Hi Guys, I'm happy to report that despite your thoughts and prayers, I'm still here . No, seriously, I want to thank all of you for your kind words of support during my recent hip replacement surgery. To be honest, I am experiencing slightly more discomfort than I had anticipated, and I'm still trying to get the images of those ugly 'nurses from hell' out of my mind (this may require years of therapy).

I do have a legitimate question, however, although it's probably going to sound totally stupid to most of you, especially those of you familiar with the Bose system. It's this whole thing about using two of these systems (orig. or compact) to create a STEREO effect. Aside from the terrible price premium, how does this even work? At it's simplest, stereo would include a left and right signal that would place different parts of a musical composition at different places along a 190/degree plane to simulate what you would hear from a live group standing at different spots on the bandstand. Bass is omnidirectional, making placement pretty much immaterial, and the addition of a center channel MIGHT make virtual placement of different instruments or vocals somewhat more accurate. So, here is my question. My understanding of the Bose system is that everyone, no matter what your location in the room, hears pretty much the same thing. So what gets fed to the 'left' system and what gets fed to the 'right'? Since both 'systems' are going to distribute their prospective signal in such a way as to 'make everyone hear the same thing', wouldn't their combined, simultaneous output have some kind of 'missional' conflict. It might sound ok, even GOOD, but would it be .....STEREO? I think it be more like CX@5%4KJ&X7A + BASS.

I'm being a little facetious, sure, but given the cost of two of these systems (plus stereo mixer???), is this the best way to spend your STEREO dollars if your goal truly IS stereo?. This whole post is going to sound incredibly stupid if I'm missing something obvious here. But it does seem to me that if a highly rated company like BOSE were truly interested in putting out a premium STEREO system, they would engineer it themselves and not leave acoustically/engineering-challenged users to create some gerry-rigged, Frankenstein with their product label on it.

Let me be clear that this is NOT a bash of Bose products or Bose users. I have no doubt that when used as intended, it is a marvelous system. I just don't understand how someone (ok, I'll use Zuki as an example) could go from 2 Podium 802's (<300.00) being 'sweet' and 'almost there', and 'the stereo effect bringing so much more to the table than a (single) compact Bose', to 2 Bose Compacts (for stereo effect) + Tone Match??/stereo mixer + Thumper or other 'bass boost' appendage + additional complexity of setup (especially for 1hr, multi-gig days), all for marginally improved stereo perfomance. I know I'm going to take a killing for this (especially since I've never heard a 'Bosi' in a A-B comparison with a conventional STEREO PA) but it sure seems like some kind of mass hypnosis to me (I can speak with authority on this subjuct, having been victimized by it many times during my purchasing career ).

I really AM interested in the thinking behind this though, and an explanation of how these systems would be configured for STEREO (detailed configurations, please, including the use of any subs, mixers, etc.

thanks,

chas