Bose has been known for it's very well marketed Acoustimass systems.
If you want a no-brainer sound system that you can conceal within the living room and make the wife happy with it, it's a good choice.
If however you're an audiophile, and each and every sound frequency matters, balance matters, sound image matters and speakers are a beautiful thing you love to show off, then Bose in NEVER ever on your list. Several other options are far better.
Bose marketing claims better sound by research... not exactly true! Better than a Samsung 5.1 kit by research... maybe... but at the price they sale their stuff, there are no excuses.
In the main living room, at the beginning of my re-married life, I really didn't want a fight, so the choice was to fit an Accoustimass 15 S2 with 5 jewel dual cubes. To cope with the lack of frequencies the Bose would imply, I've added a couple of Rock Solid Sound speakers and drove the entire thing with a HarmanKardon 355.
Given fact that the living room has a mezzanine half way into it, and it's ceiling ups from 3M to 6M, the sound seamed diffuse and uninvolving. This was fixed with a B&W ASW500 and a Yamaha Y30SW, placed at the transition of the room ceiling, together with a couple of crossovers, to split the subs to pre 80Hz on the ASW500, 80HZ to 120HZ on the Yamaha and the accoustimass would pick up from there on.
The RockSolids where also supported by a set of Castle Knight 5 speakers also placed at the room height transition. Those where amped from a NAD 320 plugged to the pre-out Mid channels of the HarmanKardon.
This worked nicely. Not brilliantly, but this is mainly to watch TV, and so it works.
Most important, it allowed me freedom to show off on the other rooms (cinema room for instance) with big speakers from Mission and Wharfedale, infecting the Wife with the audiophile bug. Now I can have speakers everywhere as she loves them as much as I do :)
7 years into it and the capacitors on the Bose are starting to go. It started with a cyclic wooooah until they charged and heated, worse during winter time...and progressed to a constant "whale chanting" sound... that annoyed...well everyone.
SO, I had 2 sets of Mordaunt Short's 302 satellites laying around, That covers center and Surround back. Found a nice pair of RockSolids in Germany, so the front channel is covered, together with the a reinforcement for the middle channel - mission bipolars. Should smooth this room transition further by directing the sound.
Ok. A solution is sketched... but what am I to do with the Bose things?
Sure any audiophile knows that Bose product is not really good. But is it bad? I mean, the electronics are now going out, but speakers are speakers and the cabinets are really well built and the internal channeling to process sound reverberation well sorted out.
Plus, I've got an old Acoustimass 25 woofer unit I've used for spares.
Some creative research with the phone audio analyzer and the web, concluded that: apart from the clever room ambience effects, the Jewel Dual cubes are crossed from 200Hz on at the unit, and their internal drivers are serialized (8ohm stuff then) and the main unit, drives both woofers serialized too (8ohm again)..and that's why they all sound bigger then they are... they push twice the air at once.
SO... Before considering removing everything from the walls, and leaving the new speakers sets alone: why not trying to play around with the good parts Bose had left?
Game-ON!
The Jewels where the easy part, found a set of configurable 2 way crossovers on amazon, brought 5, crossed them a bit further than 200Hz, their actually picking up on the south side of 500Hz on (not to overdrive the cubes), on Roundsky YLY 2088 crossovers (Up-range connection only).
The same purpose was applied to the acoustimass woofers. I'm allowing them to run 100Hz to 500Hz, stripped all the electronics, and placed a 200W/channel DoukAudio Valve amp to driving both the cabinets one on each speaker output.
The HK was retired for a long deserved overhaul, and a Marantz SR5010 7.2 was placed, driving the same NAD320 for the Castle speakers. I've added a Marantz PM65 SE and a few small valve amps for the remaining, new to be placed, speakers, but before they arrive, I've decided to check just how good the new X-over jewels, and dual subwoofer acoustimass un-Bosed where.
What a surprise! Vocals are VERY clear, Guitars too. And since I've had already X-over the 2 existing subwoofers, removing the 80Hz Dolby setting on the Marantz allowed a lot of Mid range to bleed into the subwoofer output, straight into the DoukAudio that can smooth it off by damping bass and freeing treble: ended up being a HighRange Subwoofer that fills in the frequencies easily and smoothly. Much like it's original design intentions, but without all that electronic processing.
I'm about to make a few tweaks later this week , maybe chaining them to the Pre-out Front instead of the SubWoofer, (getting some more frequency range out of it) but so far, it's quite remarkable for a "strip all electronics job".
I'm sure that, when the new speakers arrive and I install them, there will be A LOT of equalization to happen, but unBoseing the Bose was an interesting exercise that MAY get to stay installed... I may actually use the reinforcement amplifiers bass/treble adjustments to damp the setup around.
Lets see how it goes. But the "taking the Bose out of Bose" was VERY VERY successful.
UPDATE
New speakers arrived, so I've rigged the Living room. And having a Yamaha RX-V1600 hanging around, I decided to go crazy and change the 9.4 into a 17.4 system (having the room change ceiling from 3M to 6M half way through is a pain to equalize.. so yeah a lot of speakers placed strategically is the way to go.
The Marantz now drives :
-Front - B&W RockSolid Sound Monitor Speakers (read more about'em here)
-Center - A pair of Mordaunt Short MS302 (read more about'em here)
-Surround Mid - B&W RockSolid Sound Monitor Speakers (read more about'em here)
-Surround Back - A pair of Mordaunt Short MS302 (read more about'em here)
-SubWoofer1 - B&W ASW500 X-over 20Hz to 80Hz
-SubWoofer2 - Yamaha YST-SW030 X-Over from 80Hz to 120Hz
The Marantz Preouts to a Yamaha RX-V1600 that drives:
-Front - Customized Bose Jewell Dual Cube X-Over form around 500Hz up
-Center - Customized Bose Jewell Dual Cube X-Over form around 500Hz up
-Surround Mid - A pair of Mission M5DS Bi-polars
-Surround Back - Customized Bose Jewell Dual Cube X-Over form around 500Hz up
The Yamaha Preouts to both a NAD 320 and a DoukAudio Valve amplifier
The NAD 320 drives:
- Surround Mid - A pair of Castle acoustics knight 5 speakers (read more about'em here)
The DoukAudio drivers:
-MidRange Woofer1 - Customized Bose Accoustimass X-Over from 100Hz to 1Khz
-MidRange Woofer2 - Customized Bose Accoustimass X-Over from 100Hz to 1Khz
RESULTS:
WOW... I'm so happy that I'll re-listened to my preferred stuff AGAIN. The room now has 3 sweet-spots... The sofa (as it was previously), the dining table (right when the room ceiling ups to 6M) and the window (at the back of the room).
A LOT of this, has to do with the missions and the tilting of the castle speakers towards the back of the room.
I'm very happy with just how clear the sound is, how well distributed and how details everything seams.
I was expecting a lot of work to equalize this, but both Marantz and Yamaha made my life easy with their very precise speaker management tools.
So I did overcook, the setup for the living room, but then again, I can now enjoy music here too and not have to change room. Happy me :)
Some Pictures/video for your viewing pleasure:
Front
Mid
Audio Analysis with some ZZTop, from sweet spot 1 - the Sofa:
And even the pressure graph seems balanced!
Some Spoon for the test:
I'm very happy with these results :)
