Visually, this is a more compact speaker than the dimensions suggest. Partly because it is rounded and partly because the front wall is only 5" tall (that edge kind of gets lost in all of the black in the photo). The Piano Black finish is much nicer than my piano's finish (which shows wood grain). The OMD's are truly high gloss. It also has a nice magnetic grill mounting system.
Here it is on top of an EMP E41-B and beside an S-2:
It is a nice sounding speaker and the spacious sound stage is enough different to make comparisons difficult.
I was surprised that the EMP's over-performing 4" woofer gave
much more bass than the Mirage's 5.5" woofer, but that is of little concern if you plan to add a sub.
The other stand out difference was listening to a drum passage with rim taps and the OMD's did a better job capturing them!
I am not saying the OMD's are better than the EMP's, just that they do do at least this one thing better. In most places the EMP's sound clearer and more distinct, but the sound is different enough, I think it'll take me a while to really reach some conclusions.
Right now, I'm thinking this might be a good fit for my wife's ideal living room speaker - compact, and the "omni" aspect seems to provide a better sense of "fullness" at lower volume - say if we had guests over and wanted to have music in the background without it dominating a visit. At the same time, I wouldn't be embarrassed to crank them when the time comes.
I really liked the look of the burled Maple, but since the OMD-15 towers are no longer available in Maple, I decided to pony up the extra $40 just to keep options open in case I decided to make a HT system out of these.
http://search.vanns.com/sitesearch/search?q=OMD-15