Small size made it easy to return for a refund

You name it

Horrible sound quality. Sounds like fingernails on a chalk board. Bloated, tubby bass and screachy highs. Sounds worse than my ex-wife's voice. Avoid at all costs.

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Blown out Sparkomatic speaker in a 1973 Ford Pinto

size, looks (THIS IS A CORRECTION FROM AN EARLIER SUBMIT FROM WHEN I WAS NAIVE AND IGNORANT)

Overpriced, placement of "bass"-module (WAF), highs sound harsh at high volumes, overall quality of sound

Okay, where shall I start... first, this submit is a correction from an earlier one when I just bought the system (just scroll down and u see me again talking sh*t about this piece of crap... I fully admit ).I heard this system at a friend's house first and I was impressed by the amount of volumes these dices could produce.
I thought it sounded pretty good and I had made a fair deal. Remember, I didn't do any comparison with other "hi-fi" products! Well, let's say everybody makes mistakes now and then...

*Until* I decided to expand my system so I bought a pair of Magnat Vector V-77 REAL speakers. Check them out at www.magnat.de, these are great. They consist of 2 16 cm woofers, a ceramic dome tweeter (about 0.5") and a third 16 cm driver for the mids.
I hooked these speakers to the SAME amplifier, which is a Sony TAFB-940 R, which is a very good amplifier, check out the reviews... 8 in total with a 5.00 average :).
Anyway, the highs sounded much better and clearer, with no distortion at all. This clearly shows the difference between a ceramic tweeter and a Bose paper cone tweeter with thin plastic dust caps.
What was better more:
-Mids
-Real bass this time
-Soundstage
-Detail

Well, I'm nearly done with this review. And I'm cured. Don't buy the Bose Acoustimass... overpriced crap. Luckily I managed to sell them to an individual for 50% of the retail price who was as ignorant as me in the beginning... hurray :)

Although I have to say I use one more Bose product: the 802 PA system for my band I'm playing in. Nothing magic about these but they really work and sound ok for what we do. They could use more bass, though. But that was easily augmented with a dual 18" sub.

But anyway, a message for new users: Do a thorough comparison before you buy anything!! I didn't and I had to pay the price for that. Anyone wondering why you won't find Bose products in *any* hi-fi store which sells other products like B&W, Klipsch, Dynaudio, Martin Logan etc.? Listen for yourself and decide.

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There is no similar product which is so heavily overpriced and sounds so much like sh*t as this one. If we're talking about sound quality, I'd say it's equivalent to

Small speakers: Does'nt take up room.

None if you use them for what's attended.

The sound is beautiful. I would'nt buy no other speakers. Very Rich in bass. THe subwoofer kicks! I had next door neighbors complain a few times(at low volume). They would be suprise how small the speakers are. It's Cutting edge technology. If you buy these speakers and it sounds lousy...it must be your(kmart)reciever. I am running these speakers from a VSX-D510S Pioneer reciever,an Expander, and Pioneer EQ. Clean and powerful: 100 watts to 5 channels. You must have good quality equipment all round. Size of the room also counts. Bose has big sound for smaller rooms. An overkill for my case. Love it.
I brought these speakers back in 1992 overseas for under 500.00 which was a great deal at the time. My military roommate use them outdoors for a party one time. They sound lousy. These type of speakers are not for a football stadium rave party. I listen to jazz and R&B, so these are for using at a small cocktail party. I had no problem with the speakers highs and lows, the other equipment takes care of that. Take that into account when you reading reviews. The speakers has to be tailored to you.

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None

Small size

Everything but the size

If I told someone that speaker A is worth $2000 and speaker B is worth $500 (actually A is 500 B is 2000). And If he listened to both speakers, he may be would say the speaker A is better than B in sound quality.

People said that bose speakers is good because of the brand & the price. Actually the sound quality is just terrible.

With $200-500 tannoy or mission or other speakers + $200-300 Subwoofer, you'll get much better sound compared to bose speakers.

Bose speakers is lack of everything, bass, mid, high. If you hear good sound in the bose showroom, it because of good placement of speakers, good room acoustic (can profide good sound staging)

For the bass module, How can you expect low freq from 5.25" driver, low volume box, low powered driver???
That's why you never found the freq range of the speakers in the bose website.

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Mission, Tannoy

I purchased my AM5-MK2 7 years ago and am still using it with my Onkyo AV-AMP. It's a great speaker if you want a speaker system which performs well both in music and AV. It may not be compared to other speakers in pure musical playback, but I am sure that no single speaker with similar price which are better in musical playback can perform as well as BOSE in an AV environment. In fact, the only thing that i am not very satisfied with my AM5 is the depth of base when listening to music. Vocal and treble are clear.

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JBL, Onkyo, Denon, Musical Fedility, Tannoy

Power!! clarity.. Deep powerfull Bass and clear crisp full range sound.

Im still trying to find them??

After going to audio store after audio store looking at audio systems with $2,500 (australian) in my poket.. I was dissapointed in the systems which used a tweeter to creat the clarity and a muffled midbass sound from the woofers where the tweeter left off to creat the rest off the sounds... I found this sound unnatural and very tweety tweety.. this is from $3000 floor standing speakers by the way.. I had herd off bose previously but herd that they were very expensive and they were my last shop on my list to go in..

I found that u get a good sound from a system wich cost $3000 (all austrlian) but then u have to buy a cd player and then then amplifyres. and trying to match everything to get a good sound.. and ended up costting like $5000 after all off this. and i was like no way forget that.. A lady in the audio shop said to me dont buy Bose .. and i said how come and she explained no treble no bass.. and i was like ow then what would u sugest for me in my price range. she pointed to book shelf speakers a woofer on the ground and a amplifyer cd player. and i said for how much she was about $2500.. she gave me a demo i sat in the chair and listened.. there was bass but no punch. and the speakers were gutles so i left the store with a puzzled face.. could the bose lifestyle be that bad??

i drove right over to Black wood sound in Adeliade and sat in their chair.. and said let me here the lifestyle 5 III sytem.. they turned it on DOw DoW CHicka CHicka if u have herd off that song.. i was totally blown away.. i had to close my jaw with my hand. there was powerfull bass with punch.. full deep sound with crisp clarity comming from the tiny cubes. and he turned it up LOUD!! i had to ask him again which speakers where they comming from??.. the huge ones on the floor or those little things on the wall.. Compared to the other speakers i was offered at the other store for the same price these were 100 times better.. u get a cd player tuner power amplifyers.. and a bass module with creats bass and bunch and can get very very low.. and this great remote controle that u dont have to point!!!

In a review befor a guy turned down the treble form the bass moduel.. and i agree it does make a weird noise but its just because whilst turning down the treble for the cube speakers the treble is going to the sub. when u play it normally the sub playes a tini bit off voice but the rest is bass.. if you place the bass moduel correctly in your room u can feel the bass waves hit you.. it is unbelievable

Id say Dont listn to those anti Bose pple.. listen to it for your self. and let you be the juge!!

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All the speakers sytems i turned down after choosing the lifestyle 5 III sytem (alot)

small; great sound

The "Bose" name makes some people hate it

I almost didn't buy this system. It had nothing to do with my own opinion, but with the people who post here. I've listened to a lot of speakers while trying to decide which I wanted and I always loved the way the AM5 sounded. As I read through these posts, I found out I am thought of as an audio neanderthal b/c the Bose speakers sound good to me. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
I work in the computer field (actually routers and firewalls but close enough). Everyone bashes Windows. Why? Is Windows a bad product? No, actually Windows is pretty stable when used properly. It has a lot of adv. over its competition, but everyone makes jokes about it b/c it's on top.
So I understand where you Bose haters are coming from. You know the audio lingo and you worked in a speaker store long enough to really impress people with your "knowledge". You don't feel you have a choice but to bahhh like the rest of the sheep for fear that you'll be seen for something less than a professional audiophile. Don't worry, your secret is safe with us. I'll just listen to my wonderful sounding AM5 speakers while you disconnect your 28.8k modem, walk back to your living room and continue explaining to your wife how there is no way O.J. did it.
To those of you who are considering these speakers, think and listen for yourselves. I can tell you all day that a corvette lacks acceleration, but until you get in and drive it you won't know for sure. I, for one, am very glad I ignored a lot of these posts and enjoyed watching great sounding movies last night.

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Lots

Small size & enveloping sound

Bass module, PRICE

This is just a follow-up to my previous post. I too am amazed by the Bose-Haters out there, not just for this product, but by the negative reviews for anything that carries the Bose name.

Now while I don't consider myself an expert, I find it hard to believe that Bose can be as successful as it has been if all of their products are as terrible as the reviewers here make them out to be. Are they the best? Most definitely not, but they must satisfy a need that the public has. A need for decent sounding speakers that don't monopolize your listening area.

I've had them now for five years and the bass (or lack thereof) issue was most noticeable to me when I upgraded from a Sear special Pioneer to a Yamaha Pro-Logic receiver and subsequently the Yamaha Dolby Digital/DTS RX-V595a. I've come to find out that this has more to do with Yamaha's bright or "Natural Sound" tendancies. This was corrected by adding a powered sub (M&K Vk7), something that most people would do anyway to a home theater regardless of the the main speakers used. As the previous post stated, the sound is truly enveloping, provided the arrays are aimed properly.

You definitely can buy the same or better for less (or more for that matter), but all things considered, they aren't that bad. I'll stick to my previous adjective - decent.

Price just needs to come down a bit.

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Pioneer tower speakers

size

size

It's interesting to read these reviews for Bose speakers. I myself have a pair of Bose 601s manufactured back in 1980 and still enjoy them. You cannot slam people for liking the Acoustimass system, that's their business. And in my opinion, KLH bookshelf speakers do not sound better. I know,
I have some (I hung them out on my patio). Obviously the quality of Bose products have gone down in the last 10 years or so. The Bose 301s used to be quality speakers but they do not look very well constructed nowadays. If I had a suggestion for Bose I would say they either need to lower their prices or build a better quality product.

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nothing

If filtered properly, decent highs.

lack of bass, muddy vocals at high volume, need lots of power

I believe bose to be what I call an ambience system. These systems excel at playing background music like jazz and classical music. If you have it try listening to The Rock Sound track. If the speakers are set up correctly the AM5 should fill the room with should that washes over you like warm air.
My speakers are placed in a wood room that is 11' in hight 12'-15'in width and about 40' in length with openings into at leas three rooms. In the other rooms we use a pair of Bose 201's and a pair of 3 way acoustic suspension KLH. I had to run the AM5 off of a seperate Samson 250 watt amp. The other pairs are run from an Onkyo stere reciever rated at about 110watts per channel. Believe it or not is is enough to power the entire first floor of the Fraternity House. The amp need to be cranked 3/4 of the way up in orde to keep up with the other speakers on the Onkyo, which are set at the 10-11 o'clock position, not much for the Onkyo.
The sound from the bose is very clear because it is run directly form a Kenwood CD player to the amp. It is unable to be adulterated by an tone controls, all we do is crank it until it sounds respectable. This has to be the beginning of the ultimate test for these Speakers. If they can survive the Weekend abuse of a Fraternity house then something has to be good about them.
At first these were hooked up to the Onkyo and they sounded like crap. I tweaked the hell out of the Onky to make it sound good but all that happed was that they started to distort. The second amp was bought so the receive did not have to work this hard because it was getting hot one night we even tripped the protection circuitry.
I decided to switch the bose to the Samson which was rated at 100 watts per channel but that only produce minimal results. One night we also tripped that protection circuitry as well.
While testing the amp to make sure that it was still operable I notice it was bridgeable, and in this case would produce 250. The bose manual says it can take a couple of hundred watts so I bridged it. I know that it now only produce mono and not stereo, but the drunken kids will never tell the difference, as they don't really care like I do.
The difference was very dramatic and I am sorry I did it now because now this thing can really rock. The little sub wich is hidden under a piano in our woodroom seem to produce more bass in the Brothers room directly above it that in the wood room but, teh bass is now at least unacceptable.
This whole experience tells me that the bose just needs a whole lot of power to perform the way most people want it to. It seems the the AM5 is a Mighty Might now. If you want boom, boom, stop playing crank some juice into the little guys or get some real speakers and a seperate powered subwoofer. I personally have a fifteen incher in my tiny room, because I love bass.
The moral of this whole story is use these speakers for what they are really for unless you are willing to make these little guys scream. This is exactly what they do at high volumes. The highs can be ear piercing at times, but at least you can still sing along. When you hear bose think ambience, and when you hear Bose subwoofers think lots of power to make them perform.
If drink good scotch and listen to classical music while smoking a cigar and try not to distrub the wife any bose system at "moderate" volume is for you. If you want to live get some Definitives, Klipsch or something. Like I have said many times though out the article. This is art gallery material, unless you punish these speakers with some power.
They get a 4 for having balls, 5 for classical and two burps, I case of "beast", and three guys on the bar for surviving weekends. 5 stars for you guys sipping scotch and listening to classical music.

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