mkramer's Full Review: Bose Acoustimass 6 III Speaker System
Bose has developed a niche market with its Acoustimass product line, featuring tiny 3" high-end satellite drivers and a ported "mid woofer" in a separate cabinet. If Bose sold these things by the pound they'd be a pretty good deal. Unfortunately, cutting edge psycho-acoustic research ain't cheap, so I'm guessing a good part of the price is being written off against the Product Development budget. If Bose continues in this vein of very small, very expensive speakers, we can soon expect a product that costs a million dollars and doesn't have any physical properties whatsoever.
In fact, there is little reason to invest in a Bose system. Unless you have a wife. My wife, for example, thinks giant racks of audio gear and monster speaker cabinets do not look good in the living room. For that reason, and given the high cost of a decent divorce attorney, I decided to invest in the Bose system for our home theater application.
Set up is nice and simple, with polarized wire included. However, finding a good place for the bottom unit is tricky. And since all the satellite drivers draw signal from the midwoofer, you'll end up with a good sized clump of wires to hide before your wife gets home. I say the bottom unit is a mid rather than sub woofer, because it does not have its own power source, and because it's 5" driver must cover a very broad frequency range to fill the space left by the satellites.
The sound is very...Bose. That is, the damn thing is so cool you end up forgiving its weakness, which is a lack of Big Sound. In fact, I was pretty ticked when I first fired it up. Luckily I got the divorce lawyer's voice mail so I went back and fiddled some more. With some re-positioning and bass and treble tweaking, I was able to get a fuller sound.
Where the system shines in home theater is in the 99% of program material that isn't an explosion or dinosaur. The ambiance of the soundstage is awesome, and everything is wonderfully clean and distinct. After a few weeks, I didn't miss my old monster system. As much. For music listening, light stuff sounds great. Your AC/DC collection...forget it.
When you consider the price of buying the front, center and surrounds of a conventional system, the Bose makes good sense. However, most of us have the front speakers to start with.
I'd recommend the Bose Acoustimass in a relatively small room. It would be ideal for a bedroom or den surround system, and that's where ours ended up.
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