Originally posted by: Goosemaster
Bozack,
While some of what you wrote is true, a lot of it is full of generalizations from both sides of the spectrum.
First and foremost, there are a lot of people out there ( I hope) like myself that enjoy the pleasure of accurate music reproduction but are by no means audiophiles. I love listening to a variety of music, but prefer to hear it as the sound engineer intended it to sound, not after some sort of later manipulation. This is why I look for "numbers."
Although there are a lot of anti-Bose arguments, there is a lot of clout due to the ignorant masses, or ?haters?

. The ones who know what they are talking about and actually care about the music are the ones who don?t car whether something is popular or not. They care about the final output and that is that.
Once you research it a bit, you get to the heart of the argument against Bose. Bose Acoustimass systems simply aren't accurate. Perhaps it may seem like they produce accurate sound, but they actually produce "pleasing" sound that is somewhat reserved. This works well with the masses who are indifferent, but it meddles with the output that enthusiasts prefer. I want to hear Mick Jagger breathing on the mike. I want to hear Keith Richards? fingers rubbing against his guitar strings. I want to hear the internal reverberation of Heifetz?s playing from inside his violin. I want to hear the audience in the Smetana recording that I love so dearly.
Bose simply doesn?t offer that. Perhaps it can dazzle the masses with deceptively small speakers, but in the case of my sense of hearing, I am willing to sacrifice nothing in the pursuit of hearing what that recording engineer wanted me to hear.
As for myself, I have proven that commercialism or popularity had minimal effect on what I bought.
For fronts I have a pair of Mirage Frx-5?s, notably, Mirage?s cheapest floor standing speaker at the time. At the time, JBL Northridge?s had more bass, and Paradigms had higher highs. So why did I buy them exactly? In one word, I bought them for Accuracy. They are truly very neutral speakers that can about beautiful sound without adding practically anything of their own to the source. As for bass, they don?t output a lot as their floor is 45 Hz, but what a bass can be heard. It is truly a very rich sound that can make anyone happy, and the highs, wow. I was playing a Sibelius opera the other day at nearly full volume and went mad at how beautiful it sounded; it was truly crystal clear. At $400 for the pair, I feel that every cent was worth it.
For my subwoofer, I bought an Athena asp-400ps. Sure there are subs that will go lower, but I bought this one because it never stands out with music. It is simply invisible. With Rap or Classical or even Latin music, it remains in the background, providing beautiful bass that seems to come from my front speakers. It?s 10?? keeps up with fast tempo beats due to its 100watts (rms) while it outputs luscious, creamy and room-filling lows when asked to (during my receiver?s speaker test, the sub shakes every part of a three story house: Q). For the $325 I spent on it, I couldn?t be happier.
Finally, I could not afford a separate component amp and actually required a receiver for the inputs, so I got an Onkyo tx-sr600. It is quite the neutral device, and provides 90watts of clean power (rated at 80

) for each front speaker. It has a variety of inputs, and has served me well for the $400 I spent on it.