Ok ok, I've held this in ever since the first 'Bose' crack I read on this site, but I can't hold it in any longer...
My dad bought a Bose system years and years ago and put it in his basement. At the time, I had an Aiwa 5.1 channel system hooked up to my 36 inch JVC 4:5 tv, so I was blown away by the Bose speakers... "how do such small little speakers produce such a big sound"??? I had never owned a decent home theater subwoofer at that time (just the crappy little 15 watt thing Aiwa gave me), and I remember him explaining the technology of the accustimas subwoofer... "you can't hear it coming out of the actual box itself, but you feel it from your seat". I was so amazed I almost shit myself.
I was so impressed I had to upgrade my system, but I didn't have the $2000 dollars to make the transition over to Bose, so instead I went with a pair of Cerwin Vega towers, a Cerwin Vega center, and a Cerwin Vega subwoofer and kept the Aiwa surrounds on duty for a while until I came up with the cash to put up 6 Cambridge Soundworks surround speakers. In the end my surround system totaled almost the same as my dad's Bose system, but for the longest time I was still in awe of his set-up. It would take me years of living with my system, and maturity from learning more about home theater systems to realize that what I had was actually leaps and bounds better than his Bose system. And my system was entry level at best!
Heck if I'd have had my fire a decade ago and rebuilt my system with that insurance check, I might be living with a Bose system right now, and be as happy as a pig in shit with it! This just goes to show you how big a factor ignorance can play in liking the sound of something. If you don't know that what you're listening to is severely colored, you might just fall in love with that colored sound and forever wonder why nothing else out there can sound as good as those wonderful Bose sound??? But looking back I realize that Bose was actually quite brilliant in it's marketing sceme. Bose (at least back then) sold everything in packages... you didn't piece systems together like you can an Axiom system. You had to have the cash to buy the whole thing in one shebang! And with them priced the way they were priced, only certain people could buy into Bose. So they had an aura of sheekness to them. In my mind, they were the best because I couldn't have them, they were out of my range. That psychological brain washing went a long way with me. Hell I strived for years to reach a level of audio performance that was many rungs below what I had in my own living room... how in the hell did they do that?
I remember the day I discovered the fraud that was Bose once and for all. I had gotten used to the way my Cerwin Vega subwoofer pounded out bass notes. So I was over at my dads one day really studying his accustimas subwoofer because I wanted to know how it worked it's magic. So I'm right there in front of it, looking it dead in the eye with the music blaring when suddenly it hit me like a ton of bricks to the head... "THIS THING AINT EVEN WORKING"??? I got up and went over and sat down in the captians chair. "Ummmmm... yeah where's all that bass I remember that thing putting out before"??? It was gone, all of it.... GONE!!!! It was like the Emperer's New Clothes... I was told that the thing put out incredibly deceptive bass, and so I believed it. And then one day, just like the day I realized Santa wasn't real, I also realized that Boze was a scam!
I've never had the heart to tell my dad that he has a crap system hooked up to his home theater... how could I? For years I praised it, and now all of a sudden it's garbage? Well the short answer is... yes. I suppose if you grew up for 20 years being fed balogna while being told it was a delicasy you'd believe it. Until the day you finally broke out of the house and went somewhere where they sat a big, juicy porterhouse down in front of you... that's when the truth comes out! But oh well, I'm not mad at Bose... heck everyone's out there just trying to make a buck, right?
Just remember, there are still those under Bose spell out there. I can guarantee that there are diehard Bose fans out there that honestly believe that those little cubes really are magic, and truely sound better than a full on Axiom Epic 80/800 system could ever dream of sounding! I mean if you drink well water long enough and get used to that rotten egg/sulfer taste smell to the point that you don't even notice it anymore, you just might accidentally take a sip of some good Brita water and think it's been pissed in!
I know it can happen because for years I drank that Bose water up and thought everything else was piss water! Oh well, at least I an laugh at myself!
