Okay, after reading your post twice I'm sure you didn't mention which speakers are on the way.
You are fortunate to have a wife who enjoys listening along with you.
You are fortunate to have a wife who enjoys listening along with you.
New Speakers Coming My Way. Hot Dog
For the last 9 years, my living room stereo has been a "little" system, designed to provide a pleasant, non-obtrusive source of music for house ambience or for listening to small scale music, while the "big rig" in the family room has the 7.1ch setup and about 1400 watts total.
Getting the turntable last year has changed the way I listen to music. I now play all music on the turntable now, which is connected to the little living room system. I don't have the shelf space to plug the TT into the "big rig" downstairs, and if I did, I think feedback would probably be a problem.
But as I spin more vinyl, I keep wanting more--more scale, more detail, more volume, more dynamics--and I love big, bombastic orchestral works like Holst's "The Planets" and jazz, both small group and big band. And my wife loves opera and large scale oratorios like Handel's "Messiah" and Mendelsohn's "Elijah." And we both love hearing it on vinyl instead of CD or even SACD.
The current speakers in the "little living room system" are 1st generation Mirage Omnisat satellites plus the matching LF-150 powered sub. This little setup sounds great on combo jazz, acoustic folk, vocal solos and ensembles, etc., but they struggle a bit for clarity and dynamics when the number of instruments and voices goes up to big band or symphonic orchestra and chorus. And my wife's the one who loves opera and oratorios.
So when I pointed out to my wife that if I went from the little football-shaped satellite speakers to small-footprint (8.7"x12.25") floorstanders, they'd take the same overall space but I would no longer need the powered subwoofer that blocks the fireplace, she said, "Go for it."
So I did. They should be here in a week, but they also require 100 hours of break-in and are configured for bi-wiring or bi-amping, so it'll be awhile before I break 'em in, attain the goods for bi-wiring or bi-amping (haven't decided which yet) and have these fully sorted out.
But oh, when I do ...
Getting the turntable last year has changed the way I listen to music. I now play all music on the turntable now, which is connected to the little living room system. I don't have the shelf space to plug the TT into the "big rig" downstairs, and if I did, I think feedback would probably be a problem.
But as I spin more vinyl, I keep wanting more--more scale, more detail, more volume, more dynamics--and I love big, bombastic orchestral works like Holst's "The Planets" and jazz, both small group and big band. And my wife loves opera and large scale oratorios like Handel's "Messiah" and Mendelsohn's "Elijah." And we both love hearing it on vinyl instead of CD or even SACD.
The current speakers in the "little living room system" are 1st generation Mirage Omnisat satellites plus the matching LF-150 powered sub. This little setup sounds great on combo jazz, acoustic folk, vocal solos and ensembles, etc., but they struggle a bit for clarity and dynamics when the number of instruments and voices goes up to big band or symphonic orchestra and chorus. And my wife's the one who loves opera and oratorios.
So when I pointed out to my wife that if I went from the little football-shaped satellite speakers to small-footprint (8.7"x12.25") floorstanders, they'd take the same overall space but I would no longer need the powered subwoofer that blocks the fireplace, she said, "Go for it."
So I did. They should be here in a week, but they also require 100 hours of break-in and are configured for bi-wiring or bi-amping, so it'll be awhile before I break 'em in, attain the goods for bi-wiring or bi-amping (haven't decided which yet) and have these fully sorted out.
But oh, when I do ...
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- 9 posts total
Oops! No more late night postings for me! I was so excited I forgot to mention that I'm getting a pair of Mirage OMD-15 floorstanders in gloss piano black. All the other wood in the living room is either light (oak, light-stained cherry, beech) or black (Mason & Hamlin piano). It appears that Mirage's high end street cred is back. A year ago Chris Martens gave their $7500/pr flagship OMD-28s a rave review (and not just at its price range) at Abso!ute Sound, and one of the reviewers (Martens?) now uses a pair of OMD-28s as his reference speakers. The OMD-15s I'm getting are the next model down. Granted, unlike the OMD-28, the OMD-15 doesn't have 8" carbon fiber woofers or kevlar midrange, but like the OMD-28, the OMD-15 DOES have a phase plug in the midrange, uses Mirage's patented ribbed elliptical cone surrounds for more linearity and longer excursions, and has a downfiring port into a sort of slot-loaded bass. Mirage's Omniguide waveguide approach to dispersion solves all sorts of speaker dispersion problems. Having lived for 3 years with some 1st-gen Omnisats, the original model with this design, I can confirm that this design energizes the entire room in a most natural sounding way--linear if you will. Many instruments have different dispersion patterns, but on average, instruments are sort of omnidirectional, or hemispherical, throwing maybe 60% of their sound forward. The Omniguide's dispersion pattern is very similar to the average dispersion pattern of voices and instruments that make up live music. The result is a sense of "realness" in the way that Omniguide-based speakers energize a room very much like live music. In fact, that's what prompted my wife and me to buy the previous set--we got married in our living room a few months before, and had live music. When I tried the Omnisats in the living room a couple months later (with Brit-made Wharfedale Diamond 7.3 floorstanders for comparison), the Omnisats threw a soundstage astonishingly similar to how the live performers had sounded there. |
- 9 posts total