SMALL AND UNOBTRUSIVE

POOR SOUND FOR THE MONEY

I WISH I HAD READ THESE REVIEWS BEFORE I BOUGHT BOSE. BELIEVING THE MARKETING I BOUGHT THE SPEAKERS WITHOUT RESERVATION. NOW THAT I HAVE HAD THEM A YEAR I BELIEVE THAT EVERYTHING THAT I HAVE HEARD ABOUT THESE SPEAKERS IS FALSE. I HAVE GOTTEN TWO DIFFERENT YAMAHA RECEIVERS TRYING TO MAKE THEM SOUND BETTER BUT NOTHING SEEMS TO HAVE WORKED. AFTER READING THESE REVIEWS I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IS BEING DISCRIBED, THERE ALWAYS SEEMS TO BE SOMETHING MISSING IN THE SOUND, A LITTLE TOO HIGH, NO LOWS AND A HOLE IN THE MIDDLE. WISH I WOULD HAVE KNOWN.

sleek, compact & cool design, brand name, masters of marketing, "cult" following, heritage & blind loyalty

name, mass-produced radio shack grade build quality, vastly over priced (these are just glorified computer sub/sat speakers with excellent marketing)

I have a wealthy friend who built/designed his townhouse in Asia and selected BOSE as the cornerstone of is entertainment system. He spent 600K just on furnishing in a 2000 sq ft. area and dropped some big bucks on a multi sub/sat this Bose system.

Having limited space, I guess he wanted something that looked good, non-obtrusive and went with Bose because of their "reputation" (even though I remember warning him to audition other brands)

Well, I lived at his place for about a week and had a chance to audition the Bose system in real life situations, listening to all types of music and watching movies in a variety of surround sound formats.

Here's my opinion:
The sound was pleasant in that it didn't offend me or make me want to stop listening. But here's where the paises stops. Once you start comparing sound quality to other systems, you'll realize sound is flat, tonality is not accurate there is missing frequencies and lack of soundstage...in othe words, not audiophile quality. And when you factor in price, Bose is a pure rip off, that simple.

Now I know, the Pro Bose guys are offended here and angered because it's hard for most people to realize they made a mistake in their purchase especially after spending so much and instead realizing their mistake, justify their purchase by blindly supporting Bose and saying how great it is (call these the George Bush's of the audio crowd), but I'm not picking on Bose.

Let's use common sense, physics restricts/dictates that a small little cube is NOT physically able to recreate the full spectrum of sound in a convincing way...REGARDLESS of brand name.

Don't be fooled by Bose jargon created by marketing with their "direct, misdirect, reflect" technology or fooling around with equalizers/amps at the end of the day, it's just a sub/sat systen. Listen with your ears not your eyes!!

Bose haters are angry that they charge lofty amounts for equipment that can be "blown away" but competitors in similar price range. Yes, this is definetely true, but it's called a free market.
Yes, Bose is making outrageous mark ups on their equipment but in a way, I admire how good their marketing is. They have the ability to sell average at best quality equipment, build a cult following,"look you in the eye" & charge you and exhorbitant price and tell the world it's the best...now that is truly amazing! Capitalism at it's best!

Getting back my buddy and his Bose system. This guy is a musician so he knows what "real" music sounds like, he has guitars, drums, pianos in the same room as his Bose system and with his unlimited money, he hasn't complained or wanted to upgrade his sytem...so who am I to give any advice. If you forget about price & sound, these speakers meet his needs, it's a compact system which is to make sounds in a limited space and looks still very sex after all these years! Get this system to save space, not money!

The onnly good thing I can say about these is that I make good money fixing them. I usually soak test all my repairs by listening to them for about 2 - 3 hours to make sure everything is ok. This is a quality control that I insist upon, but it also lets me hear many types of gear and is usually the most fun part of the job.

Bose are the only systems that I charge for listening to. I tell my customers that even if I find nothing wrong and do no repairs that it will cost them $50 for every hour that I have to listen to a Bose acoustimass system. Mostly they are happy with that and pay up, sometimes they are not and take the system away, which makes me happy.

Pretty much everything... especially for the price.

These are simply awful. I write this in the hopes of persuading some people to not waste their money on these little systems.

I've been into audio since I was 6 years old and started making my own speakers and fixing electronics. I don't repair electronics for a job, but my reputation is such that people call me on almost a daily basis to ask for me to fix stuff, so I do know what I'm talking about.

Now we all know that the opinions of reviews of bose are either incredibly good, or incredibly bad. This is for two reasons: the people who write bad reviews know about hifi and know what to listen for and bose does not fool them. The good reviews are written by people who have upgraded from little plastic mini systems to bose so therefore it's a revelation into what bass (potentially) sounds like. To their ears it sounds great. This isn't a bad thing, but for what bose charge it's an utter con and that is what I mostly find objectionable about this company. They sell their equipment at premium prices and sacrifice quality on every level just to make a few more bucks out of the people they've conned with their excessive advertising.

Bose "cube" speakers have little plastic enclosures which contain 3" drivers that are really nothing special. They are the same chinese things used in many cheap mini systems and computer speakers. They are made by some litte factory in taiwan and would cost about $4 to buy from jaycar They can neither go very high, or very low nor handle much power. They typically are very "squaky", spitting out piercing mid-range frequencies but no real treble or bass. This leaves large gaps in the frequency range where sounds muffled or missing entirely.

The woofer has a very solid box which is quite well designed acoustically. It's great for generating low frequencies, but it's a very inefficient design and has a very low crossover frequency, so most of the mid bass is lost due to the fact that the cubes can't make any low frequencies.

The amplifier is built into the woofer and this is a poor a design as I've ever seen. Small power supply and poor ventilation. They are prone to failure due to excessive heat and bad design. All the boards and parts are so close together that it doesn't take a lot of heat to kill something. It's essentially just a cheap, little amplifier that cooks itself.

As for the sound... well, it's simply awful. when I first listened to one of these I couldn't stop fiddling with the remote. More treble, less treble, a little more bass, a little less treble... and so on. Most of the time I wanted to turn down the mid-range but there isn't an option for it. The bass is ok, but not as good as the old $30 Altec sub-sat system I bought for my PC a few years ago. Listening to these things is down right fatiguing. After a while you start to distract yourself and can't concentrate on the music any more. On some of my favourite recordings it seemed that whole instruments were missing.

So, to summarize, I've heard about a dozen different Acoustimass systems over the years and they are all the same, even if they have a different external design. They all have the same cheap components and the same cheap sound. For the huge amount of money that they cost you are better off buying some of the nicer Logitech or Creative speaker sets sine, while they are not ideal to a puritant like myself, they are a darn sight better than bose. They are cheaper and sound nicer and in some cases are actually quite well designed. Do not buy Bose.

Similar Products Used:

Danm near every piece of hifi you could name and most you couldn't.

Size of cubes, magnetic shielding, and styling.

Subwoofer is not magnetically shielded, general sound quality is weak

Let me preface this review by explaining that I received these speakers for free. Within that context, these speakers were a good deal for me. Otherwise I find the sound quality lacking in a number of key areas. My value rating reflects what I would have paid had I purchased these speakers locally from retailers. Firstly, I find when watching movies on my Sony DVP-NS725P DVD player to have a strong lack of centre channel strength. I often have a hard time hearing the vocals and have tried a number of things to compensate for this. While I use my Pioneer receiver's MCACC to set up the levels for each speaker, I have had to raise the centre channel by 5 decibels in comparison to the rest of the set. Without this, vocals can sometimes be very hard to make out. I tried two other speakers in the centre channel (both of dubious quality) that sounded stronger, louder and more defined. The voices were far easier to make out during normal movie viewing and felt like they were more "there". Additionally, I find the bass, while strong is very muddy and lacks precision. In comparison to my computer sound system which is five Z-560 satellites (the subwoofer volume control failed so I kept them around) and a Quest QS8 II subwoofer, the bass is better defined, and again, these are not the greatest speakers. I also can always tell exactly where the bass is coming from with this set, which I don't find a problem with my other (non-Bose) subwoofers. Details from movie and music soundtracks that I make out with my computer system are lost with the Bose speakers. I also had to move the subwoofer further away from my TV by over 1 metre to keep the magnetics from affecting my Sony 34" widescreen CRT's picture during any length of viewing. While the size of the cubes is nice and small, the sound quality is from from optimal. I find these speakers to sound very tinny. Cymbals and hi hats in music are not defined very well, and often times I can only listen to music for a short period of time with these speakers, while I can listen to my computer sound system for long periods of time without feeling fatigued. All in all, I would not have been very impressed with these speakers had I paid anything but a very highly discounted price. There is a dearth of stats published for them, and there is good reason for that. If Bose published stats on these speakers, the stats might show the lack of low midrange. For example, the descending drum progression on Judas Priest's "You've got another thing coming" tends to sound more like a drum that only has bass on the last two notes, instead of the tonal progression downwards I've heard better even out of my car's Harman Kardon sound system. All in all, not an impressive product. I plan to replace this set with a better quality set (at least the three front speakers and subwoofer) when I move into a larger abode soon.

Similar Products Used:

Logitech Z-560 speakers, KLH Plat-6 II, PSB, Harman Kardon sound system in my car.

Cube speaker arrays deliver just the right amount of sound to play clear and sound natural, Bass module not really designed for the boomy bass which you would get out of a sub-woofer with larger woofers. the bass module is designed to play bass frequencies that sound natural which is Bose's priority so they decided to use smaller woofers for the bass-module.

Even though the bass-module sounds superb on both music and movies if your the kind of person who likes boomy bass Bose Acoustimass Systems aren't for you. I like the bass-module because I'm more into Highs and Mids so bass module sounds just right.

I honestly believe that the Bose Acoustimass technologies are the far best achievement a speaker company in the industry could achieve. I have said in a review once before Bose isn't the best but for an out of the box system with an easy installation you can't go wrong. At first you say your paying for the name Bose because they've been around since the mid 60s. but your wrong in a way because your paying for their technologies that they designed to help serve you. Bose designed the Acoustimass to deliver the sound of big speakers in little cubes and a one bass module. For the people who are acoutically challenged ask yourself honestly you want speakers that sound good but don't want to clutter up your living space this is where Bose helps serve you, and if your a married guy unless you have your own private room with a lock most wives don't take kindly to large speakers and wires all of the room.

Beautiful exterior design, compact. Great sounds, works for both music and movies. Is amazingly powerful for such small speakers.

Bass power is a little low. Bulky and ugly acoustimass module.

It's unfortunate that some reviewers who were not happy with the product gave non-objective ratings that pushes down the average. If we use objective and logical arguments, there are many good things about the Bose speakers and some room for improvements that they can address for future product development. First off, Bose sounds absolutely terrific for the size of its satellite speaker. It looks great in a room and does not show as clutter furniture like most loudspeakers do. It delivers rich and warm sounds for both music and movies and despite what others say, can cover a wide range of frequency spectrum. There are 2 downside personally that I notice. First is the bulky size and ugly design of the subwoofer (they call it the acoustimass module). Second is the bass power itself. They can improve on these, though I feel that most overdriven bass is an exaggeration of real-life analog sounds anyway made by Hollywood as special effects. So I don't rate these weaknesses to be major. I tested Bose, M&K, Definitive Tech and B&W at Magnolia and while M&K and DT deliver a slightly more precise high tone and powerful bass, they are bulky, look ugly and cost $200-400 more. The Bose speakers do the job for me and they are more than enough for my needs. A reviewer pointed out about Bose's marketing intensity as a sign of product inferiority. Well, I happen to in marketing management for 7 years in high-tech companies and I can tell you that only companies who are run well and have focused visions will succeed. Do not think for a minute that smaller companies like M&K or Aperion, who do not post ads on paper, do not do any marketing. Their lack of presence in advertisement IS their marketing. It is creating the perception of high-class and exclusivity for audiophiles target market rather than for general public consumption. Just like you never see a Ferarri ads on tv except in showrooms. I always bet my money on a well-run company who knows what they are doing, like Bose. Many people think that Bose put more money in marketing than R&D and buyers pay for marketing-funded speakers. But they are ignorant of the fact that smaller exclusive companies do not have the funding and manpower to compete at the same level as the bigger players. Sometimes not even close. I don't know what the percentage of R&D funding Bose allocates, let's say it's 70-30 marketing/operations - R&D. That 30% R&D budget is more than many other companies' entire revenue. Let's be honest, Bose products (not just their speakers) are of excellent quality. They really do it well. Bose is driven to deliver the needs for 95% of consumers out there. There will be those 5% audiophiles who may go for something exclusive but Bose is just a company who knows what it's doing and the smaller firms who don't know how to run a business will eventually die. I am not affiliated with Bose in any way. This is just my personal opinion.

Similar Products Used:

M&K, Definitive Techology, B&W

Wide range Twiddler Drivers. 6.1 channel capable.

Pricey.

I have read all of the reviews of the BOSE Acoustimass 15 Series II speakers. I purchased them last month and am waiting for the upgrade speaker to make it a AC16 with 6.1 sound. I have a perfectly rectangular room that is 19ft long by 13ft wide, so my room is ideally setup for a home theatre system. I have a Mitsubishi WS-65313 65" television, Yamaha RXV640 Receiver, and the Samsung DVD-HD931 High Def DVD. I performed some NON-PROFESSIONAL AND NON-SCIENTIFIC tests and it cleared several things up for me personally and I wanted to share them with you. First of all, if you want truly wonderful, life like sound, you need to purchase two front loudspeakers, dedicated center, bi-directional surrounds, and two rear center speakers. Axiom makes a good set. They will cost about the same as the BOSE. HOWEVER... If you are like me who doesn't want an eyesore and who doesn't have the room for those speakers, then a small set is good and the BOSE would be the ideal choice. Here is why. I have read that there is a cutoff in the frequency range between 200hz and 280hz. I looked at the article that information is based on and it was written in 1999. I decided to test that theory. I generated frequencies on my computer from 300hz down to 20hz and sent them through my Yamaha RXV640 receiver. Well, what do you think happened? The cube speakers played ALL of the frequencies down to 190hz and then between 190 and 180, the sub seamlessly kicked in. The sub generated tones all the way down to about 28hz refuting the claim that it doesn't go below 48hz. I also had a sound meter and noticed very little fluctuation in the level, certainly not +/- 10db as indicated in the infamous 1999 BOSE review. As for the high frequencies, my ears can't hear anything above 16khz, however, I could still feel the pressure on my eardrum. I'm sure if I had the proper equipment, I could detect whether the speakers are generating tones that high, but I had to rely on my 32 year old ears. The last test I generated was a frequency slide going from 20khz to 20hz. I sat in my normal sitting position and played that tone and noticed no fluctuations at all with minimal decibal fluctuation. You can't pick the SUB location out. I stand in front of a Cub speaker and as far as I can tell, the bass comes the cube. Is BOSE expensive? Yes. Are there better speakers out there? Yes. I just read about a bookshelf system that is THX Certified, but I didn't want to pay the $4000 price tag. Please don't rely on five year old articles to make your decisions. Go to a store like Ultimate Electronics or Tweeter. They have the BOSE speakers in a room with twenty other speakers to compare them to. Heck, take a couple of DVD's with you and play them. Trust your ears and decide for yourself. However, if your going to compare them to loudspeakers and larger bi-directional surrounds, there will be no comparison. BOSE speakers serve the purpose of providing a hidden, non-obtrusive speaker system that delivers more than adequate and precise sound. Compare them to Infinity, Klipsh, Mirage, and you will be happy with BOSE. I was.

Clean, powerful delivery of sound. No need for mega watt system for high powered sounds.

Need a switch outlet as the Accousticmass is powered by the subwoofer and it will always be on if you don't.(Reason for not needing a billion watts of power)

Wow, not sure where the previous reviewers got their ideas about Bose products, but my guess would be a frustrated wallet. No the products aren't cheap, but far better than some of these reviewers care to concide in there reviews. Bose is about the science of sound and using wave signs(signals)to build the spectrum of sound. Lets face it, your room is full of stuff to reflect sound. The system is incredibly rich with either music or home theater in play. Details can be heard that you may not hear on other speaker setups. Voice is true with a realism that needs to be experienced. Don't let negative reviewers or anyone tell what to buy. But you owe it to yourself to at least experience this setup if you are in the market for a new system. (Personally I have never seen a Bose store all decked out with all the sound accoustics described?) Try Circuit City, no speacial areas for listening, just a bunch of gear in one or two rooms. I have over the years replaced all my other speaker systems with Bose products and have really enjoyed them.

Similar Products Used:

Yamaha, Boston Acoustic, JBL, Klipch.

none well paperwights maybe

everything

To those who visit the bose factory stores, the 1000 dollar sound system you purchased is wired up in an acoustically perfect room with acoustic wall treatments, specifically desgined dimensions. You were not sold on a sound system, you were sold on about 25 thousand dollars of room treatments and design, at 40 dollars per square foot. The bose factory is the worst place to demo bose speakers as the quality of the room far outweighs the quality of the product. Visit more than one place, listen to more than bose speakers, think about this, bose advertises to you constantly. How about other makes, like klipsch, energy, jbl, mirage, polk, b&w. I bet most bose customers have never heard of half these makes, if any. Disregard specs, sound, price, all that other crap that flies around these forums. Strictly a business analysis... How does a company that NEVER advertises (jbl, klipsch, mirage, b&w, etc...) stay alive? How does any company that does not advertise stay alive? If and only if their product is freaking good that the dont need advertising. You want to talk walk in to the room and be sold (without 25k in acoustical help) listen to the products of these brands. If you remove yourself from the advertising juggernaut that is bose, and the fact that the jones' next door just got a bose system and just love it and now you need one too. The mere business aspect of it will begin to make sense, and then, you will be ready to bear witness to some of the most awesome home theatre equipment out there. The clincher, at a lower price point than bose. How bose can be in business despite all of its advertising is the real question here.....

Similar Products Used:

jbl, dpa, yamaha, klipsch

Buyer Beware!!! the "bass" module only goes down to 46Hz (most less expensive speaker systems will go down to 29 or 30Hz such as the Energy Take 5.2 and even cheap Paradigm speaker packages). The Bose Bass module reaches up to 200Hz. Here is where the problem begins... The little cube speakers go down to 280Hz. So you are missing sound from 200Hz to 280Hz. If you listen to music or use these for Home theater, then you will be missing a pretty important part of the sound spectrum. But wait! That's not it! The cube speakers only go up to 13KHz (Human hearing can reach 20KHz). Bose has decided for you that anything above 13Khz is not important. Well, like I said before... If you use these for music or Home Theater you will be missing a lot. Unbelievable! Due to the system's internal crossover, there is an audible gap from 200Hz to 280Hz and from 13KHz to 20Khz. THAT MEANS ONLY 66% OF THE ACTUAL RECORDING OR MOVIE IS BEING PLAYED BACK TO YOU!! This is the most outrageously overpriced speaker system I have ever heard. Please do yourself a favor and go listen to other products. If you can't go to a decent audio store to audition speakers and your ONLY option is Best Buy or Circuit City, then spend less money and get the Athena speakers or JBL speakers or Klipsch speakers. Much better options (not available at chain stores yet they are probably available at a decent audio shop near you) would be speaker offerings from Energy, Paradigm, Gallo(very small speakers but impressive sound), B&W... and great bargains on terrific subwoofers can be found if you look at SVS or HSU subwoofers (not extremely expensive but great bang for the buck). Ask yourself this? Who told you Bose makes great speakers? Radio Commercial? (paid for by Bose) Magazine Advertisement? (paid for by Bose) Infomercial??? A person who owns Bose and has never ventured outside of Sam's Club or Best Buy to listen to speakers? Please, before spending your hard earned money, do some research on these speakers. Search the message boards at audio websites such as Audiogon, Audio Asylum, Sound and Vision, AVS forum, etc. etc. I don't expect everyone to take my word as Golden and I completely understand. Just do some research about these speakers!!! I probably can't post links but this will get you started... look for discussion forums at Web sites such as Audiogon, Audio Asylum, Sound and Vision Mag, and AVS forum.