BIC Acoustech Speakers

[EricARoth]

I've been looking to get another set of bookshelf speakers to complete my 7.1 home theatre. Since budget is a constraint, I found a series of speakers called Acoustech at www.acousticsounddesign.com. I found this place by accident while searching on dealtime, now www.shopping.com.

I'm still waiting for the shipment, but I'm interested to read if anyone else has any experience with the brand of speaker.

[sc03979]

My parents have some BIC Venturi speakers they bought about 8 years ago. They bought their high end center, 2-way speakers w/built in subs, and 2 bookshelfs for rears. This is paired with a yammie 5.1, at the time 2 steps up from the entry level receiver.

I think they sound pretty darn good and for the price, $800 for all 5 speakers was a pretty good value. They are much better then the $2500 Bose system they initially bought and returned, thanks to me.

On other forums I've heard more who like the BICs then those that don't. Of course your ears are what counts.

[kexodusc]

BIC America is a pretty solid bang-for-the-buck speaker company, I don't think they're very big, more of a local operation that does very well. A few years back for whatever reason (possibly change of ownership?) they started outsourcing many of their speakers productions to overseas (china, etc) and the performance dropped considerably while the costs did at the same time...today some models are better buys than others.
I know the recent incarnation of Venturi's can be bought very cheap, but have pretty miserable crossovers in an otherwise acceptable speaker. The BIC's are quite popular speakers in the DIY community to modify to get a great sounding speaker on the cheap, you need to have access to measuring equipment though. The stock versions of the few models I've heard have been either good or bad, though, so be careful. My heavily modded DV62CLRS sounded quite good compared to $350 and $500 center channels I tested them against...not quite as good as my Studio CC IMO, but close, but better than my cousins CC-370 (though a bit warmer). I've not heard the stock version, but I have heard the 53CLR and it was painfully mediocre...it sounded lie a $150 center speaker, nothing special.

Their subwoofers are not that great, (though I haven't heard the Acoustech subs).

It seems the Acoustech's are more of a higher-end line of BIC speakers, they might be a good buy, but I'd recommend listening first, just because of my hit and miss experience with some of their other stock models.
Like anything, always take the reviews you read with a grain of salt...