I'm not bashing but want to let you know why they "sound good." One of the reasons Bose can make those tiny little cubes or other speakers seem to defy logic is because they aren't driving all of the frequencies evenly. Bose speakers are specificaly designed to amplify the 200-400Hz and 4KHz ranges of sound.
This is because these two frequency regions are the most highly developed part of human hearing. We use these ranges for speech so human hearing has developed to allow us to be most sensitive to these frequencies. Thus, by amplifying these frequencies the speakers sound good but ARE NOT accurate at all. Unfortunately, since Bose puts the emphasis on amplifying these ranges the others suffer and fall into the background.
(Hence the old addage: No highs... no lows... MUST BE BOSE)
I had to learn this the hard way (my name is Pyrosecht and I owned Bose and still have the scars). Bose doesn't care about the accuracy of their speakers or even quality (only company I know of that still uses paper cones). They just mastered psychoacoustics and use it to make their speakers seem better than they really are.
All I ask is that you find a store with a liberal speaker return policy and try ANY other floor standing speaker in the same price range as your 701's (and any other Bose speakers you may have) and try them out for a week. Listen to your favorite music (the stuff you know by heart) and you will definately notice a difference. Even more dramatic would be to use a 701 on your right channel and the other on the left (make sure you balance them) and tell me if you still like Bose.
It's just that for the money you can get speakers of 2-3 times the quality and accuracy.
As for the components or all in one. Stick with the components. The easiest reason? Look for Dolby Digital logos on any Bose product. Notice it will say Digital 5.1 but it won't say Dolby or DTS and certainly won't say THX (they can't get it because of the above mentioned problems with their speakers). This is because Bose uses their own decoder algorithm (guess what it amplifys) because they don't want to pay the fees involved with using the systems that ARE the standard and they know they won't sound good on their speakers. Just thought you'd like to know.
