Incredibly happy w/ the Lifestyle 50

Author's Rating:

Pros: Quality, aesthetics, sound, remote, cube size, 6-disc changer, instructions, user-friendliness, DRC, 1ch5

Cons: Expense, perhaps...this is premium product for a premium price: it's the American way.

The Bottom Line: 
Search the web & grab a great deal on a Lifestyle 50 system. You won't be disappointed.

Author's Review
Please don't be confused w/ irate reviews from people who claim to be audiophiles.

Take it from a person who's spent several years in the music industry both recording & performing, as well as spent years & years buying, comparing, etc. re: audio systems for car & home. I've been to the massive retailers & the specialty home theater stores where the systems are nonillions of dollars. After comparing all of these, I found the Lifestyle 50 is to be best all-around home theater system. For normal human beings who listen to regular music & watch regular movies @ sane volumes & have neighbors & homes & noise ordinances, this is your system & it is an awesome one.

For people who have under $1000 to spend, have no neighbors, no noise ordinances, no limits on the noise they can make, & are looking to test & critique the acoustic & physical limits of every single piece of audio equipment they buy by using some kind of measuring equipment & copious amounts of time & energy doing so, perhaps this isn't your system.

Yes, it is expensive, but seeing the kind of power you wield w/ the remote alone, for instance, is astounding. You really do get what you pay for. And none of these irate reviewers ever mentions that you can hook up sound for 4 rooms from the Music Center, which is your receiver, tuner, CD player all in one. You can also hear your old pre-5.1 surround VHS tapes, DVD's, & CD's in 5-channel surround w/ the Lifestyle 50, effortlessly, using the "1ch5" feature. Lastly, there's Dynamic Range Compression or "drc" setting, which keeps the explosions, loud stuff from blowing you out of your couch & giving you cardiac arrest, while bringing the volume up on the quiet stuff like hushed one-on-one conversations in the movie.

Interesting that the irate reviewers never mention these unheard of technology advances. You can't accomplish those feats w/ anyone else's gear.

Something else you never see mentioned is that fact that the Jewel cube arrays (an "array" is Bose-speak for a set of Bose speakers, one stacked on top of the other) are the smallest, most aesthetically pleasing speakers on the market. We searched high & low for small speakers you can get in white & NO ONE has these. Many companies offer white, but none are as small as the Jewel cubes & still pack the same quality sound. For aesthetics, you can also go w/ in-wall & in-ceiling speakers, but you'd better be a top-level manager or director @ your company & have the pursuant salary before you go shopping for those. The Lifestyle 50's as close as you're going to get w/out going to the "next level" w/ in-wall/flush-with-the wall stuff.

Everybody likes to take shots @ Bose. Bottom line, the Lifestyle 50 is an awesome home theater system & well worth the money. You can always find a new one for less than retail. Try Vanns.com, for instance. That's where I got mine for much less than retail. Since the Lifestyle 50 now has some age on it, you'll be seeing it go for less & less, just like everything else.