Dave,
My experience working for Bose was overall a very positive one. It was a very good company to work for, especially if one were in Engineering. Unfortunately, I was in Facilities Management.
The Bose engineers are given a virtually limitless budget with which to work, however management expected results. More often than not they deliver beyond expectations. They always have top notch engineers as the guy with his name on the building, Dr. Amar G. Bose, considered himself an MIT professor first and foremost. This allowed him to spot the best talent and usually would give the best and brightest a very nice internship before they hit the general labor force after graduation. Knowing how to spot good talent and hire and keep it, Dr. Bose has built himself a billion dollar hobby. We should all have such hobbies, eh?
You are right though, you won't find specs on any Bose product. I'm not sure exactly why. It was never explained to me to my satisfaction. I suspect that it has something to do with the ego of MIT and having your name on the side of the building that says no one should have the need to question the specifications as his research was exhaustive and the end results speak for itself. Generally speaking, he's right. Most people don't truly understand the meaning of the specs and misinterpret them anyway. Dr. Bose places a high value on psychoacoustics, or the science of how sound is perceived. Does the ear like what it hears? The layman's ear usually does and I suppose if something is working for you you don't try to fix it.
I used to love walking through the engineer's storage area and looking at all the JBL and other competitor's products that were laying around in various stages of dismemberment and trying to think of a way to get some of the more intact stuff out of the building without anyone noticing. Never did though. But it said a lot to me about how serious they were in their research and that they wanted to know what their competition was up to and how they got there.
I spent a few years in their retail group before I left and I recall that the store staff were instructed to reply to the customers' questions about specs with, It will handle just about anything you throw at it. Again, more often than not, they were right.
JP
