In praise of Bose cubes.

Does anyone remember before Bose did it, that Boston Acoustic did it. Going back about 25 years, I remember going into a Sasafrass store. I was amazed at a Luxman-Maggie setup but was more surprised by the sound coming from this "other room".

The guy pointed to 2 little cubes on the wall and a sub tucked away in the corner. I had never heard so much sound come from so little, size and qty, speakers. I have no idea what the model numbers were from back then but do remember being impressed.

The Bose setups can be great for those who want to hide everything but are a little pricey for what you get.

Someone had these "cubes" set up a last year's AK Meet in Clinton, Ma! He was also using a subwoofer. Anyway, he set up in a tiny space near the bathroom...and it sounded pretty darn good.

I think the issue many of us have isn't so much the quality and type of sound from the Bose cube systems, but the price for the level of performance. The AM systems were not targeted at us audio enthusiests, but to the majority of the public who are casual listeners and want room filling sound from something small and simple. The AM systems hit their target. I have heard AM systems set up as intended, for casual listening, and they do sound good. If one sits down to do "serious" listening the deficencies quickly appear, but most people are not interested and never do this.

There are plenty of other companies out there that do the same thing. Orb, Energy, Def Tec, B&W to name a few. Many of these systems perform as well or better than the comparable Bose system for less, sometimes substantially less money.

Because of their powerful marketing, Bose is the first name most people think of when you mention small satellite speaker systems. If actually set up A/B with a comparable system from another company, and prices clearly posted, many people would pick the competitor, but Bose is very good at not letting that direct comparison easily happen.

I would never pay MSRP for an AM system. It is not that the Bose systems are made from total junk parts, but that without the label, those parts would cost a A LOT less. You are paying for the name. When someone asks me about audio and mentions Bose, I always recommend they listen to offerings from other companies as well (most I talked to didn't even know of these other companies despite them being available in big box stores), try to ignore the label, and let their ears decide on the sound vs doller equasion.

Samni Sound made some of the oem Bose 2.75" cube drivers which used a foam rubber surround.

Over the years many vendors have sold cube drivers for as litlle as 3$ a piece. They were advertised as Bose or sonds like NOSE overrun buyouts.

I did some experimenting with the Sony versions which use a butyl rubber surround that are in good condition after 14 years.

I got to admit, the Acoustimass 5 Series II setup has become quite impressive for our office environment. I stuffed the bass module under the front counter, as the desk part is built with with counter material. 10 feet wide, 4 feet deep on each side that is attached to a back wall with a wide doorway opening, and the counter curves in for a nice 2.5 feet deep worth of desk space.

Then I just set the cubes up in here and had the top cubes aimed at the wall, and ran Cat5 e to them for speaker wire. I can really crank some serious volume out of these through my Kenwood KR-9600 receiver. (I like to do that when I am by myself here, family owned business. )

I think these are great for background music such as this, but even at the same time, they certainly can be too much for an office, realistically. :thmbsp:


By the way, can these things really take 200 watts of power? The bass module says 10 - 200 watts per channel on it. I haven't... tried to force that much power down their throats but I really am curious. :scratch2: