I'm a big fan of the Bose system. Not necessarily because of the way it sounds, but because it's just so neatly packaged into the car.
Outside of my work on A2s, I design and build recording studio audio systems. £30,000 pairs of loudspeakers are a frequent feature in my work life. My living room is home to the same B&W speakers that are used in the Abbey Road studios. They are jaw-droppingly wonderful; an acoustic window into another world. There's no place for DSP here. Anything installed in a car, no matter how expensive, doesn't come close.
Bose is a £700 speaker/amplifier package. In comparison to the audio quality that I'm lucky enough to be used to, it is left wanting in all departments. But equally, it's extremely good value for money. In comparison to the standard A2 stereo, it's utterly excellent. I can happily play a vast majority of my music collection whilst travelling down the motorway without feeling frustrated by eveyrthing that's missing. And, best of all, it occupies no space. The loudspeakers and amplifier just bolt on where they're designed to fit. The subwoofer goes where the toolkit is normally located, and the toolkit is relocated into the right-hand 'secret foot well compartment'. I don't lose any boot space to some massive boom box, I don't have tatty cabling everywhere, no access to anything is restricted by some aftermarket amplifier having been shoehorned into a gap, my doors and door cards haven't been butchered to accommodate speakers/tweeters, etc. Sure, it's not the greatest car stereo the world has ever known, but I don't listen to music whilst sat stationary in a car park. While driving along, there's wind noise, tyre noise, engine noise, the noise of other traffic, etc, etc.
Taking all these things into account, Bose is brilliant. You keep your A2 unmolested, you enjoy a major upgrade over the standard system and it hasn't cost you a fortune.
Its like house stereo; nobody that is seriously into music has Bose at home. Even a pair of B&W’s at the fraction of the price of Bose would play better.
Absolutely. Bose make 'lifestyle' systems, not serious audio equipment. No recording studio I've ever been in has ever had a single piece of Bose gear.
Cheers,
Tom