To Bose or not to Bose...

For me, the decision has always been about coverage, first, and SPL second.

If you do a gig where you WANT everyone in the venue to hear you at roughly the same volume, I can't recommend them too highly. That's is kind of their strength. On the other hand, a lot of bars and dance venues like a good loud volume on the dance floor, but want to be able to converse at the bar and the tables (hard to close the deal if she can't hear you!), and for this type of gig and venue, the Bose work against you.

Admittedly, many OMB's tend to play in the 'background music' type mode, restaurants, things like that. The Bose shine at this.

The other thing is sheer SPL... I've tried the Compacts, and to be quite honest, I couldn't use one (or two!). I'm still playing to the bar crowd, mostly, usually with live bands or venues that usually have full bands. If they (and their clientèle) are used to this kind of volume, you are hard pressed to get a Compact up to it and it remain clean. In fact, even the big L1's have problems getting up there, and then you still have the issue of the whole room being loud, not just the dance floor. And if they start to break up a bit, the whole room knows it!

Bottom line about any of these things is, try using them for a full band, put a miked up drum kit into one with the full band, you can tell they aren't really designed to handle it. The limiter kicks in, and they sound pinched and squashed. Understandable, considering you are asking a few tiny speakers to do the work that huge horns and 12-15" speakers and subs do!

But at what they do best, even coverage at modest volume levels, they cannot be beat, IMO...