Bose Companion 5 Multimedia Speaker System Review

Crisp, Bright and Amazing

"I use the Bose Companion 5.5 with my desktop computer. I have an external drive that has over 60,000 songs. I use iTunes and a mix of VBRs and a mix of format. Many of these songs, (I would guess around 80%) when played, you will discover are have been rendered more crisp, and more importantly, spacial. The most remarkable feat is that I hear so much more within the songs than before. I hear the chorus separated from the primary vocalist. I hear new (to my ears) dissimilar percussion that becomes one, massive tiny nuances to the 80% of songs. A few weeks back, a friend of mine came over for pizza and beer and I had R.E.M.'s "Monster" album playing. After a few songs, she asked if this was a new remastered album. You can assign volume levels for every song that you own. Nothing used to irk me more than going from a loud song into a track that was revised or tweaked until a very low-volume, sometimes muffled disk is the end result. This is a new release.Say for instance, you buy a newly released album. On first few plays, the songs sound great. A few days forward you hear a song from that same album and find that it is hopelessly quiet on your mix CD. 2 choices: Turn it up, or skip it. =/So again, when you come across one of these songs, or entire albums, you can move the volume playback for each song or each album (make sure to check the box that says "remember to. The same goes for albums that are obnoxiously loud. I really recommend using this feature instead of trying to fix the track with software. If you knock the volume too high, it will distort and it is now ruined - unless you've made a copy, which you've always done, right? Along with individual song sound levels, you can give each song its own equalizer setting. You can tell I-tunes to start a particular song 0:45 into the track, because it is like stupid banter, or whatever. You can fade out - this is a great feature.Moreover, a fair number of albums have a "hidden" song, and it is just stuck on the end last track. You put the CD in to rip and find that track number 16, the last song, is 19:42. Actually, track 16 is just 4:00 long. Additionally, you should find the hidden track by going to the end of the CD and working backwards. I have found most of those hidden songs probably are well to stay hidden. But, you might find a gem in there. You can use software (audacity, MP3Trim (both freeware) come to mind, but there are thousands of these download sites. Stick with sites you are familiar with: [@]"