I spent a couple years hanging out/mostly lurking on a speaker design mailing list, learning the basics of designing a decent speaker. Early on, I had wanted a Bose system after hearing them at a department store. The sound just had a pop to it that I liked, compared to some of the larger speaker/receiver systems that were often cheaper. So I thought to myself, "You're paying because they pack all that sound into those tiny speakers." But I was wrong, well sort of.

The Bose cube speaker/bass module combo is designed to play well into a large open space. For this it has to be loud, especially the bass, because it is more omnidirectional. On the other hand the treble has to overcome the background noise at a large store, where the detailed highest frequencies are likely to be obscured anyway. This is two strikes against spending manufacturing dollars towards reproducing higher frequencies. Unlike bass, treble above 10Khz falls of sharply when you get 30 degrees or so outside the field, which takes away from the "room filling" aspect. By doubling the volume (+10db) of the mid-high frequencies around 7Khz, you'll start sounding like you have a lot more punch and fill than the neighboring system designed for a normal quiet room.

Creating loud bass in an open space without upping the costs requires a similar compromise, but for different reasons. Playing a 30hz signal at X decibels requires a far heavier and more expensive amp than one that just needs to play down to than 80hz. 30hz also requires a much larger diameter speaker and/or a motor with a bulky magnet to play sufficiently loud. This, by Bose standards, would be a kludge - not the small, sleek, and sexy it markets. Woofers naturally have a peak resonance, typically from 25-80hz, and manufacturers usually try to dampen this with expensive stuff. Things like stiff cone materials instead of low quality paper, surrounds that effectively spring the cone back to center, and a heavy frame/basket. The Accoustimass bass module embraces a low cost design that produces lots of resonance around 80z so it can play loud at the expense of accuracy and frequency range. It sounds punchy but it can't recover from reverberating from one moment to articulate the next, so everything just sounds like it is booming close 80hz.

After building a couple speaker sets and trying various brands over the last 10+ years, I've found that it is always possible to buy a much better system than Bose for half the cost, sometimes less. I'd be willing to bet most people would reject the Bose in test between it and carefully selected components costing the same, and set up in a normal room. If your considering spending Bose kind of money look into subwoofers from HSU Research. It is not strange to spend half as much on the subwoofer as the remaining speakers combined, or even more. A cheap sub sticks out like a sore thumb, it should fill in and add depth to all the other speakers output, not just boom. Piano and deep voices benefit greatly without sounding muddled, definitely not things you think of normally as going boom.

For the surround speakers, if you want something smaller, the Klipsch Cinema-6 are a good bet. Paradigm speakers are expensive but sound light years ahead of anything Bose has ever made, and most people will never feel the urge to upgrade again with these. To amplify and tie everything together, a $400 or $500 Denon receiver provides some of the best bang for the buck in terms of clean amplification and a slightly better DSP chip than the competition, check out Model # AVR-1611 OR AVR-1911. The DSP setup uses a microphone to auto-calibrate the system to your room, and it works pretty darn well. If you want to get everything in a box for around a $1000, look into the Onkyo S9300-THX, which handily beat a $2000+ Bose system.

Finally, about this latest Bose system that uses an array of speakers with nanosecond timing to beam sound. Other companies like Yamaha have had similar products with many speakers attached to a single bar, that goes above or below the TV, for about $1000 bucks. Use the remaining $4000 to buy a far better TV instead of paying Bose a fat margin for an inferior product. I'd be willing to bet the Yamaha product is better. They both use some clever signal processing to direct sound and simulate sound coming from behind your ears with slight frequency dependent delays. The Denon receiver I mentioned uses similar tech to suppress echoes and standing waves that are characteristics of the room and measured with a mic. Many manufacturers license this tech from Audyssey, and you see it in car audio as well. These sorts of features are what has been a big differentiator from the old receiver tech for a few years now, but Bose portrays it as a revolution that they are bringing upon us. If you look at the proprietary waveguide technology used in their clock radios and this new TV, it is also existing technology called a transmission line design, mentioned in the Loudspeaker Design Cookbook going back to the 60's. Bose just adds some minimally useful twist and applies for a patent to make it sound innovative.

If you want to learn more check out -

BOSE Acoustimass - Better Profits Through Marketing
http://www.intellexual.net/bose.html