Home > Consumer Reviews > Bose Acoustimass 5 - Speaker System, ideal for stereo or home theater use - Black

I paid what I thought was a premium price for premium speakers which sound like cheasy 1950s paper spekers. No bass, buzzes, no dynamic range, etc. , etc. etc. These speaker are all ads, ads, ads. No delivery at all. I have them hooked up to a good Denon 200 Watt receiver, and zip performance. Nada. They sound a thousand times worse than the rotted out 20-year-old Radio Shack speakers they replace. Bose is all puff and guff!!! No wonder they dont sell in regular audio stores; no one will handle this junk!!! Garbage!!! I was ripped off!! I am going back to Radio Shack. At least I dont feel bad paying nothing for junk then. And their junk is at least priced right. Jim Isham, Penfield, NY. God, this pisses me off. Bose can go jump in the lake and take their overhyped overpriced speakers with them; tied to their feet!!!!

I can't believe I bought this piece of crap. I thought Bose was good by their reputation. I bought this system and called a couple of friends to show it off. My friend Carl called me over and put on some music on his home built system. I was totally blown away. He put on Genesis "The Lamb" And my hair stood up. The detail, the highs the lows, he poured me a glass of single malt and it danced off the table. Like my $1,000 Bose system could do this? Not! He put on some organ music and I seriously thought the building was going to come down on us. He laughed like a mad scientist. My $1.200.00 Bose system sounds like a toy compared to this. Tinny, no midrange, deep bass or high trebles. I'm either taking it back or selling it on eBay. Carl says he will build me a decent system in his cabinet shop. Sometimes one needs a good short, sharp shock. Oh yeah, listening to Pink Floyd on Carl's system is like dropping acid and he says he can put one together for me for under $1,000.00. Everyone should have a friend Carl and everyone should avoid Bose.

I just started dating a woman who owns this system, and she was so proud of it that I simply didn't have the heart to tell her the truth. On our third date she took me back to her apartment where we watched a DVD: beautiful plasma TV, horrendous Bose hunkajunk. The only reason I kept my mouth shut was because she's incredibly hot and I wanted to be there for breakfast the next morning.

But it took a lot of drinks for me to sit through this audio nightmare: male voices often came out of the so-called "bass module" instead of the tiny and tinny little satellites, and those voices were mixed in with the smeared, flabby mid-bass coming out of the box...totally localizable mid-bass. The music (we watched "Amadeus") was completely hollow-sounding, like listening to a boombox. During a few musical peaks there was even audible resonance coming out of the pseudo-sub...no surprise since it's just a cheap plastic enclosure, not even MDF like you get with even the cheapest REAL subwoofers.

Mama mia, the things a guy will do just to get some play...

For four hundred bucks these days you could actually get a pair of real bookshelf speakers (Infinity Beta 20s, Polk Monitor 30s, Hsu HB-1s) and a cheap sub (Dayton SUB-100 from partsexpress dot com) that would effortlessly destroy this Bose junk. Granted, it won't be in such a tiny and dainty-looking package, but it will sound a million times better!

I think I'll have to break the news to her on our tenth date or so, it actually makes me feel DIRTY not to, heh.