Zimm and Hogie,
Yes, my condolences line was a bit of a cheap shot. Funny, but I think I like throwing zingers at Bose because they are a triumph of marketing over sound quality. The first Bose I heard was the 901 in 1964 and since it was the first system to use a combination of direct and reflected radiation, it was very impressive at the time. No other speaker I'd heard did that, and it was more spacious sounding. It also used active equalization but the same rinky-dink paper-cone drivers that are used in most of the Boses now.
We all heard about Bose because they are brilliantly marketed, with millions going to ad campaigns. They aren't terrible, just rather colored and not musically accurate. One of their bookshelf models--I think it was the 201 or 301--was better than others in the line. You could manually swivel the tweeter and in our blind tests if you faced it forward, the speakers did quite well. When you turned the tweeter to face the side wall, the rankings went down.
Regards,
