2. home-theater
  3. 1181069436

Going into the dark side.....please help

Lots of change in life and thinking about completely blow out my seperates and switch to Bose 321.

I have a 3 weeks old baby girl and have to start to plan baby proof my living room area. I have a complete full setup in my basement theater with Maggie1.6, Meridian 561 and Proceed amp and HSU VTF 3. I will keep those and use them to get my fix of hifi or mid-fi actually.

T current living room is mainly for casual TV/DVD viewing and mostly background music. I have Acurus ACT3, Green Mountain Europa, HSU VTF-2 and Classe 150 there. Nothing fancy but decent sounding. Wife complains about the look, difficulty to operate and many wires around when baby gets a bit older.

So it seems the only way out for me is to get rid of them and get an Bose 321 or somehting like that, 2.1 not 5.1, fairly modern looking, stremlined, and easy to operat, ie build in DVD. I know I have to take a big set back in terms of sound quality. But I want to ask for some help here to see if there is any alternative to the Bo$e. I normally would have researched myself but with a new born, bewteen work and diaper change and feeding, that's a complete luxury I can't afford.

I have read someone mentioned Denon S301 (discountiued) is decent and I saw Kef KIT-100 the other day in the sotre which probably is better than the Bose. The system maily be used for background music, classical/Jazz probably 90% of time and 10% for DVD view. Anyone want to chip in. Thanks for reading my long post. Regards.

rich
ddl24
pawlowski6132
592 posts
 
Rich, why doesn't your wife just figure out how to use your system. How difficult can it be???
calbrs03
184 posts
 
Dang wives. Kids are easy in comparison :)
calbrs03
184 posts
 
Butsy:

I'd suggest grandchildren are!

That's asking a lot of a three year old :)
johnnyb53
3,510 posts
 
For a situation like this, a pair of Mirage Omnisat v2 SATs and coordinating Omni S8 or S10 subwoofer would be about perfect. The satellites can mount on the wall, eliminating the danger of a crawling baby pulling a minimonitor off a stand and thunking her on her punky little head. The grilles are metal mesh, resistant to curious, poking fingers. The omnidirectional radiating pattern is great at filling larger living spaces from small sources. The Omnisat gets really close to being a point source. At the same time, the sound is very clear with excellent midrange.

Best of all, the parts and build quality and sound quality are great--way, way better than Bose, and generally better than similar-priced sub/sat systems. The sat enclosures are inert and shaped to avoid standing waves. Tweeter is a cloth surround titanium dome and mid/woofer is titanium vapor deposit on polypropylene with butyl surround. Handling capacity is 150 w.

Get a consumer-friendly combi player and receiver and you're there. I recommend using the high level (spkr) connections to the sub and from there out to the sats. Kimber TC-4 or TC-8 terminated in bananas should be a good match.

Separate disk player and receiver shouldn't really be more complicated than a single unit. It just requires one more AC outlet and one pair of interconnects.

I use a 2-channel Mirage Omnisat system in the music-only living room, and it's a very engaging and involving system. It energizes the room the way instruments and voices would, it's unobtrusive with good resolution. It excels on jazz and chamber music and acquits itself well with orchestral and big band music too. Voice is almost spooky-real and should work really well for TV/DVD sources.
triode
263 posts
 
I'd get an Arcam Solo and a couple of those small Gallos. The wife would be ecstatic, you have decent sound and minimal exposed cabling (the Gallos can be wall or high shelf mounted, and are waaaay better than anything Bose will ever make).
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