Bose 50 Fine-tuning your system, Adjusting speaker controls, Compensating for room acoustics

Operating Your Lifestyle® 50 System

Fine-tuning your system

Figure 39

Treble and bass controls

In most situations, you only need to follow the speaker placement guidelines (see “Setting Up” on pages 6-8) for your system to provide excellent sound quality. You do not need to adjust tone settings for changes in volume, since Bose® patented integrated signal process- ing provides a natural tonal balance over the full range of volume settings.

If desired, you can further fine-tune your system as described here.

Adjusting speaker controls

Treble

Bass

The Lifestyle® 50 system treble and bass controls are located on the Acoustimass® module (Figure 39). They allow you to adjust the treble (high frequencies) and bass (low frequencies). In the normal setting, the dots on each control are in the 12 o’clock position. You can also locate the normal setting by feeling when the control settles into the notch at this position. Turn the controls clockwise to increase, and counterclockwise to decrease, the amount of treble or bass.

Compensating for room acoustics

The acoustics (sound qualities) of your room can affect the overall sound quality of any speaker system. In general, you can reduce many problems with acoustics by the careful use of the treble and bass controls.

Too much or too little treble

Rooms that reflect a lot of sound, especially those with bare floors and walls, may sound overly shrill or “bright.” Turning down the treble control (toward – ) decreases treble sound.

Rooms with a lot of sound-absorbing furnishings, such as upholstered furniture, wall-to-wall carpet, or heavy drapes, may sound muffled or dull. Moving speakers further away from soft furnishings increases treble. You can increase treble sound by slightly turning up the treble control (toward + ).

Too much or too little bass

You can decrease bass sound by turning down the bass control (toward – ). To increase bass, turn up the bass control (toward + ). Acoustimass module placement also affects the amount of bass you hear. Placing the module closer to the corner of the room increases bass. Moving the module away from the corner decreases bass.

Optimizing AM/FM radio reception

You can adjust the orientation of your AM/FM antenna for the strongest signal by selecting SIGNAL LEVELS with the MENU button (Figure 40). Select the AM or FM radio, and the display shows you the strength level of the received signal. While watching the display, reposition your antenna until the highest possible signal level is achieved. The signal level can vary from 0 to 99. The manual tuning keys are provided so that you can check the signal strengths of multiple stations.

Figure 40

AM/FM antenna signal strength display

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