Bose Wave Music System - Platinum White

First I purchased a rebuilt Bose with the add-on CD unit. It worked very good for a few weeks till I decided to leave it on (for background music for my cats) while going to the next town. After about 3 hours on my return it could not be controlled with any of the 2 remotes. Sent it in for repair. With some delay Bose sent me a new one. Now about 1 year later the New unit is just a digital clock. It will not work with any of the now three remotes and without an on/off switch this second unit is use less.
I'm not sure if I'll send it in for repair( is this going to be a yearly repair) or cut my losses and buy something else.
I suggest before buying these Bose Wave units you look very hard for something else, besides the sound is really NOT that great.

When my family, husband, twin daughters and me, decided to move from Montreal to Austin, we had some major decisions to make. What to take, what to sell. We had a couple top flight stereo systems, a 5.1 surround sound system to beat the band, my camera gear, -- I had "L" everything, three bodies and lots of other terrific lenses -- and a decade's worth of pretty nice stuff that we'd accumulated. We were pretty well off, but not rich, not even upper middle class. This move was a big deal for us. My husband had a new job, but what about me? I was losing a pretty good income.

But Austin, what a wonderful city. And it's warm. We decided to go for it, so we sold everything we could, reaped a small fortune on eBay. So bye bye, beautiful sounding music, bye bye my cameras and the gear I loved.

That was a couple years ago and we're doing okay now, better than okay. We have back a new big screen TV, a new surround sound system, but we still have beaucoup de rooms that need good music and on a THELMA AND LOUISE type driving trip with my friend Katie I discovered the Bose Wave Radio System. We stopped at the outlet stores at Woodburn, a city south of Portland, Oregon and when I walked into the Bose store I was blown away. I listened to everything and when I got back to Houston I made some major purchases, it's nice to have some money again.

I have this system in my kitchen, on top of the refrigerator, and it fills the room with a warm sound with just enough, but not too much bass. There is no single sweet spot, no single place in my kitchen where you get better stereo, the whole kitchen is a sweet spot. I bought three Bose systems for my home and I love them all, use them all. I'd never thought of myself as being a fangirl before, but I guess I'm a bose fangirl now. I can't help it, I listen to these systems all day, everyday, whether I'm cooking in the kitchen, working on my laptop in the dining room or working in my dark room. They are a little pricey yes, but I think they are worth the money.

I had one and was seduced by, " it sounds better than a stereo many times
its size". What rubbish. It sounds "so so" and nothing at all special
I used mine in the UK and USA and the classical FM channels sounded really flat and lifeless. It is all plastic which looks crappy after a while. My BOSE was white in colour and turned a pleasing tone of old ivory. If you want a great sounding small system try the TIVOLI Mk 2 with the CD player. Nicely built with wood and a warm pleasant sound. You cannot get great sound with a mini set of speakers. Thats fact. I now own a analog tube stereo and cd player with Klipsh speakers. That is music!

Bose Wave Music System - Platinum White
The Bose Wave Radio is a joy from the first instance of approaching the opening of the normally dreaded packing. There were no extra fillers in the compact box which opened without the usual hacking, tearing and #@*+# and the radio lifted easily, with the supplemental features in full view.
THEN--a simple user friendly setup which resulted in glorious sound! The design of the radio is superb, resting on a small table and adding class to my hum-drum life. This well designed, well researched product is a tribute to the Bose company. Thank you, Granny Dee, San Diego, California

I laugh at and mock the Bose company both on Amazon and in real life among living, breathing human beings. This shocks some, offends others, and perhaps mildly annoys the rest. "Bose" is used by the masses swimming in disposable income to mean "good audio" as "Coke" is used to mean bubbly sweet brown liquid. I myself have fairly cheap audio products, except for some expensive (by non-audiophile standards) speakers I bought without any good reason a long time ago. But the point is, I grew up in a home with good audio equipment. I recall when my brother once saved up his money and bought some fashionable Bose monitors to replace the cheap speakers that came with an all-in-one stereo he'd got hold of. Problem was, when we hooked them up, they sounded worse than what they replaced--thin, lacking in bass, clarity, presence, whatever. Compared to my father's various speaker pairs, they were absolute trash. He doggedly used them for years because he'd spent a few hundred bucks on them; however, and all his music sounded like it was coming across the world's loudest AM radio.

And over the years it seemed every time I encountered a Bose product--attached to computers, in cars, in living rooms--it sucked either in actual performance, or was was ridiculous in concept, such as the strangely shaped $250 3-CD changer the company markets. But "Bose" rolled on like a CEO from early in this decade, living the high life and laughing at the discrepancy between performance and pay. And the shareholders, as it were, were fine with that, while I remained a sort of Nietzschean outsider, gnashing in my teeth in lonely superiority alone in my garret.

But something has happened recently that cracked my seething hatred of the Bose company, and given me hope that someday I might be reconciled with the rest of mankind: I heard a Bose product that I liked quite a bit, twice. It was this radio at the home of a friend and colleague. Although I normally only listen to emo, it was tuned to a classical station, and there was not one thing really wrong with how it sounded. Because of the modest size and the nameplate, I expected not much at all, and instead heard something strongly adequite for eating and drinking to. It sounded better than my brother's old Bose speakers, that's for sure. The bass was OK, the sound was clear and balanced as it echoed around the room. It sounded about as good as hooking up a compact CD player to a Peavey combo guitar amp, like I did it long ago. Likewise, from across the room, there was no clear sense of listening to stereo, but you can't have everything, specially when it's a Bose.

I briefly thought about buying this thing partly out of perversity and partly to put in my office and probably would have if it had been about $300 to $350 cheaper. But if you have money to blow, it's not a bad product at all.