BOSE Takes On the Concert Hall.

A bit late to the party, but it’s time to talk about a high-end radio-cassette player — or bald fellow, rather — from BOSE.

Apparently, BOSE conducted a playback test of the above new product — the Acoustic Wave Music System II — at Tokyu Bunkamura Orchard Hall in Shibuya, a venue well known to classical music fans. The result: sound reached a respectable 872 of the 1,424 seats on the ground floor, but it fell short of filling every single seat with a full, resonant sound. A narrow defeat, apparently.

Bose Wave music system III (プラチナムホワイト)WMS III WH 国内正規品

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¥26,800 （2026/08/06 06:59時点 | Amazon調べ）

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I couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of what on earth they were actually testing and against what standard — but Orchard Hall is a large venue, home to the Tokyo Philharmonic, capable of hosting a full orchestra, and, as classical music halls go, rather on the dry side acoustically. And yet, from a small portable unit, sound was apparently “ringing out richly and resonantly” as far back as around row 25, past the centre of the hall. Anyone who knows Orchard Hall will find that quite something. Setting aside the obvious question of why they chose Orchard Hall of all places — if it were a more reverberant venue like Casals Hall or Kioi Hall, surely it would manage with ease? (who knows) In fact, I gather the product itself was designed with comfortable high-volume playback in small commercial spaces and dance studios in mind, as well as portability for outdoor use — so perhaps this sort of demonstration is not entirely beside the point after all.

Comment from Mr. Yoshihiko Tanaka, Vice President of Orchard Hall / Tokyu Bunkamura (reprinted from newspaper)

“I was present at the experiment myself. BOSE said they ‘lost’, but I don’t see it that way. The sound coming from the Acoustic Wave was the same as the orchestral sound I am accustomed to hearing. I listened from around the middle of the hall, and I could never have imagined that a speaker of this size could produce such beautiful sound, such a sense of scale, such musicality. Given the size of Orchard Hall, I would not call it a ‘defeat’ at all.”

Musical performance cannot be judged by specifications alone. This is because the specifications made available to the public are measured against a single electrical reference point that has nothing whatsoever to do with musical reproduction. The Acoustic Wave Music System II is a compact, all-in-one Hi-Fi system, the result of more than twenty years of research and development and a total design approach from sound input to output. Simply plug it in, and its distinctive rounded form faithfully recreates the full emotion of a concert hall, without compromise.

So they say. Very much marching to the beat of its own drum, this is BOSE — the drivers are a 7 cm BOSE original unit and an 11.5 cm woofer in a 2.1ch configuration. It receives FM/AM too, so it is undeniably a radio-cassette player. However, the subwoofer is connected to a 203 cm folded resonance tube — an Acoustic Wave Guide — and this, in the very Bose fashion of placing particular emphasis on “bass reproduction” in music playback, is what sets it apart from ordinary portable players and constitutes its real originality.

It is quite a catchy pitch, but without actually hearing it, the size alone is enough to make you want to ask “really?” — so if the opportunity arises, I intend to go and listen for myself before too long.

AUDIO STYLE

BOSE Micro Music Monitor M3 vs 55WER & Wave Music System / 125 Westborough WBS-1EX IV [Review]

Incidentally, this is the lower model, the Wave Music System. In addition to CD and FM/AM radio, it also has an alarm and sleep timer — one of the original purposes of a radio-cassette player — and is designed with bedside or study use in mind, intended for more personal listening at lower volumes. This one is a 2ch configuration with 6 cm full-range drivers left and right, plus a 132 cm Acoustic Wave Guide (bass reflex, perhaps?). And notably, the amplifier rather quietly makes use of a toroidal transformer. In terms of how I’d actually use it, this is probably the one for me.

Just a radio-cassette player, and yet — a radio-cassette player. If you’re going to buy one, you may as well get the best. Which means, inevitably, BOSE and nothing else. Those who pursue pure Hi-Fi may well take issue with that, but the fact remains that cost-driven products from other makers — cheap portable players, mini systems, so-called high-grade mini systems, or even poorly matched pure Hi-Fi separates — simply cannot surpass these BOSE products in terms of musical quality or ease of use. That is something one has to acknowledge.

Going back to first principles — if the aim is to put something genuinely good into anyone’s hands, regardless of whether they are a Hi-Fi enthusiast, something that can be enjoyed casually yet without the musical shortcomings of a cheap mini system, then BOSE products remain, at this moment, the most user-friendly choice available.