demo of new Mirage OMD-28

Thanks to the Mirage rep and my local dealer (Mark Haflich), I have had a pair of the new OMD-28s in my HT for demo this past week. Here's my report.

Here's what they look like. My pair is in the birdseye maple; they also come in rosewood and black lacquer.









My gear: Krell FPB 450Mcx monoblocks, Krell HTS 7.1 pre/pro, Onkyo DV-SP1000 DVD, Cardas Golden Reference XLR interconnects. Current spkrs are Mirage OM-5s, which I've been looking to upgrade for awhile now.

Other spkrs I've recently auditioned: MBL 101E, MBL 111E, Revel Ultima Salon, Genesis 6.1, and Von Schweikert VR-4SR. I spent the most time listening to the MBL 111s; I heard them at 2 different dealers, for a total listening time of about 5 hrs. At the 2nd dealer I even lugged my Krell monoblocks (100 lbs ea. ) to listen to them thru. For all these spkrs, I brought my own bag of Redbook CDs which I'm very familiar with.


For starters, the OMD-28s are very placement sensitive. As a starting point, I put them in the footprint where my OM-5s were. They sounded terrible. Very chesty, with a pronounced low-mid bloom and resonance. No imaging; just an amorphous collection of sounds swirling around in a huge soundstage.

As I began moving them around, I realized that the placement of these spkrs is a function of how they interact with the room (primarily rear and side walls), not "aiming" them for a specific listener sweet spot. The user manual explicitly states: "DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ADD DAMPENING MATERIALS TO THE FIRST REFLECTION POINTS OF THE SPEAKERS! OMNIPOLAR SPEAKERS ARE DESIGNED TO EMBRACE SUCH REFLECTIONS AND THEY ARE A CRUCIAL PART IN THE PERFORMANCE OF THE SPEAKERS." When properly placed, I found that they have every bit of the holographic sound, and maybe even a tad bit better spatial imaging, than the 111Es. You can walk around the room, including between and behind the spkrs, and the imaging pretty much remains stationary in space; it's as if you're walking among the performers. Very impressive.

I finally found a placement inflection point. Moving them slightly back (towards rear wall) increases the immediacy and palpable presence of the voices/instruments, and slightly decreases the spaciousness of the soundstage. Moving them slightly forward does just the opposite. In effect, they can be tuned for one's preference in those areas.

Overall, I'd say they have quite good tonal balance. They are very "ballsey" spkrs with plenty of punch and tight bass, although they don't approach the explosive dynamics of the 101Es. The mids are well-defined, articulate and robust, yet smooth; but they don't have quite the mellifluous mids of the Revels. The high end is not quite as refined and accurate as the 111E's, but it also lacks that hint of brightness/stridency I sometimes found in the MBLs (both models). The OMD's highs are clear, transparent and musical, with no real noticeable grain or etching that I could hear.

To put these comparisons in perspective, though:
OMD-28 $7.5K
Revel $20K
111E $28K (rosewood)
101E $50K (rosewood)

Conclusion: I like 'em!! Great sound, pretty to look at, and tremendous bang for the buck. I would call these spkrs the "Poor Man's MBLs." My choice is now essentially down to deciding between the 111Es and the OMDs.

I would highly recommend listening to them, but with the following caveat: if they're not properly set up, they'll sound like crap.

Of those spkrs I heard, I would place the Von Schweikerts last. The dealer was extrememly nice -- he came out here and set them up in my theater for a demo. In terms of presense and realism --like the performers are right in front of you -- they were just totally unconvincing. With the OMDs and MBLs, with a really good recording, you can close your eyes and you'd swear there's someone standing right in fron of you singing (and/or playing). It can be downright spooky sometimes.

I think one of the most impressive experiences I've had with the OMDs so far was the Fleetwood Mac concert DVD "The Dance." You hear all the sounds, dynamics and acoustics of being in a large concert venue with a pumpin' rock band, with a huge soundstage, yet it sounds like you're sitting right in the 1st row. All the guitars, drums, percussions, keyboards, etc. are perfectly distinct and embodied in space, and even though they're in a huge hall, it really sounds like the singers are right in front of you, singing in an intimate club performance. It sounds pretty amazing.

I've had the OMD-28s now for a couple of months, plus I got the matching OMD-C2 center channel, so I thought I'd post an update.

First off, even though I think the birdseye maple is really gorgeous, it just didn't match the decor/colors of my fairly dark HT, so instead of keeping the rep's demos, I got a pair in the rosewood:



Here's a few shots of the OMD-C2 center.

Front view, grille off:


Side view, showing how it angles up in back to direct reflected sound up to the screen:


Grille on, in front of screen (poor lighting, sorry):


The center channel is truly amazing, and a bargain IMO @ $2K. It has the identical "Omniguide" tweeter/mid array (1.125" tweeter + 5.25" mid) as the towers, so the three spkrs are perfectly timbre-matched. It also has 2 6.5" woofers. The mid and woofers are carbon fibre, same as the towers.

The 3 spkrs, including the center, completely disappear, whether music, movie soundtracks, or dialogue. Dialog is especially noteworthy: it's super distinct, clear and 3-dimensional, but it is imaged in space above the center spkr. In other HTs I've seen/heard, dialogue so distinctly eminates from the center spkr that it diverts your attention to above/below the screen, and is a distracting disconnect between where the sound is coming from visually (on screen) vs. aurallly (the spkr). This center is just the opposite: if you look right at the spkr during dialog, you actually think the spkr is turned off, b/c no sound seems to be coming directly from its location. The sound seems to be coming from off the screen. As a note, the one HT I went to where the center was behind an AT screen, the center's soundfield was so narrow and focused that all dialog seemed to be coming from dead center of the screen, and didn't seem that realistic, IMO. YMMV.

All in all, I'm very happy w/the 3 spkrs. Very musical and refined sound, linear top to bottom, detailed and transparent highs, robust yet smooth mids, tight bass w/plenty of slam, and superb soundstage and palpable 3-D imaging. Definitely a tremendous value at just under $10K for the 3. I'll be getting the matching rear/surrounds as soon as I finish my HT remodel.

Hi Mike - sorry I didn't get to your PM yet.

My dealer (Mark Haflich) helped me w/the rough positioning, then I tweaked further. To start with, Mark started w/his back to each of the 3 adjacent walls to the spkrs (rear and 2 sides), and while talking w/his head roughly at the level of the tweeters, slowly walked forward. His voice sounded a little nasal at the walls; as soon as it sounded clear, we marked that spot - that's the closest the spkr should be placed to that wall to avoid resonance w/it.

From there, it was just a matter of playing w/toe-in, distance between the spkrs, and moving back and forth from rear wall while listening to them to see what sounds best. Painter's (non-paint removing) masking tape comes in handy for marking different spots to come back to for A/B comparisons.

This was just my amateur spkr positioning effort; I'm sure many in this forum who are professionals and/or who have much more experience than I have better ways to do it. Hope this helps.

When you get them set up, let us know how they sound.

I thought you were getting the OMD-15s....? And did you get the OMD-C2 or the OMD-C1 (which matches the 15s)?

Have you tried contacting Mirage? I spoke to Martin quite a few times; he was extremely helpful locating dealers, and even arranging the rep to bring the 28s to the dealer for me to audition (it was when they first came out, and no dealers had them yet).

Re. the 28s: they have tremendous punch and kick in the low end. I haven't heard the 15s to compare, but if you get a chance to hear the 28s I'd recommend it.

The pics have to be hosted on a web site, such as photobucket or whatever. Those sites usually give the URL of each pic below its thumbnail. Copy that URL and use this format (but use brackets instead of parentheses):

(img)URL of pic(/img)

Call Mirage and get the name of the rep in your area. Reps usually make the rounds to the dealers in their territory; call the rep and ask him if you can set something up for him to bring the 28s and C2 to one of the dealers for you to audition.