Bose Adds Room Correction To Two Home Theater Systems

New York— Bose is upgrading two of its DVD-based Lifestyle home theater systems to compensate for room acoustics without changing the expected retail price.

Room-compensation technology is available in some audio components and add-on boxes but not in home systems, Bose said. It's also available in some aftermarket car audio systems.

The company says its technology, called ADAPTiQ, is sophisticated and simple to use. It operates over the entire audible frequency band to equalize "spectral and level differences," said engineer Richard Saffran. The company doesn't plan to license the technology to other suppliers for home or aftermarket car audio applications.

The two systems, the $2,499 Lifestyle 28 and $2,999 Lifestyle 35, are currently available but will ship in June with included DVD-based software upgrade and microphone-equipped headset. They're needed to complete a 10- to 15-minute procedure that compensates for room size, seating location and other factors that color system response. The DVD disc contains a software upgrade that users load into the systems' flash memory. Also in June, Bose will ship free upgrade kits to dealers who have the systems in inventory. And existing 35 and 28 users will be able to call Bose for a free upgrade kit.

Although the two systems can be upgraded with ADAPTiQ, they're not upgradable to formats such as DVD-Audio and SACD, the company said.

Bose said the technology builds on its OEM experience of compensating for car acoustic anomalies. Bose's car technologies include Audio Pilot, which appeared in the mid-1990s to automatically compensate for environmental noise such as wind and road noise at different speeds.