Boston Acoustics BASNDWRXSB Boston Acoustics SoundWare XS 5.1 Black

5.1 speaker sets are a must for the home cinema experience. However, my wife does not appreciate 6 speakers in the living room. The choice - no speakers or a set of unobtrusive, stylish ones. Typically, this usually means compromising on sound quality or paying a lot of money for a reasonable set-up.

These Boston Acoustic speakers are really nicely made - a must for good sound as poor build quality leads to sound leakage from the cabinet which you hear as flabby, loose sound. The speakers are surprisingly small, and surprisingly full and tight sounding. The satellite speakers come with various mounting options, so you can put them flat against a wall, in the corners of a room between two perpendicular walls, or just free standing on your TV stand.

If you have a current receiver/amp, you might be able to use an auto configuration feature. Once configured, the combination of the satellites and subwoofer provide a very full and complete sound. The need to configure the speakers is not unique - all 5.1 speaker sets need to be configured to provide a balanced soundstage for your own room.

I bought this set as a replacement for a set of Tannoy speakers. The Tannoys provided very good service for the last five years, and continue to do so in the playroom. However, those speakers were always an eyesore. The Bostons are cute, smaller and sound larger. Unless you like to have the volume up at 11, or have an atypically large room, these are a fantastic speaker set for those who want the cinema experience without making the house look like a you ram raided Richer Sounds.

I did a lot of research before buying this set and I couldn't find a better sounding (and looking) set for anywhere near the same money. The excellent KEFs and even the brand new Cambridge Audio sets cost quite a bit more. Excellent value for money.

If you know your stuff you'll have heard of Boston Acoustics, a high end American speaker manufacturer.
I have some excellent Boston speakers as part of my AV set up at home, but I wished to get my girlfriend's living room set up, and me being me didn't wiah to spend a grand on a set of speakers, so I did some research.

The most popular choice in the sub £400 mark seem to be the Jamo HCS5 set which are excellent, I was down Tottenham Court Road and Kamla gave me a demo.
But these, are BETTER than the HCS5 Jamo's - they look better, and more importantly, sound better!
From the high end, to the lows, the mid range and the Sub Woofer.

Check out Google, you'll see nothing but rave reviews, and What HiFi have given it their top accolade, but less people have heard of Boston, hence sales aren;t has high as for Jamo.

The satellites are excellent, with many angles allowing you to position them and angle them to whichever direction you please, and are supplied with many bits and bobs and brackets etc so you can easily wall mount.
And the sound they produce is fantastic, you really have to look twice at the satellites (5 in total in this set - all the same including the centre which is the same as the rest) to believe that the sound you're hearing isn't from something much larger and beefier.

The set up looks superb, sounds superb and the build quality is excellent and will last you many many years!

I have this set running with a 9 year old budget Pioneer VSX 814 using a roll of cable I bought from Amazon - (which is pretty good), and it's excellent!
For those looking to invest in a living room surround system (or a bedroom one) don't wish to spend a million pounds, and wish for classy discreet yet beautifully sounding, well constructed and powerful speakers - buy these! Don't bother with anything else! And with a decent enough Amplifier you'll have a set up to last you many a year with years of pleasure!

DOWNSIDE??
Not many, except I discovered that these are made in China rather than the USA as Bostons other stuff is (or used to be) but even so, I'm even more impressed!

I think the main reason why there are hardly any reviews on these speakers is because people are still sat in front of their tvs enjoying them and havent got around to giving them a 5 star rating yet!

Haha im one of these people, i bought these speakers and sub woofer along with a Sony STRDH810 amp 2 months ago and ive been caning the blurays continuously since i installed them!

If buying these speakers you need to makes sure that you also remember to buy suitable strand speaker cable as well as a sub woofer cable, just dont get speaker cable that has too many strands to it because i really struggled threading the ends through the postive and negative copper connections on the speakers, and the cable was too thick to thread through the speaker stands that i bought.

The extra stuff that i required for the speakers is as followed:

25m of Quality 2 x 2.5mm 322 Strand Loud Speaker Cable - (Outside Dimensions of Cable: 7.5mm x 3.6mm) This cable was a bit too thick in my opinion so try to get one with less strands to it.

Fisual Subwoofer Cable - 3m - Pro Install Series

B-Tech Pair of Black Speaker Stands with Metal Base

The instructions for the speakers were straight forward to follow, the most faffy part was trimming the roll of speaker wire to the correct lengths and feeding the trimmed ends through the positive and negative holes at the back of the speakers. The copper bits are spring loaded and when you push down on them they align the hole that you can feed the wire through, its hard to explain but its straight forward to connect all the wires up.

You will obviously also need an amp to bring the speakers to life and i went for the Sony STRDH810, the speakers and "compact" subwoofer go very well with this amp.

And onto the subwoofer, its black and unboxed it weighs in at 9kg, its pretty big. In the manual it tells you to set the volume dial to 11 o'clock which i thought was funny, just....one.... more lol, and theres a polarity switch that needs to be on 180 degrees and a cross over dial that needs to be on 180Hz, i havent messed with these settings because i honestly dont know what my changes could do.

The volume knob is also commonly referred to as "Gain". This is used to set the volume of the subwoofer in relation to the other speakers.

The crossover control sets the point at which you want the subwoofer to produce low frequency sounds, against the ability of the satellite speakers to reproduce low frequency sounds. The crossover adjustment is variable from 40 to 180Hz. However, there is a label on the back of the sub that indicates the recommended setting provided by Boston Acoustics, so it must be important having it set at 180Hz.

The Polarity (Phase) Switch control matches the in/out subwoofer driver motion to the satellite speakers. This control has two positions 0 or 180 degrees. Again, the recommended setting is 180 degrees.

There is also a LINE IN port. This is where you connect your Subwoofer Pre-Out or LFE output from your preamp or home theater receiver.

The bass that this beast pumps out is truly ridiculous, the first film i popped in after setting up all the speakers and calibrating them with the amp was Tron: Legacy. I fast forwarded to the scene where Kevin Flynn and his son go speak to Zuse in the bar and Zuse asks the DJs to change the beat. I get goosebumps as i type this, the bass was incredibly deep and shook the whole room! yet the satellite speakers delivered incredibly clear sound, speach wasnt drowned out, everything sounded amazing.

Some of the best stuff ive watched with these speakers is:

Band of Brothers - The explosions and bullet fire are amazing, in some episodes when the squads are trecking through snowy forests you sounnd like youre really there, surrounded by your comrades then when every starts kicking off you can hear the bullets whizzing past your head and all around you, amazing series.

Ice Age 1 and 2 - The cracking of the ice and subtle music from the rear speakers are great.

The Dark Knight and Batman Begins, the Bat Mobile sounds absolutely amazing, im watching them both after ive typed this review!!

Avatar - Although everybody slates this film by saying its just dances with wolves with smurfs, i still rank it as the best film ive ever seen and this definately needs watching with decent surround sound speakers.

I could go on forever because ive watched some much stuff since getting these speakers. They also work very well with music and if you get hold of upmixed 5.1 surround sound music then youre in for a treat. I listen to all my music and watch all my blurays through the PS3 and the speakers bring a new lease of life to games old and new.

I recently purchased and finished Infamous 2 and I thought the sound and music was amazing. I was amazed at how good the sound enveloped me while playing. Listening to cars driving behind me and then down roads to the left or right-hand-side of me, it sounded like they were really there, and hearing the pedestrians of the world talking from different directions while I was wandering about made it feel like a realistic living breathing world! So these speakers are perfect for gaming as well as listening to music and watching films.

I found that these speakers delivered clear sound across a wide range of frequencies and a very well-balanced surround sound image. I found the powered subwoofer to be a great match for the rest of the speakers. Despite its compact size, and lack of effective bass response below 50Hz, in real world listening, the subwoofer provided an excellent sounding low frequency transition from the mid-range and high-frequency response of the satellite speakers.

System specs are as followed:

*Satellite Speakers: SoundWare XS 2-way
'Dimensions: 3.75 x 3.44 x 4.5 inches
'Net Weight: 1 lb.
'Frequency Response: 150Hz-20kHz
'Recommended Amp Power: 10-100 watts
'Nominal Impedance: 8 ohms
'Sensitivity: 85dB [SPL/2.8v at 1m]
*Subwoofer: 8-inch Powered Subwoofer
'Dimensions: 12-7/8 x 11-3/16 x 14-1/4 inches
'Net Weight: 20 lbs.
'Frequency: 40-150Hz
'Variable Crossover: 60Hz-180Hz (24dB)
'Amplifier Power: 100 watts

So in summary, buy these speakers! They are ridiculous!

Billy