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Review 2 of 3
Price Paid:
$114.00
from Circuit City Summary:
A great addition to an out-of-retirement system!
With a pretty decent mid-fi inside the house and all the speaker terminals spoken for on my distribution amp, I dug out all my old stereo junk in the basement to make a separate set-up in the garage. Routing cables through the wall facing the backyard, I hooked-up a pair of old AudioSource I/O speakers. With just a receiver, a BBE Sonic Maximizer, and CD player, my backyard ROCKED! In fact, it rocked a little too hard for those tired old speakers when my wife "fine tuned" the BBE and blew the woofers to pieces.
This ended-up being a good thing. As I started looking for replacement speakers, I demo'd all the brands available at the big box stores (and a couple at the high-end audio shop). The 151's were by far the sweetest sounding of the big-box offerings. And, even though this might not be fair without a side-by-side comparison, I felt the detail and timbre of the 151's was just about as good as the B&W WM4's I listened to at the high-end store, at about a buck-fifty less. They may not have the same punch and precision in the 20 to 35 Hz range as the B&W's, but it's a shortcoming that most people won't even notice.
Anyway, I was prepared to wait 'til after Christmas to slap down full retail on the 151's when, lo and behold, Circuit City had their pre-holiday-lets-start-the-madness sale, and reduced their 151's down to $114. Bought 'em on the spot.
Once hooked-up in my backyard, the real surprise came. With some unusually mild late-November weather, I had a chance to spend a few hours listening to Christmas CD's outside. The new speakers just blew me away. They sounded better than in the store, even without any BBE process applied. The accuracy and clarity of CD's is very good. FM broadcasts have a much wider frequency representation than with my old speakers. When adding a little BBE lo-contour, any low frequency deficiency is erased. The Bose 151's are, in short, one fantastic set of outdoor speakers, regardless of the price. Strengths:
Clean sounding. Good clarity at higher replay volume levels. Acceptable dynamic range. Weaknesses:
Mounting bracket provides EXTREMELY limited mounting options. A much more versatile bracket is available from Bose as an option, but it costs $29 (it should be the bracket included with the speakers). Similar Products Used:
AudioSource
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