Mirage Omnisat V2CC Center Speaker

My wife truly hated my huge Cerwin Vegas overwhelming our family room. I, however really like as good a sound as I can get. I wanted to get something as small and unobtrusive as possible that would still sound as great as possible. I researched online and narrowed things down to these, Infinity Modulus II, Orb Audio, and Polk Rm-10s. After listening to these Mirages at Tweeter, I was sold.

General Comments:

I realize that all the speaker companies talk up the features of their speakers to try and sell them to you. The thing Mirage pushes is called "Omnipolar Technology". Basically, these speakers are firmly mounted at about a 70 degree angle and have this odd looking baffle arrangement above the main speaker cone. They claim that this arrangement disperses the sound to create a 3D image. All I can say is that it works!

Sound:

I took my "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" DVD to the store with me. I was using the pod racing scene to evaluate the speakers. I was really wowed.These speakers create a smooth sound field and sonically (and almost visually) disappear. The racing pods seemed to whoosh by me in my listening position. The dialog from the center channel was still very clear and seemed to be coming from the characters as well. I also found that as I moved around the room that the imaging had a much larger than usual "sweet spot". The treble and mid-range were crisp and clean. The bass is not as strong as you'd like, so you really have to augment these with a subwoofer. Mirage makes one to go with these speakers, but I settled on a Velodyne 10" VX-10. The combination produces great deep and thundering bass. With my cross-over set at 80 Hz, there is a seamless transition between the 5 Mirages and the subwoofer. I also took some Pink Floyd and some classical to test their music ability. While not as impressive sounding as in 5.1 mode, they are competent at stereo reproduction.

Appearance:

They are about the size of a large cantaloupe. They come in black, platinum, or white. Since I have light walls, I went with the white. They are unusual looking, but somewhat cool in my opinion. The picture provided by Epinions shows the grille off. With the color matched aluminum grilles, they resemble giant fly's eyes.

Mounting Options:

Mirage sells custom stands, but I didn't get these. My fronts sit on my stereo component cabinet in front of and beside my TV. They can sit on a bookshelf. My rears are mounted near the ceiling on the sides of my room and are angled down toward the listening area. They come with a detachable sliding bracket, and can be mounted upright, inverted, or on the ceiling facing down. They are magnetically shielded to avoid interfering with your TV.

Construction:

Very solidly built from some kind of composite and aluminum.

4.5" main speaker with Polypropylene Titanium Deposit Hybrid Cone With Santaprene Surrounds

1" Titanium Hybrid tweeter

5 way gold plated binding posts