Any Axiom speaker will sound vastly superior to the Bose Lifestyle systems, even to those who have absolutely no idea what the hell the word ‘soundstage’ means.
I say this with complete confidence because I was exactly where you are a couple years ago. I wasn’t about to spring for so much as a thousand bucks for a sound system. I thought they were all over priced. So I bought a little HTIB system from Costco for about $400. Then the receiver went tits up on me so I bought a new receiver. Quite an overkill for the little speakers, but I got a HK 7200 for a steal. The speakers sounded much, much better…..till I smoked them. Then I was wandering through Sams Club one day and low and behold, they had the Bose cubes and bass module on sale for about $600!! Acoustmas 10’s I think (twin drivers that swivel). Wow! What a difference they made over the little piece of crap speakers I smoked. Those little suckers really put out an amazing amount of sound for being sooooo small. But the bass was lacking big time so I bought an Outlaw sub and ran the speakers directly to the HK. Holy crap!! Another huge jump in sound…….
Then I bought some M80’s for a two channel system and another sub. I was again floored at how great they sounded compared the other system. No comparison between the M80’s and the cubes. The cubes were pathetic in comparison. Out of curiosity’s sake, I hefted the M80’s upstairs and tried them as mains in the HT system just to see how much difference there could be between them and the cubes for movies. I was done by this point……I picked up the phone and ordered more Axioms to fill out a 7.1 system and another set of speakers for the two channel system.
I figure I wasted about $1000 being stubborn and believing all the Bose propaganda. There really is no comparison to any of the little farts on the market to a real speaker and a good sub. The little squirts may have their place, but it isn’t in HT where the user wants that “wow” factor when watching movies or listening to tunes.
When you get a good system, you’ll find that the remote is one of the first things you look for whenever you plan on being in the same room as your system for a while. When I’m home, music is always playing. I even find times when I do nothing but listen to a song which is something I’ve not ever done before. I’m not known for sitting still very long.
