Bose Interaudio 4000 Speaker Info? No Laughing/Bashing Please!

[Roboturner91]

Came across a pair of these Interaudio 4000 at a flea market today. They looked interesting. My only experience with Bose speakers was with an awful early 90s Acoustimass system, but these were just conventional speakers with what looked to be a 10 inch driver. Surrounds were all intact and looked great, in fact both speakers looked practically brand new. I didn't take them but I might go back, they were only $40.

 

[Akbugman]

Came across a pair of these Interaudio 4000 at a flea market today. They looked interesting. My only experience with Bose speakers was with an awful early 90s Acoustimass system, but these were just conventional speakers with what looked to be a 10 inch driver. Surrounds were all intact and looked great, in fact both speakers looked practically brand new. I didn't take them but I might go back, they were only $40.

Bought a pair of the xl 4000s at Salvation Army Thrift Store in primo condition. $10.00.

 

[Akbugman]

Came across a pair of these Interaudio 4000 at a flea market today. They looked interesting. My only experience with Bose speakers was with an awful early 90s Acoustimass system, but these were just conventional speakers with what looked to be a 10 inch driver. Surrounds were all intact and looked great, in fact both speakers looked practically brand new. I didn't take them but I might go back, they were only $40.

Bought a pair at Salvation Army Thrift Store in primo condition. $10.00.

 

[442_Tom]

Ok older thread but had to chime in - I gave away a pair of 4000s a year ago (with a nice little Pioneer sx 202) to a guy that built a fence for me, younger and wanted to get into vintage audio - cabinets were a bit banged up but sounded great. That under appreciated 25 wpc pioneer from 1982 set up well with the big InterAudios.

Sorry PWK I sold my Herseys, but kept my 201s 301s 401s 501s 601s 701s and 901s (which have to be set up properly w/equalizer or Bose 550 or Spatial Receiver). And I’m still going to replace those IA 4000s.

https://classicreceivers.com/bose-spatial-control-receiver


https://assets.bose.com/content/dam...speakers/interaudio/pdf/owg_en_interaudio.pdf

The 4000s are an underrated speaker, and sonically on par with Heresys IMHO.
Bose truly made some fabulous speakers and equipment in the 70s and 80s - especially their 1801 amp (87 lbs) and 4401 preamp.

 

[PhooBar]

Would the IA 4000's need any tweaking, or are they good as-is?
Currently cleaning up a pair of these somebody else threw away. Waiting on new foam, so not heard them yet.
Contemplating titanium horn tweeters, ala Econowave.

 

[442_Tom]

As mentioned above I prefer them to Heresy’s, and fortunately just picked up another pair a few months ago. Set them up in bedroom with my Technics SA 600. Rich and full with great bass, they sound tremendous for $60, not giving these away. To you answer your question, after the refoam, hook them up and let us know what you think, and go from there. I think you’ll be sonically surprised and pleased.

 

[PhooBar]

As soon as the glue cured on the new foams, I plugged them in.
Little Feat's Waiting for Columbus is my go-to for testing new speakers.
They do sound pretty good! Much better than expected.
I was a bit skeptical about those diffusers over the tweeters, so I tried them a bit without.
After a bit of listening they went back on and I'm willing to leave them there.
I think they might do with some angled stands, Heresy style.
Just enough to get them laid back a few degrees and off the floor.
And some new grilles.
Back to the workshop!

 

[442_Tom]

Agree with some sort of riser or stands - I picked up these walnut JBL‘s they work perfectly

 

[RobRoy]

Here's a picture of what these models look like.

Those look almost normal.

Back in my Seattle days around 2010 I picked up, at two different estate sales, pairs of Bose 301's (different series) for $30 a pair. For the money they were actually great! And that's the thing. For many Bose products it's not really that they are bad. It's that they are over-priced. When you get the stuff cheap, that's great!

 

[VintageDutch]

Okay... gonna chip in... a few month after the last post..

1st of all I own a set of Interaudio model IA 3000 Often revert to as the 3000 not be mistaken for the 3000XL....
2de In the late 70ties early 80ties I sold these a lot. back in the days I t was a good sounding for the American taste tuned Speaker. That is the reason I hunted a set of 3000

But as live goes on so did the advance in sound reproduction...
These days we do not care much anymore for Strong High roll of of the American sound of the 70ties..

Although i'm still in the process of restoring my set of 3000's I found, as many of you, that the high lacks a bit..

Now...let go back to the 70ties... We did two strange things with speakers... We bought either small speakers, hung them on brackets High against the ceiling tilting forward... Or we bought bigger ones like the 3000 and the 4000 and Placed them On stands at ear height....
Either way... speakers and ears were a bit more "in line" ... And listing was more an living room event (mostly on sunday) and musical wallpapering was unknown.
We as sellers made sure that we could sell brackets and stands as they where cheap to buy for us and we new how to sell the for good money... Often we even had to "Install" them...

In the eighties the Dome tweeter entered the scene.... Speakers changed.... people did not want to see them anymore... or they should be as big as a book..and they played more often and very very loud...... production methods changed... new materials, lower power consumption, higher power output.... etc... we all know the game.

This means that we are used to have speakers hooked up to our vintage gear that are modern and have more of lots of things...
So those rolled of Vintage speakers soon seem to lack Highs... witch they indeed do...

What I did to counter this is make a few changes to the filter.... First of all... I changed the tweeters from being in parallel to be in series.... going from 4 ohms to 16 ohms on the filter...
This shifts the roll of frequency up... In fact .... that is what already was done by Bose by using a series resistor with the tweeter raising the 4 ohms up to 8 ohms....
I take it a bit further up to 16 ohms.... The series resistor is not in series with the tweeters any more but is first in line from the speaker lead connector and lowered to two ohms, from there to the Cap still 4 uf and the coil... I estimate that the cross frequency is about 3000 hz right now.

This makes that the woofer is less influenced by the High pass filter...and that the cap has less ac current and thus cleaner function... The AC current is further reduced by the higher tweeter impedance of 16 ohms..

I'm still going to experiment with the coil... making a little change there could freshen the sound even more...

This was done tonight so I could not test at higher sound pressure... But at low volume The highs seem to be more present.. but still have a fairly strong roll off
I expect the "bigger change of the beast" when the coil is tamed a bit...


will post the findings here

 

[leesonic]

Hey, it's a pair of 2-way speakers, made by a company with a reputation (good or bad) for making speakers. How bad could they be? Put it this way, if I saw a pair needing a refoam at a reasonable price, I'd pick them up and fix them.

Good luck, and happy listening!

Lee.

 

[VintageDutch]

@leesonic
No there not bad at all... Just trying to make a point that Vintage speakers can be "re tuned" to adapt a more modern sound taste..so more people buy and restore them...so they not go to waste..

Meanwhile in shady shed somewhere in the Netherlands....The Bose model 3000 speakers are happey playing full power

 

[JeremyJJ]

View attachment 2011447

Ok older thread but had to chime in - I gave away a pair of 4000s a year ago (with a nice little Pioneer sx 202) to a guy that built a fence for me, younger and wanted to get into vintage audio - cabinets were a bit banged up but sounded great. That under appreciated 25 wpc pioneer from 1982 set up well with the big InterAudios.

Sorry PWK I sold my Herseys, but kept my 201s 301s 401s 501s 601s 701s and 901s (which have to be set up properly w/equalizer or Bose 550 or Spatial Receiver). And I’m still going to replace those IA 4000s.

https://classicreceivers.com/bose-spatial-control-receiver


https://assets.bose.com/content/dam...speakers/interaudio/pdf/owg_en_interaudio.pdf

The 4000s are an underrated speaker, and sonically on par with Heresys IMHO.
Bose truly made some fabulous speakers and equipment in the 70s and 80s - especially their 1801 amp (87 lbs) and 4401 preamp.

You seem to be the only guy I can find with some experience with the Bose 550 receiver. Does it have a built in equaliser that will suit series 6 901s and is it any good, considering it’s only 40wpc. I thought the 901s needed 100wpc at least (eg 551)? What’s your experience. There’s not much info on the net unfortunately.

 

[kevintomb]

interaudio 4000

i have tried different dome tweeters of up to 97db spl but still did not get a balanced sound as the tweeters were too insensitive. These speakers were born with highly sensitive cone tweeters but i did get a decent improvement when i replaced them with the bose 501 tweeters (aluminium in cone centre)

Dude, no disrespect, but why not FIRST try putting a new crossover capacitor???

You likely have 30 year old caps, and all these replacement tweeters you keep mentioning, are not going to FIX a bad or old cap.

 

[442_Tom]

Hi Jeremy and welcome to AK, the 550 is a bargain relative to the 551, and yes both do have built in 901 eq functionality. My guess is that Bose had an ‘entry-level’ 40wpc receiver in mind (550) as well as the higher priced (100wpc) 551, both very capable options for 901s. Owners manuals state minimum RMS of 10wpc, and 901s certainly are able to handle much much more, but sound quite nice with the 550. Driving six pair at a time is probably not advised, perhaps even beyond the realm of the mighty
1801.

I’ve got two nice project 550s sitting in a closet if you’re interested.

 

[JeremyJJ]

Hi Jeremy and welcome to AK, the 550 is a bargain relative to the 551, and yes both do have built in 901 eq functionality. My guess is that Bose had an ‘entry-level’ 40wpc receiver in mind (550) as well as the higher priced (100wpc) 551, both very capable options for 901s. Owners manuals state minimum RMS of 10wpc, and 901s certainly are able to handle much much more, but sound quite nice with the 550. Driving six pair at a time is probably not advised, perhaps even beyond the realm of the mighty
1801.

I’ve got two nice project 550s sitting in a closet if you’re interested.

View attachment 2404029 View attachment 2404030
View attachment 2404031
View attachment 2404101

Hi mate,

thanks I appreciate your knowledge on the 550. I imagine the 551s would be snapped up pretty fast as I have never seen one advertised. What would you be chasing for your 550? What’s a fair price on these do you think? Feel free to PM me if you like.

Cheers

Jeremy

 

[442_Tom]

Sent you a PM Jeremy. My spare 550s are sitting in a closet looking to be resurrected - again they are projects, but in good shape. I obtained them inexpensively and will eventually sell them in a similar fashion.

 

[Jason Lafler]

Hi all, I just picked up a pair of some Bose Interaudio 4000 speakers today dirt cheap. I never thought I'd own another pair of Bose because I've HATED every pair (3 or 4 pairs) I've had in the past!!! Anyways, I don't know anything about them but they are not the typical Bose. These are a straight-forward (standard) set of 2 way speakers. They say maximum 100 watts and 75 watts continuous. They have a 10 inch woofer and about a 3 inch cone tweeter/mid. The tweeter/mid has a generic looking refraction type lens over it. The cabinets are black and are ported with 2 ports in each one. The vinyl veneer is scraped and scratched here and there but otherwise in really good shape. What caught my eye was the woofers look better than average. The foam looks fairly thick and is in excellent shape. Long story short, I hooked these up to my Harman Kardon 55 watt per channel (in stereo mode) 5.1 receiver and they sounded very impressive in the bass. Even the highs and mids weren't as bad as I was expecting... Better high-end than I thought through that ugly-generic tweet/mid. I listened to all sorts of material through them and was shocked at how good they did sound. The bass was the most impressive thing about the sound of them; solid, deep and controlled. Anyways, anybody know anything about them? I've searched all over the internet and cannot find anything out. There is lots of pictures of the Interaudio 4000XL which looks identical. But these aren't the XL model. There's not even info about the XL model. There is tons about them in other countries and languages (mostly European) but nothing in English. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

A neighbor had a set given to him. He had them sitting in the middle of the room right side by side playing. He said they sounded terrible and asked me if I wanted them. Sure, I'll take them, I guess. Not too ethical of me. Sitting where they were of course they sounded like crap. I got home, set them up properly and enjoyed them. Kind of an odd design for Bose.