I got myself "BOSE Companion 5" 5 days ago in an attempt to improve sound in my TV room. My TV room is longer than it is wider therefore all previous setups with floor standing speakers and surround channels did not work due to the sound bouncing all over the place. I just needed something smaller to improve our TV experience.
BOSS was a logical choice after I have heard my father's Companion 3 performance in his computer setup. The thing is - I already own "Cambridge SoundWorks FPS 2000 Digital" (CSW) 4 speaker surround set I got 9 years ago as a present from my wife "girlfriend back then" It has been performing admirably in my computer room on a 2nd floor to this day.
Back to BOSE: I got my speakers and paired them with IBM T60 laptop hooked up to my TV and Dish encoder/decoder. Ofter playing various audio files/CDs and listening to sound coming from TV and DVDs I was puzzled with luck of "OMG!!!I am blown away by this!!! OMG!!" factor. Something was wrong here. The speakers sounded OK but just OK. I have tweaked various Win 7 settings on my laptop in an attempt to achieve the breakthrough in performance to no avail. I even compared the same CDs and MP3 by listening to them through my CSW rig on the 2nd floor. And again I could not reach conclusive decision since side by side comparison could not be made. Finally I had enough and brought BOSS Companion 5 set to the 2nd floor to meet my workstation and "Cambridge SoundWorks FPS 2000 Digital"+ Soundblaster Live. BOSS speaker set was hooked up to my desktop under a minute and had a first go with Pink Floyd's "Wish you were here" in the CD drive. I turned the lights off and listened to the music. I've caught myself nodding - the performance was good.
Then I switched to the CSW setup and played the same song again and my jaw dropped. The sound was SOOO MUCH BETTER - full of character, warmth and soul. Exactly the qualities another reviewer [P. Lau] described in his post as "`warmth', `soundstage', `smoothness',`less fatigue'." These qualities were missing from Bose Companion 5 reproduction of the sound. This could be due to the fact that it is a new system which does not have a lot of "burn in" time yet or it could be something else. Nonetheless, the difference is profound enough for me to send it back for a refund. I guess I must give Bose another shot some other time. Once again they did not sound bad, no no, they sounded OK but just not better than Cambridge SoundWorks FPS 2000 I already own. I might have kept them if they weren't caring BOSE name and were under $99 or I did not have a chance to compare them to my existing system.
Once again I do like Bose brand and will not bash them needlessly. Make up your own mind since this review is based on my personal biased experience. My father seems to like them better than my CSW setup - go figure!Get more detail about Bose Companion 5 multimedia speaker system Graphite/Silver.
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