Acoustic engineer 038; audio visionary

Amar G Bose,the visionary engineer,inventor and billionaire entrepreneur whose namesake company,the Bose Corporation,became synonymous with high-quality audio systems and speakers

Amar G Bose,the visionary engineer,inventor and billionaire entrepreneur whose namesake company,the Bose Corporation,became synonymous with high-quality audio systems and speakers for home users,auditoriums and automobiles,died on Friday at his home in Wayland,Mass. He was 83.

As founder and chairman of the privately held company,Dr Bose focussed relentlessly on acoustic engineering innovation. His speakers,though expensive,earned a reputation for bringing concert-hall-quality audio into the home.

And by refusing to offer stock to the public,Dr Bose was able to pursue risky long-term research,such as noise-canceling headphones and an innovative suspension system for cars,without the pressures of quarterly earnings announcements.

In a 2004 interview in Popular Science magazine,he said: I would have been fired a hundred times at a company run by MBAs. But I never went into business to make money. I went into business so that I could do interesting things that hadnt been done before.

A perfectionist and a devotee of classical music,Dr Bose was disappointed by the inferior sound of a high-priced stereo system he purchased when he was an M.I.T. engineering student in the 1950s. His interest in acoustic engineering piqued,he realized that 80 percent of the sound experienced in a concert hall was indirect,meaning that it bounced off walls and ceilings before reaching the audience.

This realization,using basic physics,formed the basis of his research. In the early 1960s,Dr Bose invented a new type of stereo speaker based on psychoacoustics,the study of sound perception.

In 1968,he introduced the Bose 901 Direct/Reflecting speaker system,which became a best seller for more than 25 years and firmly entrenched Bose,based in Framingham,Mass.,as a leader in a highly competitive audio components marketplace.

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Later inventions included the popular Bose Wave radio and the Bose noise-cancelling headphones,which were so effective they were adopted by the military and commercial pilots.

Dr Boses devotion to research was matched by his passion for teaching. Having earned his bachelors,masters and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s,Dr Bose returned from a Fulbright scholarship at the National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi and joined the M.I.T. faculty in 1956.

Amar Gopal Bose was born on Nov. 2,1929,in Philadelphia. His father,Noni Gopal Bose,was a Bengali freedom fighter. Dr Bose and his ex-wife,Prema,had two children,Vanu,now the head of his own company,Vanu Inc. in Cambridge,Mass.,and Maya Bose,who survive him,as does his second wife,Ursula,and one grandchild. NYT