producing it — the company now sells just white model (which tends to get dirty fast) and the black one, which I opted for. At Rs 33,638, I think the player is worth every penny.

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The above article appeared in the Indian Express, on Sunday 1st February 2009