Bose isn't the biggest selling, but it is up there on the list.
It's just their marketing, along with the shows they do.
Back when the acousticwave music system (essentially an oversized wave radio) was being marketed like mad, I was invited to one of their shows...the music CDs they give you are off the freaking hook....best classical disc I have ever owned...pity my mom made it her goal to "forget" she had it when she last visited (grr...get it back I will...MUHAHAHAAHA!), the radio...well it was better than most boomboxes....but I wouldn't pay nearly a grand for it. It did like hard rock though, and took abuse well....Our Lady Of Peace's song "Starseed" was hitting hard enough they had to tell me to stop since I was annoying the old folks (I was the only one under 55 in there, I was 19 at that time)
Sad part, my $600 car stereo blew that radio away....in general a home stereo at a third the price should comapre to a car stereo of any price point. so this radio should have compared to a $3000 car stereo.
But, those shows are very impressive, and they speak for themselves. THe other side is high wife acceptance factor. Bose cubes blend intop a room, I'll give them that, and the sub does too. Wives also like that idea more than "Let's cut holes in the wall to fit speakers.....SPEAKERS (insert tim allen grunts here)!!!!!!". Oh, and almost everyone knows they are an old brand, so most think "if they been around this long, they gotta be good". It's the only reason aside from college kids that KLH is still around...which was actually a very good company back when Henry Kloss was designing speakers for them, so just being an old and familiar name possibly has something to do with it too.
JBL gets mad props as well for being a practically ancient name, despite IMO not making anyhting particularly inspiring in my entire lifetime (I'm only 25, but still 25 years is a lot of time to do something right). Klipsch is one of the few old brands that are still making superb products. I may have forgot some names here, but those were the ones that stand out.
My $140 a pair kit speakers have already turned a few away from Bose...showing how overpriced those things really are.....that's the best you can do is just mind your own system, and hopefully your friends hear your setup and understand that there is more than tiny cubes and global marketing agendas.
