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question about BOSE reputation

I have never listened to a BOSE system but I have heard that many audiophiles "hate" this brand. Is this brand really that bad for the money? The other day I saw in the Bose web page a home theater system, the Lifestyle 50, which retails for $3700. I was wondering if there are a lot of options better than Bose for much less money. For example, do you guys think that I can go better with a Denon receiver and some not too expensive speakers from...B&W or Infinity for example? If so, which would be the least expensive Denon A/V receiver and B&W or Infinity speakers to beat away that $3700 Bose system? How much would that system be? Your comments and suggestions will be highly appreciated. Thanks. Jair
jair2fdc
martice
103 posts
 
Other than the sound of Bose, there is one thing that nobody talks about when speaking of Bose and that's how unflexible and upgradeable their systems are. What I mean is this. I was talking to a person at my job about a movie on DVD and I mentioned that I have the same movie but on DTS and that it sounded awesome!! The person said that his system is only Dolby Digital and they were going to call Bose about upgrading to DTS or even seeing if it was available for that matter. Anyway, it turns out that in order for this person who just spent $3,000 for their system to get DTS they had to buy a new Bass Module which had a DTS decoder inside of it. I said WHAT!!! You have to buy a new Bass Module in order to experience DTS!!??!! It seems that Bose doesn't want you to integrate your system with any other system so they fix it so that if you want to upgrade to another standard offered by the industry you have to pay them once again and the module had the cost of $500.00 to go with it. Now if you feel you want more flexibility you have to either do one of two things and that's pay Bose again for the upgrade or start all over and pay for another system other than Bose. So it seems in short that you pay a hefty fee to get in with Bose and you will pay a hefty fine to get out and change teams. Robbery!!!!!
jeffloistarca
1,004 posts
 
Sugarbrie, careful, don't go listing yer gear, you'll git slammed! Laying out your HT set up is bound to draw criticism. We should all know by now we shouldn't be mentioning audio/video gear here, it brings out the worst in some of us. *g*
rcreations
158 posts
 
no highs....nolows....must be bose.
sugarbrie
3,854 posts
 
Jeff, Its not my HT System. The poster asked for a system under $3700 that blows the Bose away. I did it with lots of extras and $600 to spare.
south_park
103 posts
 
No matter what separates you get, you won't get anything worse than Bose. For a budget like you have I would go for what you can get a good deal on, and spend the most on speakers.
OR, if you want separates, try a Parasound processor, their intro model is like $800. You can then get a 5 channel amp like the 200 watt x 5 Anthem MCA 5 for $999 (discounted but that's the going price). You can then get a 5 speakers and a subwoofer for the remaining 3700 - 1800= 1900 right? Go with what fits, I suggest something like Polk (not the tiny ones), Infinity, Paradigm etc...
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