- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 19 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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10 out of 11 people found this review helpful
2.0 stars
"the more i think about it, the more i feel like i was taken advantage of"
Pros: powerful solid bass, small speakers can be placed anywhere.
Cons: speakers sound like they're being smothered
Summary: i don't know where all these people get that "these speakers are the best" stuff from. just bought the acoustimass system a couple of days ago because i was impressed with how good they sounded at the display station at best buy that i decided to get them. when i got home, i couldn't wait to hook them up to my yamaha receiver and i have to admit that, when i finally got done running the wires and everything and started listening to the speakers i was actually impressed at how good they sounded, but after a while i couldn't help myself but to start playing with the EQ for the center channel speaker because somehow it sounded like not only the center channel but all of the speakers were placed inside an empty bucket or something like that. after i had been playing with the EQ for a while it seemed like i got the speakers to sound "just right". at least that's what i thought until i decided that before throwing my old cerwin vegas out the window i would compare them to my "state of the art" bose acoustimass system just to see how much better the new speakers where, and to my surprise and disbelief MY OLD SPEAKERS SOUNDED A LOT BETTER. so there i was playing with the EQ again trying to get the bose speakers to sound at least just as good as my old ones. switching back and forth between speakers sets, playing with the EQ and all the different settings on my receiver but it always seemed like the old ones sounded better.
usually when i'm about to buy a new product i look for reviews on it or shop around for a while before i decide to buy it, but with this system i didn't even think too much about it before putting it on my card. the more i think about it the more i feel like i was taken advantage of, because everyone tells you how good and wonderful these are, the innovations and the breakthrus achieved to get you this "great sound from such small speakers".
the system as a whole can actually fill your room with sound, specially with the double cube design that allows you to turn one cube one way and the other in a different direction so that sound will reflect off of walls and such, but the sound that you are surrounded by is of poor quality
the satellites, for their size sound ok but just ok, nowhere near great but the subwoofer sounds pretty good, with it's deep bass which to me sounds pretty solid and clear, the satellites which are small can actually sound pretty loud too. the problem is that there seems to be a huge gap in sound between the ear drum piercing mids on the satellites and the deep bass coming from the sub, also the highs coming from the satellites aren't that high at all. but it's more than obvious when you don't know whether the satellites are mid rangers or tweeter wannabes
maybe that's where the big achievement comes in, how do you make such a small speaker sound so big? well make up for the deficiencies in sound quality by adding a huge subwoofer.
the bottom line: these speakers are of decent quality but they're definitely not worth a grand. if you really want to get them compare them first to other similar systems from different manufacturers and if you still want to get them afterwards i'd suggest buying them and trying them out at home, see if thay sound as good as they did at the store, if not return them. you could also buy them on ebay and save a few hundreds of dollars. but compare, compare, compare.
Where to buy
Bose Acoustimass 10 Series IV (black):
$999.00
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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