Re: compressed music
If your only using a 100 watts on the 901's you loosing a lot!!! The last bose 901 set up that I had, I was running carver TFM 25's on each channel, they are a 250 watt amp, where you really loose out with the bose and low wattage amps is in the very highs and the deep lows, you are getting middle spectrum sound, with the low watt amp, the bass will get muddy and the highs will get scratchy..
The 901 series speakers can handle just about anything you throw at them, so as your out and about, look around for some higher powered seperates and you will be amazed at how good they sound. 100 watts a channel is just not enough, which could be a good part of your question about compressed music and quality.
You have to remember the older the bose, the less efficient they are, the foam surrounds on the speakers gets less and less flexible hindering the sound reproduction and requires more and more power. Every set of bose I buy, I get the speaker rebuilt kits off ebay and put them back as close to new as I possibly can, the last rebuild foam surround kit I got was about $36.00 per speaker.
Another thing I will add, when dealing with consumer grade amps, you will loose up to 40% of the actual power rating due to heat and distortion, so even brand new, you might only be getting 60 watts per channel, if it is an old amp, that number is going to go down, heat in the enemy of electronics and they become less efficient the older they get.. So a 10 year old amp that has been used normally might only be putting out an actual 20 watts per channel. That is if it is still running balanced, each channel can deteriorate at a different pace, depending on how it is designed, so you could be getting 20 out of one channel and less or more out of the other channel..
If I were you, I would look around for a couple of older Marantz(sp) amps, they are cheap now a days, but were one of the best in their day, I just saw two of them at our local thrift shop for $10 each. They were rated at 200 watts each, and they are a Warm amp, which brings out the warmth in the speakers.
The more clean power you can give to each one of those speakers, the better all of your sound is going to be..
