Ok, there's plenty of BOSE bashing out there. I've been to the BOSE store, listened to their home audio products, saw the little mini-movie theatre demo 3 times, etc. I'll admit that I think the BOSE wave radio is fine for a kitchen radio, the 802's are ok for a wedding DJ. My biggest issue is the ridiculous cost of the stuff they sell! That being said...
I happened to be at the mall yesterday. The BOSE store had an L1 compact system set up in the store right near the front entrance so I wandered in. I had heard they were going to start carrying these in stores. The BOSE employees were demoing it for a customer who wanted a system for deck parties. Ok, how bad can it sound? Well, really bad apparently...I mean really really really bad. The employee started with a demo by playing some classic rock from his ipod, and it sounded like utter garbage. The lower part of the system seemed to have little to offer aside from maybe 90-200hz. The high end section of the system was extremely hyped in the 1-4k range. The high frequency region was barely existent. The audio was also not particularly coherent either.
Please someone, go to the BOSE store and tell me I am or am not crazy. This is by far the worst BOSE product I have ever heard. I am quite flabbergasted as to how they can let something so bad out of their R&D department let along peddle this crap for $1000. If I were a speaker company (and I have done my share of good and bad designs) I would be downright embarrassed to let anyone hear this. If you are considering getting one of these, do yourself a favor and buy a mackie srm450 and a tripod stand.