Just that I'm thinking of buying a Bose Wave system and I was wondering whether any Forumites have one and what they think of them. I had a demo on one yesterday and I'm really impressed as to how much quality sound can come out of that as a pose to separates (which I've always had but now seem to take up too much room)

I have a Bose iPod speaker/dock which I use for both home listening and in my very noisy pre-school classes. I'm very happy with both durability (it gets carted around to different venues 5 days a week) and sound quality bearing in mind I work in some venues which have pretty awful acoustics.

I had a demo on a speaker dock too, and they sound, if anything better than the wave CD. However I don't have an iPod thingy as until yesterday I had no idea that ordinary mp3 files could play on them, compatibility and all that jazz. My means of portable music is quite a cumbersome Sony Discman that's very bashed and battered.

The top of the range model of the dock is quite reasonably priced too for what you get.

It's horses for courses and what you like to listen to.

I've heard Bose kit demo'd but not had a proper "sit and listen" which I always do when buying main hi-fi kit. On first impressions at least, Bose does make a good sound. I'm assuming you won't really get a stereo image from it though?

See if you can get a proper demo, sitting in a demonstration room listening to music that you are familiar with, ideally your own recordings/CDs.

By most people's standards, I'd come under the heading of "hi-fi buff". Personally, I don't see it that way, rather I like my sound system to make a decent attempt at being a simulacrum of real musicians playing music.... Trouble is, people generally don't know what to listen for, so you end up with either excruciatingly over-bright treble and forward presence, or ludicrously overblown (and unmusical) bass (to test the bass - can you pitch the notes being played? If you can, it's good. You'll be surprised how uncommon that is).

There are two types of music which are particularly difficult to reproduce well: organ music and choral music.

It took me years to find a CD player which even came close to sounding as good as my turntable and that I could live with (I bought a Naim (a British make) in 1999 and I've been happy with it ever since)

At the end of the day, music is a personal choice and music reproduction systems have to be as well..