Bose ?.....don't hurt me.

[Preacherman]

Hello all, time again to pick ya’lls brain. I have just received a Bose Lifestyle 12 series 1 system (1996 model) as a hand me down from Mother.

OK...I know that Bose is not at all anything spectacular.

Right now within my budget theater I have a Onkyo 801b 7.1 receiver. The fronts are good but the surrounds (Kenwood) and side (RCA) speakers at this point are very cheap and definitely not the greatest. So, I was thinking of cannibalizing the Bose system to replace the sides and surrounds in the theater room with the Bose cubes and put the RCA & Kenwoods with the lifestyle system and use it for maybe a computer or garage system. I don’t even know if the Bose speakers will hold up with an actual receiver.

I am not a Audiophile by any stretch and this is to keep my spending down to $0 and upgrade slightly. I know that will be a laugh to some.

Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome.

P.S. I already thought of ebaying the Bose and buying a set of Fluance speakers, but you know the minute I do that, Mumsy would visit and wonder what I did with her system....

[ThomasW]

ebay

[aud19]

I agree :lol:

[LikeCoiledSteel]

I would doubt if the Bose would be any kind of an upgrade over the RCA & Kenwood speakers you have now. It would probably sound worse since the Bose cubes are much less full range than the RCA and Kenwoods. I would put the whole Bose system in the garage if you think your mom will feel bad. If she would not and if they are worth something...EBAY.
Steel

[gd]

Agreed.

If you love Mumsy, put the Bose in the basement -- where it will actually do a pretty fair job in a small, near-field environment -- and sleep soundly knowing that installing the Bose speakers in the main system is a wasted effort.

Then do yourself a favor, and move slightly from your keep-my-spending-down-to-$0 stance, and get some small entry-level satellites and/or center from such mfr's as Cambridge Soundworks http://www.cambridgesoundworks.com/ , or M&K http://www.mksound.com/xenon1.php or http://www.mksound.com/Kseries1.php

Either would be a significant bang for the buck.

System improves, Mumsy's happy... win-win.

[whoaru99]

If the Bose Acoustimass bass module and speakers would facilitate connection to your receiver or processor as a system, I'd have said go for it and I think it would have had a fair chance to sound OK compared to a mix-match of other "cheap" speakers.

However, the Acoustimass module and these speakers seem to be made with proprietary hookups (inasmuch speakers matched to bass module, bass module w/funky control connection to the Lifestyle receiver). Since that is the case, I would not use any of the pieces separately.

If there is some attachment to the system, or you need something for the bedroom, etc, then I'd use it there. If not, I agree with the others to sell and get some different speakers for the surrounds.

[Preacherman]

Well since I stated that I had already thought of ebaying (in fact that was the first thing I thought of), that of course is not an option, at least not at this time. From what I am reading and finding on my own it seems best to not break up this system and maybe use it as a whole for my computer. (Can't use it in the basement...live in Florida....I would be swimming)

[Brandon B]

eBay, buy something with part of the money, get mom a gift with the rest and tell her you just couldn't see having that expensive of a system when you didn't need it.

BB

[Azeke]

Aren't the Bose speaker connections proprietary?

Also, audiogon.com is another option, maybe there is a collector on that site.

You could use it as a secondary system, in another location.

Peace and blessings,

Azeke

[dyazdani]

Aren't the Bose speaker connections proprietary?

Last ones I saw, on the speaker end, were simply the wire clip type. Push the tab and stick in the wire.

I think the proprietary connection is between the sub/amp and the control center on the "all in one" models. I don't know that it's truly "proprietary" but it's not a conventional connection.