Bose Acoustimass 6 Home Entertainment Speaker System - Black by BOSE
|
Our Price: $699.00 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $350.00 (click here) Category: Speakers See more digital camera details and other models |
|---|
Digital camera reviews of Bose Acoustimass 6 Home Entertainment Speaker System - Black
Digital camera Review: Great Speakers for what you get.
Summary: 5 Stars
Don't let the one star people fool you. I don't know a whole lot about speakers but I know what sounds good. When it comes to speakers. I did some research and read my Bose book. If you set these up properly they will blow you away. For tiny speakers these pump out as much as the 12 inch Cerwins I have as my front channels. These should sound great on any 5.1 system. The base is plenty powerful it will shake my windows in a fairly big room. I would recommend this speaker set to anyone and my mom is looking into buying one for her house after hearing them. I listen to classic rock of all kinds 24/7. This is the best system I have heard in the price range. If you know anyone with this speaker set give it a listen. You will love it. Just for your info. I have this set up with a harman/kardon avr 1600 system. Harman/kardon makes amazing systems.Digital camera Review: Great with a nice subwoofer.
Summary: 4 Stars
I got this system with an onkyo TX-SR307 5.1 receiver. These speakers are ok, but you could easily get better ones for around $300 from klipsch. I got these, because they are small, and for bragging rights. I have them paired with a kicker solobaric l5 12 inch and a dayton 500 Watt RMS subwoofer amplifier. They are very clear, and give me some good frequency response. If I had to buy them again, I would still buy the bose, but klipsch are still a lot better. The acoustimass that comes with this system is also very bad. It plays the low end sounds that these speakers can't play, but it does not fill in the bass very good. It is more of a midwoofer to me, thats why I have the kicker solobaric.Digital camera Review: I'm soooo glad I unloaded these on someone else
Summary: 1 Stars
I ditched my AM6 speakers through eBay and bought some good speakers instead. Anyone who likes Bose must only have their clock radio as a point of reference. I was able to sucker some chump into paying $400 for my Bose AM6 speakers, which I turned around into a set of Athena .5 speakers and a 10" Velodyne sub. All running from the same Pioneer VSX-D711 AV receiver as the Bose. My new speakers set me back about $350, leaving money left over for speaker wire and stands.
So, why am I so harsh on the Bose AM6 speakers? Well, they do look nice, but... they use proprietary speaker wires with speacial plugs. So, you have to use their wiring which really reduces the options for running wiring for the back surrounds. The small size is nice, but having speaker wire hanging out in plain site pretty much sucks.
Speaking of sucking, let's adress the major shortcoming of almost ALL Bose products, they just don't sound good. My budget Athena .5 speakers have a 1" tweeter and a 4" driver. This combo does a pretty good job of covering down to around 80Hz where the sub fills in. Not completely flat, but really nice for the price and signficantly better than what the Bose AM6 can do with its single 2.5" driver per speaker. The Velodyne sub can hit 30Hz and really fill in the low end, while the bass module (I refuse to call that Bose thingy a sub) doesn't get any where near that. And, since all 5 speakers are cabled through the bass module, you're really stuck finding a good place to hide it in your room.
So, what does all this mean? When watching a Dolby Digital or DTS movie, I can now actually notice the low frequency effects, and even feel them. with the Bose, you get muddled farting from the bass module (and, I suspect the cross over on the bass module is set pretty high in an attempt to compensate for the Bose Cubes' misserable low to mid range response, so you know where the sound is coming from, sort of distracting).
The overall sound stage is now much better with the new speakers, too. The Bose cubes were too easily localized, and didn't fill in the room very well. But... most important: when watching a movie, we can now actually hear the dialog! With the Bose AM6, it seemed like the music sound track and other ambiant sounds were constantly overwhelming the dialog. Turns out, this was due to the fact that crappy little cube speakers aren't able to effectively produce sound in that low to mid frequency range, where most dialog lives. Take a look at all the traditional center channel speakers everyone else sells, they usually feature a single tweeter and two or more mid-range drivers of decent size (4" to 6" depending on cost). Now, compare that to the single 2.5" driver found in the Bose cube "center channel". Which one do you think will do a better job of reproducing the full frequency of sound needed to enjoy a movie?
Sorry to ramble a bit, but I was a chump when I fell for the Bose marketing hype/BS. Now that I've learned that I can get significantly better sound for 1/2 the cost (and I'm sure there are scores of other options), I'd hate to see someone else get suckered in by the hype. So, go back to Amazon's speaker section and try something else; Athena is a great brand;) and I'm sure there are lots of other choices...
Digital camera Review: In my opinion...
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't own one of these Bose systems, but as a sound engineer of 30 years plus, I have to defend Bose, when I see some of the terrible reviews they sometimes get. It seems that people either love 'em or hate 'em... After hearing these at a friend's house, (a guy who has good ear's, and can set up a system), I was very impressed. He does "concert night" at his home, and we listen to great music video concerts, (mostly jazz rock), such as Steely Dan,Sting,Lee Ritenour, Jeff Beck,etc...These videos have great sound, and they sound wonderful on his system! They also sound wonderful on my own huge JBL system, but in some ways, I actually like his better! My system will go louder,(and we like full scale concert volume),but his is loud enough to hurt,in his moderately sized 15x15 living room, and that's with very clean, full, sound...One reviewer mentioned that his bass module produced "farting" sounds. I never heard anything like that on my friend's system, and we like concert level bass. I have to wonder what size room it would take to cause these things to sound like that, and at what volume levels. Our listening levels are well above anything you would hear at a movie theater, and louder than most rock concerts we have been to! It makes me wonder if the reviewers are setting these things up properly.One reviewer mentioned that his ears were drawn to the bass unit, due to a high crossover point. I do not hear anything like that at my friend's house, nor did I hear that at any of the demos that you can see at BJ's and other places. In fact, I marveled at the stereo sound field, and how articulate and spacious these things sounded.(I might suggest that keeping the bass mod near the center of the stereo field, with the satellites slightly out in front should cure this problem)..Nor were any of these systems lacking in voice articulation, if anything, just the opposite. One thing that is great about these sytems is their size, (or lack of it), which enables many men to have a good, loud system without being served divorce papers. Also, I do not hear a lack of mids, as some reviewers have stated. If anything, to my ears, the upper mids, say 2 to 7khz, are forcefully but pleasantly stated, while the lower mids are just a bit understated (250 to 500 hz).This type of sound does give a very clean, crisp, clear perception, though. To my ears, Bose gets away with small bass drivers by emphasising 50 to 90 hz in its bass mods, with increasingly less sound at the lower freqs.(I think they also use processing that synthesizes low freq information by turning very low freqs into a combination of two or more higher freqs, which the human ear combines, and perceives to be the original lower freq, but don't quote me on that one.)However, there isn't that much musical information down lower than 40hz anyway, (contrary to popular opinion), and I can still feel the kick drum punching me pleasantly in the chest, and hear very well defined bass guitar notes. On my friends system, I love the way the kick and bass combine smoothly, and yet you can hear each instrument clearly in it's own space... Now, I'm not going to tell you that these are the absolute ultimate sound, (in fact, I don't care at all for the Bose wave radios, for the price),but I will say, that, especially for their size, many of these Bose systems are really nice. If they were sold at a lower price point, I think almost everyone would have them, at least in one room of their home. Like most people, I feel that price is their biggest downfall. But I don't hear BIG sound coming from anyone else's tiny speakers, so they kind of have the market cornered,if you need loud,full,and clean without taking up hardly any space. If these things are set up properly in a moderately sized, (say a maximum 15x20 foot room), and they don't sound good, then probably nothing else will either, and the next step would be to acoustically treat the room, by deadening hard surfaces with rugs, furniture, curtains, etc, or installing bass traps, (which actually increase bass, by not allowing low freqs to bounce around the room),causing room modes (dead and hot spots.)If you have the money but not the space, these will make you happy. If they don't, get some help setting them up before you send them back. I like 'em!Digital camera Review: It does sounds good for its price.
Summary: 4 Stars
It seems like the first step to be an audiophile is to criticize Bose. I got lost on that path a little bit. I spent six months going around to listen to many others speakers (included Polk and Klipsch). Of course, I heard some decent speakers that sound better than Bose, but they usually cost at least $3,000 each. But, for the similar price range Bose is hard to be beaten. I decided to buy it because it always make me smile our of my poker face at Bose showroom (not because of the funny sale guy).
I decided to adopt a set of AM6. People at the store told me that I may have to wait for 45 days. I think, that's OK. But, I can't live without some nice music for 45 days. Then, I placed my order for the AM6 and also brought home a pair of an inexpensive Bose 161. The 161 alone sounds very OK for music. Anyway, my receiver is Onkyo TX-SR605S. And my audio sort is the Mac mini optically connected to the Onkyo receiver. I could make my neighbors dance with this set. However, the 161 alone is no good for movies.
45 days later, I got the AM6. So, the pair 161 are now the back surround speakers. With the AM6, I got a 7.1 system. The first Onkyo automatic setup was great for the movies the floor and the walls were shaking. for some reasons, the floor and the walls were still shaking for music too. That is a little too much for me. The bass wasn't like a strong punch. It was more like a really annoying subwoofer effect from the next room. I was a bit disappointed. However, a month later when I was playing around with the Onkyo remote control, I found that the Onkyo set volume level of subwoofer to -3. I manually changed it to +3. Now, it is a lot better for music. It does sound like what I heard in Bose showroom. The movie sound effect is still cool. I think, the reason that make Onkyo receiver set the volume level very low for Bose speakers, because Bose bass module is not exactly a subwoofer. It also produces some midrange sound, which could mess up Onkyo automatic speakers calibration. One more good thing that I like about the AM6 is, speaker cables are included. I don't have to worry about what cabel should I use or how much do I have to pay more. But please note that, the center speaker of AM6 is identical with the satellite speakers. So, it could be better of a system that has a real center speaker.