So a very, very good friend of mine just had his birthday yesterday. He sent me a picture of his loot. In that picture was a Bose Accustimas system. He was very proud that his wife had gotten him such a 'fancy' surround system. And while I wasn't there to see it, I'm sure his wife was also very proud to have given him the 'best system' money can buy. I mean there are lots and lots of men who fall for the sales jargon, so I'm sure it was easy to convince a woman (who generally don't know nearly as much about home audio than men) that the Bose was top of the line.
All I said was, "congratulations, that looks very nice". But its killing me that she went out and spent that much money on an inferior system for him. I feel obligated to let him know that for the money, they could do much better. Even if they don't buy Axioms, they can still do better than Bose. However, I hate to seem like a killjoy. He seems happy with them (although he hasn't hooked them up yet), and I'd hate to hurt her feelings by telling her that Bose aren't that great of a speaker.
So what I thought about doing was inviting them over with their new speakers to do an 'A/B' comparison. I'm just looking for a way to put it delicately without out right lying to them. So I thought I'd just say something like, "I've been curious as to how they stack up against my speakers". They've never been over to hear mine before, so perhaps without actually saying anything about how Bose perform, they could hear it for themselves and maybe ask about the Axioms.
Of course they might just like the Bose. And if that's the case, then more power to them. But what would you guys do in this situation, would you mention anything at all? I would hate myself if I just let him think he had a great speaker system, and then someday he came over to watch a movie at my place, noticed how much better the Axioms sound, and say he wished he would have known before the 30 day return policy had run out.
