Science behind the bose wave radio (1 Viewer)

I would love for someone to explain the "science" behind the Bose Wave Radio. Bose claims the sound from the speakers travels through a tunnel inside the radio making the sound "fuller". I'm no audiophile but considering the speakers are facing in the opposite direction of the tunnel how on earth is the sound going to travel through them?

Michael,

The way the Wave Radio works is quite simple really, it is
nothing revolutionary by any means.

The Bose Wave Radio uses two drivers to produce the Stereo
Sound Field one of the drivers is a 3" Paper Wideband
driver and the other is a 4" paper midrange if I recall
correctly.

Every speaker "driver" has a front and a back wave. The
sound you hear from the front of a driver is only half of
the air movement the driver produces. What Bose did was to
take the 4" driver and build a folded transmission line
behind it.. What does this do? The back wave of the driver
is channeled through that tube that is folded up inside the
Wave Radio enclosure and it reverberates to create lower
frequency sound without the need for a much larger woofer.

I think the setup is also called a Quarter Wave Pipe. Bose
also used this "technology" in the 3rd Generation Mazda RX7
where they had tubes running all through the back of the car
with small drivers to produce lower frequencies.

As with anything there are trade-off's and this technology
is not without them.. The lowest frequency is still determined
by the length and size of the tube plus the drivers ability
to generate the air to move..



As you can see on the original Wave system it has a
specific low frequency driver coupled with the Acoustic
Wave Guide. The Wave Radio just uses one of the stereo
drivers to generate the low frequency information which
dare I say is cheesy. In a "Stereo" configuration you
typicaly want the same exact drivers on each side yet
the Wave Radio has two completely different drivers.

Neat

Neat.

In theory, it is cool, but we all know the truth...

FYI. The Bose Wave Radio (the $500 one) is MONO, not stereo.

Would you pay $500 for a mono system?

Brett,

the image you posted shows 3 drivers - could it be some sort of 2.1 system?

Thanks Brett. Do you have any idea why Boses uses different types of drivers on each side of the unit? The idea behind the "wave guide" system sounds interesting but also looks like a very cheap and easy to manufacture audio "technology". If I understand correctly all Bose does is place some small, inexpensive drivers in front of plastic tunnels (in place of larger speakers) and that is the remarkable science that justifies a $1200.00 price tag.

Would you pay $500 for a mono system?

The clock radio has two separate speakers. Are you saying because the two speakers are so close together that any stereo separation cannot be perceived by the listener?

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Michael,

The wave clock radio uses 2 speakers total. One speaker
is to produce higher frequencies and the other is located
in the wave guide to do the low frequency this setup is not
stereo.

The "wave radio" on the other hand uses two wideband drivers
to do the upper and midrange frequencies while it has a
larger centrally mounted driver (see image above) coupled
to the wave guide to produce low frequency.