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Q: What is your opinion on BOSE speakers?

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We have a couple of the Bose WaveRadios in the office. They're horrible. I hate how it has too much bass and I can't change it! 😛

For other Bose products, I have no opinion since I've never owned any nor have I really listened to them.
 
I was thinking about posting some speaker suggestions, but I'm so lazy that I'm just going to paste a copy of one of the many PMs I've sent to Kaido that's fairly relevant 😀

Enjoy:




I know what rockets are

You missed an incredible deal on Rocket ELTs by a couple months. (Assuming you were buying now)
They got rid of their cherry line of ELTs and a pair of them were going for $129. It was incredible the value you were getting if you made a 6.0 set of them for only $387 plus shipping.

I constantly read good things about rockets at AVSforum and hometheaterforum.

When you ask what are the best rocket speakers they sell, I grin because I know they sell some floorstanders that are over $4000 a pair.

It all depends on what you want to spend. The rocket ELTs are a great value and even though the deal is over, a 5.0 set of them would run under $1000.

I think it's a very good idea to get the sub separately and go SVS.

Dayum.... I was going to give you a sweet link to Plasmadocs, but they're redesigning their site. Plasmadocs offers packages with several speaker companies coupled with SVS subs instead of the subs that the speaker companies make.

I'm not sure how much you're planning on spending here... I wasn't expecting you to mention the best rockets looking at your setup now
Looking at all the possibilities makes me wish I had more experience hearing them. Most of the stuff I say about specific brands is just based off of research I did for buying my own stuff and reading about stuff I might want to get in the future if I magically got some more money
With the cheapest floorstanders costing $1000 a pair, I'd say sticking to bookshelf speakers would probably be a good idea unless you have a specific reason for wanting the floorstanders.
A couple RS250s up front with an RSC200 center and a couple RSS300 dipole surrounds would be a killer system. Looks like it would be about $2000 shipped though

Rockets are gorgeous... I agree with you on that . I've also read that their curved design gives them extra strength and helps them get even better sound without increasing the cost of production with more internal bracing... ( something like that ).

I only considered going with the rockets myself though. If the cherry deal had been going on when I was buying, I can almost garauntee you I'd have chosen those over the Fluance set I got.


There are several amazing brands in the $1000 to $2000 range for 5.0

The ones that come to mind for me are (other than rocket, which definately would have made my list)
Axiom Audio
Swan Speakers
Ascend Acoustics

For no particular reason I've been thinking Ascend is what I would get if I could afford a nice upgrade right now. As with all these companies, they've won tons of awards. I think above everything I like the simplicity they offer. They only make 3 basic speakers and two of them have matching drivers and tweeters making a matched system incredibly easy.
A set of 340s up front, a 340 center, and 170s for surrounds would run right around $1100.
It's not rosewood, but I really like their sleek look.

Oh, I should mention that I think all of the companies I've mentioned (and rockets too) offer a great try out system where you can order a pair of speakers, try it out in your home, and then send it back if you don't like them. You only have to pay for shipping back.
If I was going to pay $1000 or $2000 for a 5.0 system of internet speakers that I couldn't hear in a store, I would definately get a pair from the companies I was considering and listen to them for a while to decide what I liked better. $50 in shipping is a small price to pay for knowing you made the better choice for yourself.

That reminds me... Paradigm is another great option in this range. The best part of it is that you can easily find a paradigm dealer almost anywhere in North America. The Performance Series is a good one to check out.

Man, I hope I'm not overloading you with options here. I think picking out speakers is harder than picking out a computer by far . There's no numbers to tell you what's better than something else... and everyone has their own tastes. I didn't follow this advice myself because I started on a very limited budget, but going out and listening to different options is the best thing you can do. My original intent was to spend about $750 on my entire HT including my 24" tv I had at this time last year. Now I'm up to about $2300.


For your size of the room question, it does matter. The main thing here is that you get enough output to fill you room. This is mainly affected by 2 things: the power your receiver can output, and the efficiency of the speakers.
Something you'll notice if you walk into Best Buy or Circuit City or something is that just about every receiver you look at, regardless of price, it will say 100watts x 5 (or 6 or 7). The vast majority of receivers will not put out anything near their rated wattage.
I have a link here that gives a little overview of a variety of models stating their rated specs and the tested results.
My point here is that wattage ratings are generally meaningless. Don't get a receiver that's 125watt/channel over one that's 100watt/channel because chances are it's not going to correlate to anything.

Ok, getting over that... some good brands to look at are Onkyo, Denon, Harman Kardon, and Pioneer. There are a lot of other good choices too.
I probably should have asked you for a budget before I started writing this novel... but I'll say that in the $300 to $500 range, the Pioneer 1014 is an amazing deal. Whoa... looks like they just came out with the 1015. The 1014 and 1015 have the internals of a Pioneer elite receiver (the 52) but are a lot more affordable. They have a ton of features like built in auto equalizing and such. It's been tested to really put out 110watts/channel for the full 20hz to 20 khz spectrum too. This one is the real deal. If I was getting a new receiver, that's the one I'd get.

I think as a rule of thumb, spending roughly twice to 3 times as much on speakers as on the receiver is a good way to go to get a good balance of price and performance. Spending more on the speakers is going to make more difference than spending that same money on getting a better receiver. Speakers are still the main bottleneck in HT systems.

If you're looking for something more than the Pioneer one, something like a HK AVR-635 or a Denon 3805 would be a great choice too.


Ok, I was going to say the other thing to consider for room size/output... that's speaker efficiency. The number like 89dB means that's the sound level a speaker will output given 1 watt of power if you're 1 foot away from it... or is it meter? Well, whatever. The thing to know is that something in the mid to upper 80s is average. Something with an efficienc above 90 is a very efficient speaker. Klipsch is known for having very efficient designs. With more efficiency, the receiver doesn't have to work as hard to give you a higher sound level. If you have a really big room (like 20'x30'x10'), you're going to want to try to get some pretty efficient speakers to get good sound levels. My room is only 10'x12'x8' or so... I have no problem getting it as loud as I want


The same things go for subs. The bigger your room, the more powerful your sub is going to need to be in order to get a good output level. My PB-10 could do reference in my room if I wanted it to. It would do fine in even a medium sized room. The guys at SVS are a great resource. If you tell them the size of your room and what you hope to accomplish, they'll tell you the best sub for your needs, even if it's not the most expensive one


Let me know if there's anything else you think I could help you with. If you can't tell, I like talking about this sort of stuff. It's almost as fun as buying the stuff, and a lot easier on my wallet.

Man, I just looked back at what we've talked about before and I realize I repeated myself a lot... oh well
 
Needs poll.

Bose is too much money, too little quality on the components.

For that price, might as well get a nice Kilpsch system or other low end Bowers and Wilkins.
 
Bose are not bad speakers depending on the model.

But they are overpriced. There are much better speakers to be had for the same or less.
 
Bose speakers and the Sharper Image Ionic Breeze Air cleaner are two of a kind.

All marketing and very little performance.

But, at least the Bose WILL make sound. The Moronic Breeze air cleaner doesn't clean sh!t.
 
Back in my college days they were really fun to sell because they had the highest commission percentage of virtually all the speakers that I sold; for this strictly economic reason I pushed them on customers as hard as humanly possible. To a salesman, more commission = these are the best speakers ever. In actuality, they are not bad speakers, but deep down I have always known that for the money there are better speakers.
 
Originally posted by: Amused
The Moronic Breeze air cleaner doesn't clean sh!t.
Click to expand...

Actually, my aunt has one of those......I was quite surprised at how dirty the fins in it get.....they really do take crap out of the air.

 
Originally posted by: NINaudio
Originally posted by: Amused
The Moronic Breeze air cleaner doesn't clean sh!t.
Click to expand...

Actually, my aunt has one of those......I was quite surprised at how dirty the fins in it get.....they really do take crap out of the air.
Click to expand...

No, the fins oxidize. Read Consumer Reports multiple tests on this unit. It was the LEAST effective "air cleaner" they had ever tested.
 
Originally posted by: NINaudio
Originally posted by: Amused
The Moronic Breeze air cleaner doesn't clean sh!t.
Click to expand...

Actually, my aunt has one of those......I was quite surprised at how dirty the fins in it get.....they really do take crap out of the air.
Click to expand...
Put a piece of the same metal anywhere in your home and it will pick up all the dust around it... same basic effect. It's not doing anything that amazing, and as said above, it's mostly useless.

Anyway, I OWN Bose whereas I'm pretty sure most of the people in here commenting don't. Right out of college, signing bonus in my pocket, and I made a stop to see what they priced speaker stands at ($100 apiece!). I left the store with speakers. I hate their acoustimass speakers because I don't like finding places for small speakers: I instead would like to have speakers that are their own stands. So I bought their tower speakers (701 Series II) with their VCS-30 center/surround package.

My personal feeling is that these speakers have decent range at best. I kept checking the subwoofer plug, and I swear it makes no difference if I plug it in or not; no matter how much I turn it up (knob on the side is for the sub), there's hardly any bass. The center channel is fairly good, but the surrounds are the typical sub-par speakers. This is the most annoying factor of the whole package because without worthwhile surrounds, you miss a lot of the best effects of movies.

So, if I had a sub, I'd be fairly happy, but not exactly excited. My conclusion was the same as what everyone else has said here: it's not that they're terrible speakers, but if you can't find better for that kind of money, you're a moronic consumer and you DESERVE to buy over-priced stuff. I think that Polk and JBL make some great speakers for the price, so take a look at them. I feel like both companies actually put out quality products. JBL doesn't do much at the high-end IMO, whereas Polk has a very respectable high-end line, but I like JBL: a little better in terms of "bang for your buck" at the lower-end.

BTW, I would suggest AVSforum.com, but don't go there asking if Bose are good or not. They'll curse you for not knowing this in the first place. Just fyi.
 
i think they sound pretty good and look great but way too expensive for what you get. if i had the money, i wouldn't mind picking up a nice set of bose speakers
 
Overpriced, Overrated. Kind of like Monster Cables. People thinkg they are great because that's what their marketing tells them. But they aren't worth the price.
 
Outstripped by Klispsch and Mac (Not macintosh).

What about Harmon Kardon, i have heard good things about them, not high end equipment but very nice?

-Kevin
 
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