Bose Lifestyle 12 Theater System
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- Included Components: Receiver Radio Tuner
- Number Of Speakers: 5 Speakers and Subwoofer
- Subwoofer Power Output: 350 Watts
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Strongly Ambivalent...
Pros
Ease of set up. Great sound. Visual appeal for the speakers.
Cons
Price, proprietary technologoy which is non-expandable and maybe non-upgradeable.
Recommended it?
No
For Christmas we bought ourselves a BOSE Lifestyle 12 series II system. From Atlanta, we went to the BOSE outlet store in North Georgia (Dahlonega). Our purpose was to buy a set of BOSE surround sound Acoustimass cube speakers and then to purchase a separate AV Receiver.
When we got to the store, I saw and heard the Bose Acoustimass series 10 (which are the 5 cubes and subwoofer package that can be used with another party AV Receiver).
In time, the salesman got us to listen to a LifeStyle 30 system and I must admit, I was impressed. In the store, the LS 30 system sounded great with the movie "Patriot." It even produced surround sound from an old Frank Sanatra Christmas tune that was a mono signal. Hey not bad I thought.
But then the price, $3000.00 for the LifeStyle 30!!
Well, at this point I was ready to leave and re-think my surround sound needs...but I allowed the salesman to convince me that the LifeStyle 12 at $1999.00, with a Wave Radio for free, a 90-day return for any reason, AND do a 1-year same as cash transaction was not a bad deal.
So we bought it: the Bose LS-12, plus 2 sets of the cube speaker stands ($99.00/each), and a table stand ($29.00) - total damage $2400 and some change.
At home, the LS system is simple to set up. The hardest part being the time to assemble the speaker stands. We pop Matrix into our DVD - Pioneer RV-333 and viola...it sounds great!!
Then we tried listening to the Digital Cable music channels and I am shocked to find out that many of Digital Cable music channels are coming in mono...so I hold down the surround key on my Bose remote until I heard a chime - this means that system will take mono audio signals and convert them to surround sound. So now the Digital Cable music channels sound pretty good too.
But, I am still not satisfied with this system.
I keep thinking that for $2400.00, this thing should "rock the house"...
but, it doesn't.
So I started looking for the watts per channel rating for the LS-12 thinking that this would be a good point of comparison with other systems and I can find nothing to indicate the watts/channel.
Then I pull out some CDs of various types of music to test the system.
I played "O Mia Bambino Cara", "Scotland the Brave", "Heaven Can Wait", "Rumors", and a lot of club dance music.
Actually, nothing I played sounded bad. In surround sound, stereo + center, and stero modes all of the music sounded great.
But still, I am not quite satisfied with this system. What nags me is the price, the non-expandability of the system, and the idea that I have purchased a proprietary system which is incompatible with emerging industry standards.
By this I mean that the Bose LifeStyle products use something called Bose VideoStage. Which they say is designed to take a Dolby Digital bitstream or a PCM signal and product 5.1 output. They also advertise that there VideoStage can take a mono signal and create a 5.1 surround sound from it (which it does fairly well).
The LifeStyle cannot handle a DTS signal. Even though I know that there are precious few DVDs out in DTS (about 5 I think), I still am haunted by the fact that in a year DTS may become the more common format displacing Dolby Digital...just as Dolby Digital displaced Dolby Pro Logic.
Lastly, I just don't like this concept of a music box with a built in CD player. I believe in component architecture. This allows you to up-grade individual components as your budget allows and as technology advances.
So, IMHO: the Bose LifeStyle 12 is OK. It sounds great! You cannot beat the way it sounds with DVDs and the way it takes a mono signal and makes it surround sound is impressive.
But, it is way over-priced!!
For an investment of $2400.00, I expect a system that will rattle the walls and this one does not.
Also, at very low sound levels, the sound is actually no better than what we replaced which was only a stereo-system (SONY receiver with 2 Bose 301s).
Bottom line: if the system were cheaper, say $1500.00...then it is a good deal and a great system. Though still the proprietary nature of the beast remains an issue; however, at $2400.00, this system is a rip-off.
I must say though that Bose seems to have targeted a particular market segment: wealthy and non-technical. I certainly am not wealthy, though, I do OK. I am, however, fairly technical and am not intimidated by having to figure out how to hook up audio or video components.
BTW, the ease of set up is a selling point for Bose...but, the lack of LED indicators for the RF remote, is annoying because it takes a moment or two to figure out what listening mode the system is in.
When we got to the store, I saw and heard the Bose Acoustimass series 10 (which are the 5 cubes and subwoofer package that can be used with another party AV Receiver).
In time, the salesman got us to listen to a LifeStyle 30 system and I must admit, I was impressed. In the store, the LS 30 system sounded great with the movie "Patriot." It even produced surround sound from an old Frank Sanatra Christmas tune that was a mono signal. Hey not bad I thought.
But then the price, $3000.00 for the LifeStyle 30!!
Well, at this point I was ready to leave and re-think my surround sound needs...but I allowed the salesman to convince me that the LifeStyle 12 at $1999.00, with a Wave Radio for free, a 90-day return for any reason, AND do a 1-year same as cash transaction was not a bad deal.
So we bought it: the Bose LS-12, plus 2 sets of the cube speaker stands ($99.00/each), and a table stand ($29.00) - total damage $2400 and some change.
At home, the LS system is simple to set up. The hardest part being the time to assemble the speaker stands. We pop Matrix into our DVD - Pioneer RV-333 and viola...it sounds great!!
Then we tried listening to the Digital Cable music channels and I am shocked to find out that many of Digital Cable music channels are coming in mono...so I hold down the surround key on my Bose remote until I heard a chime - this means that system will take mono audio signals and convert them to surround sound. So now the Digital Cable music channels sound pretty good too.
But, I am still not satisfied with this system.
I keep thinking that for $2400.00, this thing should "rock the house"...
but, it doesn't.
So I started looking for the watts per channel rating for the LS-12 thinking that this would be a good point of comparison with other systems and I can find nothing to indicate the watts/channel.
Then I pull out some CDs of various types of music to test the system.
I played "O Mia Bambino Cara", "Scotland the Brave", "Heaven Can Wait", "Rumors", and a lot of club dance music.
Actually, nothing I played sounded bad. In surround sound, stereo + center, and stero modes all of the music sounded great.
But still, I am not quite satisfied with this system. What nags me is the price, the non-expandability of the system, and the idea that I have purchased a proprietary system which is incompatible with emerging industry standards.
By this I mean that the Bose LifeStyle products use something called Bose VideoStage. Which they say is designed to take a Dolby Digital bitstream or a PCM signal and product 5.1 output. They also advertise that there VideoStage can take a mono signal and create a 5.1 surround sound from it (which it does fairly well).
The LifeStyle cannot handle a DTS signal. Even though I know that there are precious few DVDs out in DTS (about 5 I think), I still am haunted by the fact that in a year DTS may become the more common format displacing Dolby Digital...just as Dolby Digital displaced Dolby Pro Logic.
Lastly, I just don't like this concept of a music box with a built in CD player. I believe in component architecture. This allows you to up-grade individual components as your budget allows and as technology advances.
So, IMHO: the Bose LifeStyle 12 is OK. It sounds great! You cannot beat the way it sounds with DVDs and the way it takes a mono signal and makes it surround sound is impressive.
But, it is way over-priced!!
For an investment of $2400.00, I expect a system that will rattle the walls and this one does not.
Also, at very low sound levels, the sound is actually no better than what we replaced which was only a stereo-system (SONY receiver with 2 Bose 301s).
Bottom line: if the system were cheaper, say $1500.00...then it is a good deal and a great system. Though still the proprietary nature of the beast remains an issue; however, at $2400.00, this system is a rip-off.
I must say though that Bose seems to have targeted a particular market segment: wealthy and non-technical. I certainly am not wealthy, though, I do OK. I am, however, fairly technical and am not intimidated by having to figure out how to hook up audio or video components.
BTW, the ease of set up is a selling point for Bose...but, the lack of LED indicators for the RF remote, is annoying because it takes a moment or two to figure out what listening mode the system is in.
