My current CD player is a boom box that we’ve had for about 5 yrs. It cost less than $ 100 . It’s tinny and pitiful, but it did the job
After spending a month hanging out on the You Tube thread I realized that I used to listen to music that shook the walls, and I miss that!
I want to shake the walls again!
My budget is less than $ 500. But, it’s a small room with thin walls
Interesting side note, if you scroll about half-way down the page there is a clicky that says "Learn how the Wave® music system reproduces lower musical notes ". There is a great little animation that explains how the music goes round and round, oh oh oh oh oh oh, and it comes out here!
The insides of that thing are so twisty they look like the intestines of some kind of herbivore. (sorry Izz )
Yes, I have had experience with them. We have the old style one . . . the one that loads CD’s on top, instead of sucking them into the unit. I imagine they did away with the top loader because of problems. Ours doesn’t always read the CDs.
Besides that, it’s a really cool little unit that delivers an amazing sound. We found it has less base that the larger Bose unit, but you can control the base a little bit by using the wall to reflect it back to the listener.
We haven’t used it as much as we thought for playing CDs or listening to the radio. But when the speakers in our console TV broke, I put it on top of the TV and hooked up the auxiliary input jacks to the VCRs output. We’ve been tuning the TV through the VCR and using the Bose as the television’s speakers. Our VCR tapes never sounding so good! I find that the CD’s sound good played through the Bose, but the VCR tapes sound amazing. We were watching the A and E version of Pride and Prejustice with the audio track coming through the Bose. We heard sounds we NEVER heard in the thirty or so times we watched it. I was amazing to hear birds twittering in the background.
That said . . . get a Bose and hook it up to your TV!
I got one as a 25 th wedding anniversary present many years ago, before they put the cd player in the unit. I plug in a cheap walkman type player to it. The sound is wonderful. I’ve never had any trouble with it in any way.
Maybe it wasn’t quite thirty times through a six hour miniseries. But we have watched it a lot. If mom and I hunkered down in the cozy spare bedroom with a TV(but no cable) for an afternoon of just relaxing, we inevitably popped it in the VCR. I think it is the best, most entertaining Jane Austin adaptions.
The house we’re in now has cable both upstairs and downstairs so we spend more time flipping channels than we used to and haven’t pulled out P and P in a while. But I could watch it again.
For $500+, I’d personally be keeping my options open a little.
I had a Bose system in my TransAm and I was not alltogether impressed with it. I eventually switched the head, amp and speakers out for different ones.
My father in law had a Bose surround sound system until he upgraded to a Dolby 6.1 DTS-ES (which cost him less than the Bose system initially did, but sounded much better and more ‘live’); HUGE difference between the two for not a lot of price difference.
Basically my point is, keep your options open until you explore other systems. Bose, IMHO, makes excellent devices, just not for the price the charge. For less money you could have a larger, more powerful system that still enhances sounds in the 3 Hz to 120 Hz and other ranges just as well.
As an audio hobbyist I’m not saying I wouldn’t buy Bose; I would if the price was right. It wouldn’t be my first choice, though.
There we go, I was waiting for an ‘audiophile’ to weigh in…!
Just found out that my friend’s husband is a stereo gear head, so it will be interesting to hear what he has to say. He was very detail-oriented about choosing his truck, his TV, etc so I’m sure he’ll research the hell out of this too. “What can you do with a budget of X”.
Really is great to have other people’s brains to draw on!
In the cosmic scheme of things, I know it’s not really that important, a good music system is a luxury. There’s so many deeper issues in the world.
But on the other hand, music is a source of joy and energy-- and with more energy, what additional good stuff would I be putting out into the world?
Probably washing the dishes faster, if nothing else…
I was in the market for a new CD/DVD player about 4 months ago. I was under a $500 price range since I just spent $1400 on my new TV.
I went with a Home Theater In A Box Setup…the best one I could find for my price range was the Onkyo HT-S790
Man do I love it!
The fronts are huge! So if size constraints are an issue, this might not be a good set. The sound quality is top notch though…upgrade the speaker wire!! 16 gauge at least..I went with 14g and used banana plugs.
Thats my two cents for you…
OH!..thats just the receiver and speakers..Since I got it for under $400, I picked up an Oppo DV-970HD to upconvert my DVD’s to HD…works great! With this together it put me right about $525…so not too far over my limit..
Sorry I went off like this, I try to plug Oppo whenever I can…great company!
Like some other folks, I’d suggest shopping around a bit before going right for the Bose. My parents have one, and it’s nice and certainly reliable. But I think the sound on the Tivoli Audio radio/cd combo is as good and the aesthetics are better. The Tivoli is very minimalist as far as controls go, but that suits me as well. And it’s easy to plug in an mp3 player or computer. I didn’t get the subwoofer which you might well want for wall-shaking purposes. But the sound on this set carries nicely.
