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The Rediff Business Special / Suhasini Haidar

A sound price: Rs 199,900 only!

They have this really neat trick at the newly-opened Bose showroom in New Delhi's Connaught Place, the venerable audio company's first anywhere outside of the United States.

Charming young salespeople take you for a ''tour'' of their equipment, so that you can ''feel'' the sound of Bose amplifying systems and see if they are worth their price.

You are made to sit down for an audio-visual presentation where they have these two huge speakers.

Throughout the show, you listen to different sounds and it really is marvellous how each tone, each string, each note of the music seems to have a distinct source. You think that those large speakers do a really good job.

Towards the end of the show, a sales assistant goes up to the speakers and removes them, and voila! Below the shell are two tiny ''jewel box'' speakers, each measuring four inches by two inches. At half-a-kilo per speaker, they could be large paperweights.

They connect to a sort of amplifying bass box, which can easily be stored underneath a table, and out of sight. This is no ordinary hi-fi system; it is technology at work in its most clarified form. So you no longer have to adjust bass, treble, noise reduction, digital echo, etc.

Bose's unique selling point: the size of their speakers, and the invisibility of the rest of their music equipment. Their philosophy, says Bose India business development manager Rakesh Pandey, is that you experience the sound without seeing the accompanying apparatus. "We combine high technology with simplicity, " he says with obvious pride. "Bose systems are on the cutting edge of music technology anywhere in the world."

Founded in 1964 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology electrical engineering professor Dr Amar Bose, Bose Corporation emerged out of Dr Bose's graduate work in ''psycho-acoustics''. A violin player himself, he researched not just the way music sounded, but how people listened and perceived it.

Which is why in its patented ''Lifestyle'' home theatre systems, Bose provides not one but five sets of speakers. Three are for distributing components of sound to the listener, and two sets at the back for surround sound. Dr Bose continues to teach at the MIT, and furthers his research in the field.

In fact, all the profits from his company are just ploughed back into research at the Bose Corporation Research Laboratory in Massachusetts.

Surprisingly, Bose's first products were built not for music-lovers, but for the US army. The company still produces technological devices for military use, particularly for reducing the noise levels in airplane cockpits. However, the company has really become famous for its design of acoustics in public halls around the world, including Madison Square Gardens in New York and the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican in Italy.

Bose systems worldwide are well known for their excellence, and even in India, most auditoria strive to install them. The recently-renovated Kamani auditorium in Delhi installed a Bose system in its hall and its patrons are extremely pleased with it.

However, on the retail side, Bose is renowned for the steep price tag that accompanies each of its products, Bose's UFP, or Unique Frightening Point, if you like.

At its Delhi showroom, the ''most affordable system'' comprising a compact disc player with AM/FM radio, two speakers and a bass module, retails at an amazing Rs 69,900 plus tax. The most advanced system, which includes five sets of speakers (each set has two jewel cube speakers), a six-CD changer, and connections for a television, video player, laser disc player, etc, is priced an unaffordable Rs 199,900 plus tax.

But Bose executives are quick to defend the prices, explaining with well-rehearsed ease that it is the value of these systems and not the cost that should be counted. "After all, if you have two silk saris, why do you pay Rs 1,000 for one, and not blink at the paying Rs 30,000 to Rs 40,000 for another. Can you compare the two?" says Pandey.

The other criticism is that Bose will only be selling complete audio and video systems in India, and it will not be possible to buy just the speakers or any other individual component. This puts Bose's systems firmly out of the reach of even the averagely-wealthy music-lover.

That does not deter many people from coming, partly out of curiousity, to Bose's swanky new showroom. On some days, they get up to 200 visitors there. Ashwini Sehgal, banking official, brought his wife to the showroom after reading news reports about it. "I came here expecting high prices," he says, rather dejectedly, "But after coming here I realise that only very wealthy people who don't look at cost can afford these exorbitant systems." He agrees, though, that the sound quality on these systems is better than anything he has heard before.

It is hard to miss all the connections that the Bose Corporation has with India. Besides the fact that the founder of the company is of Indian origin, many of his employees are also from India, having traversed the well-worn engineering-IIT-USA route.

So, one asks, is that the reason that Bose chose to open its first store outside of the United States in India? "As Bose systems are produced only in North America, we try to set up alliances in other countries for the distribution and sale of our music systems," Pandey explains, "But in India, we just couldn't find any existing and reliable distribution network. So we needed to do it ourselves."

A rationale that just reinforces the hardheaded and down-to-earth attitude about quality-consciousness that Bose Corporation is world renowned for. It has made a sizeable investment here, and for the moment Pandey has high hopes from the Indian market. What might be needed for that, though, are some budget-friendly products in order that the new showroom does not become just a beautiful museum to sound excellence.

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