Hi
The Bose Lifestyle 25 System(if that is what your friend has) is all inter related and require each other to function effectively!
The cube speakers are bare drivers inside and through the speaker cables feed into the bass acoustic module where the crossover circuit and amplification board is present. If you drive the cubes bare on any amp or avr other than bose, it will sound very bland and ordinary.
I have tried my stunts 2 years back to use only the Jewel cubes from bose on my Marantz AVR. Although Audyssey had managed to do the tonal and other adjustments, it did not give the detailed sound as it is supposed to when it was hooked to the bose subwoofer which houses the crossover!
I have my childhood friend who has settled in Goa and repairs Bose. He provide me some capacitor values for the cubes which i added for each externally and there was a change and better sound.
Bottomline the cubes supposedly perform from 270hz to 15khz and the bass module works from 30hz till about 180hz, As per reviews over the net, Bose seems to focus on certain frequencies to make their speakers sound great. Eventually, I sold the cubes and got my invested money back!
There are lot of Bose products on sale over OLX, I would suggest if your friend likes the tonal quality and performance of Bose to get a pre owned replacement of what is not working and use it. Repairs will be very expensive.
Fact of the matter is that due to some Firmware issue the latest Bose System, the Lifestyle 600 which my neighbor has is gone into Limbo mode....no source etc is working. estimate mother board and repair costs almost 20k or more......my neighbour likes the mini jewel cubes etc....so i said to repair this and sell it in working condition.
Then get a 5,1 Marantz NR 1508/09 series AVR and hook it to Telome Procubes which are exact copy of Bose Jewel cubes and enjoy better playback and stress free headaches of firmware or repairs. These Telome cubes are not dependent on the subwoofer for crossover etc.
