Let me preface this review by saying that I have been a hard core Bose fan for a long time. I have Bose in every room and even narrowed my car search to cars that had Bose stereo systems. Recently however the bubble has burst a little bit. I had this Acoustimass system for 5 years and thought it sounded great... until I bought the Energy Take Classic 5.1 system for less than what I paid for my Bose. I read about it on Consumer Reports and based on customer reviews I decided to give it a try. I was blown away with how much better it sounds than my Bose did. I once heard someone say "No highs, no lows must be Bose". That used to offend me until I found out what they meant. The Bose system obviously sounds better than most of the Wal-Mart crap systems out there however it is not the best value for your money. I sold my Acoustimass system on Ebay and was able to buy a brand new Energy system and still have some cash left. I am so glad I did. If you snap the grills off the front of your Bose cubes, you will notice it is just one full range driver. Times 5 cubes and all you really have is 5 full range drivers and the subwoofer. Now these full range drivers are extremely impressive as far as full range drivers go however they are still not capable of producing the mids and highs that component speakers can produce. Having had both systems in the same room, powered by the same reciever, I can honestly say that I didn't know what I was missing when I had my Bose system. I would highly recommend saving a few bucks and buying a far superior system, such as the Energy Take Classic 5.1. You won't regret it. In conclusion, I still like Bose... I have the 301 bookshelf speakers in my bedroom and love them... still love my car's (component) Bose stereo. The acoustimass system just lets quality suffer a little for the sake of compact size (i.e. full range drivers instead of component audio). That slight savings in size is not worth the comprimise in sound to me... especially in this price range.