Bose Blues

[eddie902]

Just bought a bose acoustimas 15 and installed with my older Technics receiver
SA-DX940. The rear speakers are putting out hardly any volume. Meanwhile, I seemed to have used all of the speaker hook-ups on back of receiver. Any suggestions for low volume rear speakers?

[midfiguy]

Chances are that it's reciever and not the speakers. While many say the Acoustimass speakers are terrible, they should still play in the rears. Alot of older recievers had VERY little power going to the back channels and you could hardly hear anything coming out of them.

Are you sure it's connected correctly? I wouldn't imagine replacing the rear channels if you just bought the AM-15s for that price. Is there a reason you can't take them back if you don't like them.

[N. Abstentia]

Yeah, take them back. You can get far better speakers for half the money.

[midfiguy]

Well... ...to expand on that...

....The majority of people on this board and others (including myself) consider Bose products to be inferior to similarly priced speakers from other manufacturers, some of which include B&W, NHT, Klipsch, PSB, Paradigm, Monitor Audio and countless others both in-store and online. Is this inferiority a fact? NO. Sound is completely subjective. Otherwise, people would just agree on 1 speaker to posts like "Best speaker for $500". However, scientific studies have been done like the one that describes how there is a big frequency gap between the Bose cubes and the acoustimass module, etc.

I guess the best advice is, if you haven't tried other things that were in the same price range as the AM-15s, you should have done so. If after that, you're completely content with the sound and your purchase, then you should sit down, enjoy you system and not give a flying @#%&* what anyone else says.

[zonik]

Otherwise, people would just agree on 1 speaker to posts like "Best speaker for $500".

Well most people seem to point to the B&W 602 S3 for under $600 and those that differ seem to acquiesce into 'B&W does makes the goods'.....->thread hijack- I'm down to the 602s, Klipsch RB75s or Wharfedale Diamonds 8.4 (uk,ark,china). I wish I could do side by side but I can't. I've heard the B&W and Klipsch, both very clean, however both seem to be recommeded with a sub, so that is why I am looking at the Diamond floor standers....thanks again for your recommendations.

[Mathew J]

Just bought a bose acoustimas 15 and installed with my older Technics receiver
SA-DX940. The rear speakers are putting out hardly any volume. Meanwhile, I seemed to have used all of the speaker hook-ups on back of receiver. Any suggestions for low volume rear speakers?

From what you are saying it sounds as if you are connecting the jewel cubes to the reciever itself which is pretty bad as you can fry those babies out....however if this is incorrect you could just have a bum unit.

[shokhead]

A sub and the 602's would make you happy.

[risabet]

Almost anything is better than the Bose sound, the man is a marketing genius but has no idea what real music sounds like. BTW, there is an objective standard for the reproduction of music in the home. It is the sound of live, unamplified music in a neutral acoustical space i.e the absolute sound.

[jrflanne]

You need to wire the Acoustimass speakers through the woofer module. Use the factory-supplied wires. Receiver>woofer module>speakers. I believe there are some pretty detailed instructions in the manual but you are running the risk of breaking your speakers. .

[gonefishin]

You need to take jrflanne's advice hooking them up. You can't just hook them straight up to the receiver and need to go thru the bass module as he described.


I used to try and be nice to people asking about the Bose Acoustimass speakers...saying that...if you like them, that's all that matters. To an extent that is true...but they do sound horrid. If you've got your heart set on Bose speakers please, at least look elsewhere than the Acoustimass models.

dan

[Woochifer]

As the others have said, check the owner's manual and make sure that it's connected right. The Bose AM systems require that you patch the receiver's speaker output through the bass module, which then redirects the output to the satellite cubes. The cubes are not designed to plug directly to the receiver.

After you check the connections, you should make sure that the output through all five speakers is identical. You do NOT do this with a movie, you need to use the test tone generator in your receiver. Movies are inconsistent in how much sound gets directed to the surrounds, only with a test tone can you ensure that the level output to each channel is consistent. To make absolutely sure that everything is done right, I would go further and get a SPL meter over at Radio Shack to ensure that the sound output levels are equal all the way around.

Another reason you're not getting enough output through the surround speakers could have more do with the soundtrack itself. If the surround levels sound low, it might be because the recording engineer intended it to sound like that. Most soundtracks are mixed with most of the sound up front, and not a lot in the back other than ambient sounds. Only with certain action films and larger scale movies will you get a lot of activity in the surrounds. Multichannel music discs such as DVD-A, SACD, and concert DVDs will also have a lot more sound mixed into the surrounds.

[Worf101]

Sigh, I don't know how many folks I've told this to. You just can't hook up a Bose minicube system to a receiver and get 5.1 sound. It doesn't work that way... You think I like giving people the bad news? Well can't say I never warned ya.

Da Worfster