For years, I’ve enjoyed various Bose sound systems. I’ve used Bose for my home theater as well as my whole house music system. When I moved to my new home in 2016, I built a whole house music system based on the now-discontinued Bose SoundTouch system. I had the Bose Soundtouch 300 soundbar with the small cube rear speakers and Bose subwoofer. I also had various SoundTouch 10 and 20 Series II WiFi speakers around the house.
Besides the sound, what I loved about the SoundTouch system was that I could use their mobile App to control the system. They had integrated with popular music services such as Spotify, Pandora and Apple Music. I could choose any speakers and play playlists or music stations to them and then put my phone away. Since the music was being played directly from the speaker’s WiFi connection, it didn’t matter if my phone stayed on or in the app.
For years, this worked quite well, and then Apple introduced AirPlay 2. Although it’s great that the speakers could play the music directly from the various music services, it was an isolated system. If you want to stream music from your Apple computer, iPhone, or iPad device, you would want to use AirPlay 2. This would also allow you to stream to your other speakers at the same time. For a couple of years, Bose promised to deliver a software update that would enable AirPlay 2, and in 2020, they finally kept their promise. This made me even happier with my system. However, they managed to implement AirPlay 2 in a half-baked way. If you put two speakers in a stereo pair, then you lost the ability to use AirPlay 2 on those speakers. You had to choose between AirPlay 2 or having stereo. The handwriting was on the wall as Bose had discontinued the SoundTouch system and started selling a new system called “Bose Home Speakers.”
. Three of them, the Echo, the 
and the 
are really geared towards obeying your voice commands and playing music. The Echo and Tap have decent built-in speakers, but the Echo Dot is really an Echo with a much smaller speaker. Of course this means that Dot can be sold at a much more attractive $49 price point (
) and that makes it a no brainer for people look to add Alexa to other rooms. Yes the Dot does have a speaker, but this speaker is really not great for music playback. While you can attach any speaker via the AUX out jack or Bluetooth, it means that it will take up more space having two devices instead of one. Luckily there is a really good speaker that has been designed to be a perfect match for the Echo Dot.
Soundbar. I was looking for a 5.1 WIRELESS surround sound system. I’m a fan of Bose gear and when my neighbor told me that Bose had just the system I was looking for I ordered it on the spot. Yes there are other wireless systems out there and I even had one. I had a Vizio soundbar with wireless subwoofer. However, with the Vizio soundbar the satellite speakers plugged into the subwoofer. In my family room I don’t have a back wall to run wires. Therefore the Vizio system presented a wiring challenge. The Bose SoundTouch 300 is actually sold piece by piece or you can buy the whole setup. You can just buy the soundbar. You can add on the wireless subwoofer (Acoustimass). You can add on the rear speakers. They are all wireless. Each speaker needs to be plugged into an AC outlet for power, but they don’t need to be wired to the soundbar or any central point. This was exactly what I was looking for. I am completely happy with the performance of the Bose SoundTouch 300.
. This adapter give you TWO Lightning ports instead of one.
