Advice for replacing non-functioning Bose Lifestyle 48 5.1 (1 Viewer)

[dem]

We have a Bose with five cube speakers, wall mounted, wiring in the walls. We need to replace it and prefer a non-Bose product. We are looking for a minimum number of wires. One recommendation is to buy a Bluesound Pulse soundbar, perhaps with a wireless sub-woofer, perhaps with two wireless back speakers. Another recommendation to buy a Sennheiser soundbar. Both of these are in the mid to high price range, said to be good for music listening as well as surround-sound-like for movie watching. Does anyone have any experience with these? Also, if we go with another 5 speakers, does anyone know whether we can use the existing -n-wall wiring we have for the Bose speakers?

 

[JohnRice]

There's really no reason I'm aware of you can't use the existing wiring. That's preferable to the other options you mentioned.

Do you have a target budget?

 

[dem]

There's really no reason I'm aware of you can't use the existing wiring. That's preferable to the other options you mentioned.

Do you have a target budget?

Were we to replace with Bose, the cost would be about $3500, so probably would be in the $4000 range.

 

[JohnRice]

Where are you located? Those definitely don't sound like US prices.

 

[dem]

Where are you located? Those definitely don't sound like US prices.

In the US. Price is for the Bose Lifestyle 650. What we are looking for is a system good for both music listening and film watching/listening. My wife does not want a lot of visible wires, thus our desire to use existing in-wall wiring, and of course the speakers also are mounted on the wall so we would like the same if a wired system. An alternative could be some wireless system (plugging into outlets is not a problem).

 

[JohnRice]

Holy Smokes! I had no idea Bose had systems as high as $4K. You can do SO MUCH better for that much $.

I think your old cubes just used standard speaker wire,but you'll need to verify that it's just two wires to each speaker.

 

[dem]

In the US. Price is for the Bose Lifestyle 650. What we are looking for is a system good for both music listening and film watching/listening. My wife does not want a lot of visible wires, thus our desire to use existing in-wall wiring, and of course the speakers also are mounted on the wall so we would like the same if a wired system. An alternative could be some wireless system (plugging into outlets is not a problem).

I know that we can do better, but of course am more than willing to spend less if we can get good sound! We bought our current system 15 years ago. Just checked - 2 wires for each speaker. I'm into good sound, my wife into simplicity and not seeing wires all over. We have a BluRay player. The Bose had a CD player. Our TV also is 15 years old, so not smart. If necessary we would replace it.

 

[JohnRice]

We can get you going. Bose wiring is still unusual, since everything is routed through the bass module. That will no longer be the case. There would normally be a wire to the new subwoofer, but there are options for that if it's really a no-go.

 

[Bobd207s]

I highly recommend Aperion Audio speakers - great bang for the buck ! Great sound , high quality components and beautiful cabinets. Their subwoofers are excellent too ! I'm not sure what your budget is but Aperion is very flexible with configuring a system for you. Below is a link to one of their family of speakers - hope this helps

Aperion Audio Novus Home Theater Speakers

Twenty years of engineering excellence has led to the development of our newest family: NOVUS. Literally thousands of hours have been spent on the design and refinement of our newest family in order to bring you a speaker of incredible value and performance. Several unique design features allow...

www.aperionaudio.com

 

[Todd Erwin]

I highly recommend Aperion Audio speakers - great bang for the buck ! Great sound , high quality components and beautiful cabinets. Their subwoofers are excellent too ! I'm not sure what your budget is but Aperion is very flexible with configuring a system for you. Below is a link to one of their family of speakers - hope this helps

Aperion Audio Novus Home Theater Speakers

Twenty years of engineering excellence has led to the development of our newest family: NOVUS. Literally thousands of hours have been spent on the design and refinement of our newest family in order to bring you a speaker of incredible value and performance. Several unique design features allow...

www.aperionaudio.com

There are many other companies you can look at, too, and I'm sure many will chime in. Speakers are very subjective, though, and highly recommend either listening before buying or find a company or retailer that has a very lenient return and exchange policy (including paying for return shipping).

I'm not entirely crazy about Aperion. Their blog posts are often misleading, and when I called them out on one of their posts on Facebook (which, BTW, had nothing to do with their own products but how the author quite obviously did not have his streaming device configured properly), the author turned around and fired a nasty shot at me and this forum.

 

[JohnRice]

My #1 recommendation for reasonably priced speakers is the ELAC Debut 2 line.

For a subwoofer, maybe the SVS SB-1000.