As part of upgrading the speaker system for our office Mac, I ordered a set of the new Bose Companion 5 Multimedia speakers. Now, Bose is one of the most revered and hated, love-em or hate-em brands on the market today. I don’t pretend to have the “ear” of a true audiophile, but I do trust my ability to form a sound opinion. Which is why the following article made me laugh, as it gently lampoons the formulaic audiophile review found all stereo and home theatre magazines.

Technorati Tags: bose, stereo

Evan Trent does a masterful job reviewing the Harman Kardon Soundsticks II (the system I’m replacing as it turns out!): there’s actually good information and insight to be found here! But he’s at his best when parodying the audiophile’s recipe for writing a good review, comparing the $200 HK system to a 1.5-ton, $135,000 Genesis speaker setup powered by a $12,900 Audionet Pream and a $1,600 quad set of Manley Laboratories Neo-Classic 300B vacuum tube monoblock amps. Says Trent,

ATPM 10.04 - Review: Harman Kardon Soundsticks II:
Initially it was difficult to form any hard and fast conclusions about the sound of the two systems. They sounded so different. It will never cease to amaze me how different two given systems can sound one from another. I could clearly sense that the heart and soul of two unique designers went into the engineering of the Soundsticks and the Genesis 1.1 systems. The Soundsticks are voiced to be more nimble, and fluttery. They have an almost aloof quality. The Genesis system is anything but. You paid $135,000 for these speakers and you will never forget it.

Each of these systems had its own unique character and it would be hard to declare one the outright winner. Much as Stereophile and The Absolute Sound find it difficult to come away from an audio review with anything but praise, I was hard pressed to fault the Soundsticks. They had a sound of their own that was admirable. Besides which, it is clear that each system was designed with different goals in mind. Can we judge one system on the basis of another’s design goals? I think not. Both systems deliver upon the promises they make, and in this day and age who could ask for more?

Rather than offering our readers useful information such as a recommendation, or a concise conclusion as to which product I myself would buy, I feel it is more appropriate for me to ramble on for a few pages about the intricacies of my emotional response to the extensive listening sessions on which I embarked over the course of the comparative analysis. Thus in the long established tradition of long-winded and completely meaningless audio reviews, I will consult my notes from the listening sessions just as the reviewers in the aforementioned, esteemed, publications do. At the end of the following pages you should have absolutely no idea which system to buy, and it should be completely unclear as to how each system sounded. I expect, and demand, numerous irate letters to the editor exclaiming with great frustration how utterly useless this review was. Those of you who threaten to cancel your subscription will earn extra points.

So while I’ve surely sold my stereophonic soul to the king of lifestyle marketers by buying the Bose Companion 5’s, I’ll nonetheless be curious to see how these paper-coned objets d’art will stack up to my soon to be retired (and moved to my son’s computer) HK Soundsticks. And in Evan Trent style, I’ll also see if they can hold a candle to the 7.1 NHT system in the living room. Look for my review in next month’s Stereophile magazine!

And while on the subject, I should point out another great article that systematically dismantles the audiophile’s list of favorite “truths,” a set that exists to primarily further the existence of the high-brow (and high-cost) audiophile lifestyle:

“The Ten Biggest Lies in Audio” by Peter Aczel, published in The Audio Critic (link to pdf).

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