We were planning on wiring our house with in-wall speakers and, after an 'audio specialist' arrived for a consultation / estimate, we weren't in love with the price and amount of necessary work, wiring, etc. So we looked for other options with three considerations in mind: 1. aesthetics: simple and small 3. flexibility: we opted against surround sound because it wouldn't work well for regular audio / entertaining. We wanted an option that was flexible for movie viewing, music, and so on. 3. price: any time you require wiring and professional work, the price mounts very quickly
So we arrived at a bizarre solution: running the television's audio through a set of nice Bose computer speakers... and you know what? It was perfect and 10% the cost of the conservative estimate. It took a few minutes to install everything and we can easily run between our media system, the radio or our iPod. And the sound is terrific - far better than running through our Samsung television.
An aside: we purchased the system from the Bose Store and, after explaining our intended set up, our salesman actually advised against their higher end computer speakers ($399). He explained that they are terrific but intended for a desk and thus optimized for a very limited radius.... His honesty saved us $150 and we ended up with a better system for our needs. I was very impressed.
Bose Companion 3 multimedia speaker system
- Premium stereo performance for those who prefer a three-piece computer sound system - Two small desktop speakers deliver lifelike stereo sound - Hideaway Acoustimass module produces substantial low notes - Handy control pod includes volume, single-touch mute, headphone jack and auxiliary input