Any AV hifi experts on here? Sonos + Old Bose question

[6BMW]

I have an old Bose Lifestyle 25 MK II System hard wired in to our walls and the lifestyle head unit has finally died after a good 10 years of service. I am thinking of getting a Sonos system but wondered if my wall mounted cube speakers can be powered via the Sonos in built amp?

Pulling out the bose cabelling means redecorating which I don't want to do!! Also can the cubes be used without the Bose subwoofer or are the speakers useless without the Bose sub?

Can I use a different sub and amp or are the bose cubes only capable of throwing out treble and no bass?

[Plotloss]

In a Bose system the cubes only present the upper mids and highs.

Their cabling is also less than straightforward as its proprietary.

I've just ripped a Lifestyle 50 out for a client for the same reason.

[6BMW]

Yikes! Does this mean redecorating! st!!

Might just leave the bose in and get some floor standing speakers but the room would look a bit overkill.

Thanks anyhow... Is there any other way out? Can the Bose sub be powered from another amp?

Edited by 6BMW on Monday 2nd August 19:56

[Plotloss]

The 'sub' is what contains the amps, the head unit simply sends it's commands to the 'sub' to tell it what to do, again over a proprietary interface.

In all honesty, if you don't want to replace it you'd either be better getting one off ebay or trying to get it repaired.

[headcase]

It may be possible but depends on how handy you are, in the back of your user manual is actually a pinout of its mini din connector. The sub takes variable analogue audio from the headunit, you could remove the mini din from the end of your sub lead and add a couple of phono sockets instead then connect the RCA outputs from a zone player to it and switch the zone player to variable output then in theory it should work but by no means guaranteed. Its something I would have a fiddle around with if I were in your situation before resorting to ripping the whole lot out.

[miniman]

Plotloss said:

The 'sub' is what contains the amps, the head unit simply sends it's commands to the 'sub' to tell it what to do, again over a proprietary interface.

In all honesty, if you don't want to replace it you'd either be better getting one off ebay or trying to get it repaired.

Were the subs all active on the Lifestyle? My Acoustimass 5 system has a passive sub.

[Bullett]

My old Bose was connected from subwoofer to cubes with normal 2-core speaker wire.

So the speaker wire should still be usable I would have thought. Just disconnect the cube and put a proper speaker on and at the subwoofer end put your sonos.

[headcase]

Acoustimass's are passive, Lifestyle subs are all Active.

[E31Shrew]

Standard repair cost from BOSE is around £80.00. Normally takes 7 days depending on efficiency of your local retailer.

I would go down that route....

Is the head unit totally dead? Nothing visible at all?

Edited by E31Shrew on Tuesday 3rd August 23:10

[Teetertank]

I don't own one of these Bose systems, so can't say for sure, but while I'm sure it can be done, you would need to be careful powering the satellite speakers directly from a different amplifier (like a built in Sonos). The reason being that I expect that the satellites are designed to take only the higher frequency sounds, and could be easily damaged if you run low frequency bass through them without the addition of a crossover.

If you can add or use the exisiting crossover, which is likely found inside the Bose bass unit, then you should easily be able to re-utilise the satellites with addition of a sub to take care of the bass. Most active subs have adjustable cut-off frequency so you could easily integrate with the system. You can also get subs that take a high-level input from an amplifier, so again, you may be able to use a Sonos.

You will probably find a suitable replacemetn Bose sub on eBay if you find you can't get it repaired.

Hope that makes sense.

Edited by Teetertank on Wednesday 4th August 14:34

[6BMW]

Thanks all. It's a weird problem - when I power the system up the sound only comes from one of the speakers and the sub. I need to manually reset by holding down the surround button on the remote for it to fire up all speakers but then it looses the surround sound ability and just has standard sound coming out from all speakers including the one's which are meant to be behind as surround speakers.

Spoken to BOSE on a number of occasions but they can't figure out what the problem could be so time to change it.

The Sub works fine i think it's a 5.1 processor issue of some sort.

[Sabrina Joul]

Thanks a lot for this respond, actually i had a similar concern and this helped me out with my issue. now i know what was the problem when powering my satellite speakers!

Teetertank said:

I don't own one of these Bose systems, so can't say for sure, but while I'm sure it can be done, you would need to be careful powering the satellite speakers directly from a different amplifier (like a built in Sonos). The reason being that I expect that the satellites are designed to take only the higher frequency sounds, and could be easily damaged if you run low frequency bass through them without the addition of a crossover.

If you can add or use the exisiting crossover, which is likely found inside the Bose bass unit, then you should easily be able to re-utilise the satellites with addition of a sub to take care of the bass. Most active subs have adjustable cut-off frequency so you could easily integrate with the system. You can also get subs that take a high-level input from an amplifier, so again, you may be able to use a Sonos.

You will probably find a suitable replacemetn Bose sub on eBay if you find you can't get it repaired.

Hope that makes sense.

Edited by Teetertank on Wednesday 4th August 14:34

Sabrina Joul (Client Electronics Reviews) - Fabius, New York
bose acoustic wave| bose wave music system| bose acoustic wave| bose acoustimass 10| bose acoustic| barcode scanner| reverse phone lookup| bose acoustic| bose sounddock portable

Edited by Sabrina Joul on Thursday 16th December 22:48