Mirage OMNI 550 Floor-standing speakers - any good?

[achung123]

Hi all!

I saw Mirage OMNI 550 over Crutchfield is on sale now - very good price. Is it any good? I plan to up grade from my Sony Dream system to some real speakers and amp - with limited budget. The price over their web site surely sounds good; but the review online is very limited. Any one actaully own them and like it? I plan to get a complete set as 5.1 setup. The other option is KEF IQ7 as main, and a pair of IQ8 as surround - how these set compare with Mirage OMNI?

Any help would be nice... thanks in advance!

 

[gus6464]

I have a pair of Omni 550's for fronts and Omni 150's for rears. They are very nice, especially for the price. The 550's have very good bass response as well. I don't use a sub for 2ch. I haven't heard the KEF IQ series though so I don't know how they would compare.

 

[rnatalli]

Mirage makes a great speaker. I've personally heard the OMNI's and think they're a great speaker. My only complaints about them was they didn't separate instruments as well as my Mordaunts which is expected due to their OMNI nature and the vocals sounded a tad unnatural also probably due to the OMNI nature. However, they did throw a large soundstage by comparison so it's a compromise. These are my observations and others will vary. You should give some OMNI speakers a listen before buying as some people love it, others hate it. In fact, you should get out and audition as many speakers as possible as every one is different.

 

[Coheednme13]

550's

I have the 550's and I really like them. Having good bass is an understatement! I have a small 8" Infinity sub and they go as low and as loud as my sub does(time for a new sub). They have a very large immersive sound field. They don't have the most realistic sound for voices, but other sounds like small things like people walking in a room, phone rings, dropping a fork; sound so real. The separation is pretty good. They are great for brass also and don't distort at high volumes. They aren't the best in the world but for 400 bucks they are good and they are better than what I had. Hope this helps

 

[achung123]

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the input, and yes, I went for it. I posted my review in AVS Foums, and hopefully for it will be helpful for whoever want to order the same speakers:

After 2 weeks of wait, finally everything arrived. Spend a weekend to put them all together, and here is my 5.1 set up:

Front: OMNI 550 - new
rare: OMNI 350- new
Center: C150- new
Sub:S-8- new
Receiver: Sony 5200ES- new
DVD player: Xbox 360 + HD-Player - old
TV turner: HD TIVO - new
Digital music server: Roku M1001 - new
TVanasonic TH-50PX500U - old
Remote: Harmony 880 Remote - old
Room size: 16' (D) x 12' (W) x 8' (H) - listening area only

The speaker boxes is big, and well protected. There are few holes in my 550's box due to the shipping; but nothing missing or damage at all - well packaging. The S-8 on the other hand was badly done - all the form inside are broken and box is kind of deformed - but luckily there wasn't any damage. The speaker is lighter than I expected. The finishes is fine - not great great like the other higher end line. The each speaker cone has some kind of Fiber Glass like material and it is almost like B&W products - very modern and nice looking speakers - a lot better than any picture that I seen online.

So, after closely inspected each of them, I begin to hook them up with my 5200ES. Took me a while to get all the HDMI and all the input going. The GUI of 5200es is nice but painful to call out by the remote. After running automatic speaker configuration by Sony, with a little personal touch - the speaker sound FANTASTIC!!! At first I was complain a bit on the base performance before I hook up the S-8 (the sub came 1 day later)... but once all the piece fall into a right place... it perform VERY VERY nice. The high and mid is clear and well separated. The sweet sport is large; but yet still retains a very good tones separation. The bass is tight and accurate without over kill. The S-8 seems work well with all the speakers. This setup even work well with MP3s - I mean, even for some typical 44kps compressed crap... it sounds pretty good. Can't wait to see the sound result of SACD - too bad I don't have any media or player. It is for sure not the best speakers out there - but the ratio of performance and $ is very very high - it is a lot better than that I expected!

Kind of off topic - if anyone want to connect your music from PC to your sound system wirelessly, I highly recommend Roku M1001! Easy to hook up with a lot of options - both coaxial and optical inputs are available!



Thanks again!