The Bose system has a lot of neat features in the player and electronics -- built in MP3 recording, ability to learn your listening preferences etc... -- but the speakers are really too small to fill a room that size. If your listening area is off in one corner of the room the Bose system can sound pretty good, but the Axiom system would be in a totally different league. In all seriousness an M2 based system with a decent sub would be a surprising step up from the Bose speakers.
It would probably be worth your time to try and audition a couple of good high-end home theater systems to get an idea of the kind of sound you can get from good, full sized speakers. If you don't walk out having had a "holy &%$#^!!!" moment, try somewhere else.
The Bose system is a great step up from a typical TV sound system but the speakers are designed to fit unobtrusively into a typical living room, not to deliver the "best" sound for the $$. I think you will find that the M60s will deliver as much or more clean bass than the "Acoustimass" woofers, and the EP350 goes much deeper into the bass for movies.
BTW we're not saying that only Axioms can do this -- any high end full size speaker system will do -- we just happen to like the Axioms a bit more than the competition. Actually some of us even own non-Axiom speakers but hang out here anyways
The Bose 48 is a 5.1 system if I remember correctly.
