07-04-09: Petewhitley
There aren't many reviews on this series of Mirage speakers. I guess their prodution run was brief. I have been reading reviews on the Energy and Athena speakers which use the exact same drivers (I think all three companies are owned by Klipsch) and everyone thinks they are just wonderful.
They were all part of the Canadian company, API (Audio Products International), which was also behind the Sound Dynamics 300ti. Klipsch bought API a few years ago and has been restructuring, resulted in some of these deep discount closeouts. A couple years ago they closed down Athena, resulting in fire sales on Audio Advisor. It looks like they're doing the same thing to the Veritas line in Energy, which was a fabulous line of speakers.
As for Mirage, they shut down development of Mirage's Omniguide-based $20K flagship speaker and a true high end subwoofer. Currently the OMD and Omnisat and Nanosat divisions remain, but the Omnipolar line (150, 350, 550, etc.) has disappeared from the Mirage website. That's why the production run was short. The Omnipolar line bridged the gap between "lifestyle" type Omnisats and the expensive high end OMD series.
The Onmi 150, 350, and 550 us a fiberglass sandwich woofer/mid and an Aluminium tweeter as opposed to the previous version of the 550, the Omni 260, which uses a titanum hybrid. The more expensive OMD-15 also use titanium hybrid. If I like them better than the 1B's that's saying something.
What's the 1B?
I really like the Mirage cloth surround titanium tweeters, but the API group has made a lot of excellent aluminum domes as well. Also, the top line OMD-28s also use fiberglass sandwich woofers.
The online blowouts of the OMD-28s do concern me, however. I hope Klipsch doesn't shut down what made Mirage great. The emergence of their Omniguide technology was a revelation. Originally conceived for their ultra-compact omnisat satellites, the design concept took over almost their entire line of speakers, including the ones at the top.
07-04-09: Texas42
I love trying out different speaker designs and am always intrigued by speakers that have wide dispersion and room filling sound (as opposed to the 'head in a vice' accurate speakers that only sound good to one person).
I remember reading an Stereophile review of the top line Dunlavy's about 24 years ago. Everybody was raving about the detail, but the reviewers had their heads clustered together trying to get a piece of the 3-D imaging. J. Gordon Holt walked into the room, gave 'em a quick listen, and pronounced them the "world's most expensive headphones."
The Omniguide-based speakers are the result of about a dozen years of R&D into how we perceive music, how voices and musical instruments radiate into a room, and how this interaction influences timbre. I find my humble OMD-15s to be some of the most timbre-correct speakers I've ever heard. Basically, head-in-a-vice speakers place you in the recording venue, and things can get really wonky when you step out of the sweet spot. Omnipolars put the musicians in your listening room. Their soundstage is such, however, that the walls of your room will disappear. And while there is an ideal sweet spot, the entire listening area has even tonality and correct timbre.
