[mike50]

Build quality is trash consumer with a hefty markup. The older CD player era equipment has the cheapest CD mechanisms I've ever seen for the era. The audio pathway is the same hybrids that everyone else uses. Bose is 100% mass marketing. I'm old enough to remember the endless ads in the back of magazines.

[com2kid]

Until the rest of the market caught up, Bose's noise cancelling algorithms were top notch. As soon as Apple entered the fray a bunch of money was thrown at the problem, the bar was raised, and now good quality noise cancelling is the norm.

But for awhile Bose's headphones had the best noise cancelling out there.

Their old ads were super irritating though, and many people (such as you and me!) are still irritated about them decades later.

[filoleg]

> Until the rest of the market caught up, Bose's noise cancelling algorithms were top notch. As soon as Apple entered the fray a bunch of money was thrown at the problem, the bar was raised, and now good quality noise cancelling is the norm.

A minor nitpick: while Apple entering the ANC arena certainly set fire under the existing mainstream brands to improve their ANC headphones, imo Bose started facing serious competition on that front even before Apple moved in.

I remember Sony releasing their MDR-1000X par being the first crack in the wall. I specifically remember this, because I picked up those headphones in favor of Bose options at the time.

P.S. Yes, the naming scheme on Sony's side is atrocious, because MDR-1000X is the first gen of their very popular WH-1000XM line of ANC headphones that people treat as a flagship ANC headphone pair (with the most recent one being WH-1000XM6).

[com2kid]

I had forgotten about Sony. They were indeed going back and forth with Bose on who could make the highest quality ANC.

I actually had a pair of Sennheiser noise cancelling headphones and they had a really good BT implementation, super low latency and the ANC was really good. Sadly they developed a persistent hiss in one earpiece.