I am relatively new to modern home theater systems and am learning much form this site. I have a 7.1 system with a B&K AVR 507 receiver and four Mirage Omni 550s:2 front, 2 rear, a C150 center and 2 Omni 150s. I recently purchased two Energy RC 70s for the fronts and an Energy RC-LCR for the center. I'll move two of the 550s to the side surrounds and experiment with the sound. I also have a Mirage S10 sub and two smaller Omni 150 bookshelf/surround speakers-not sure what I'll do with the 150s-probably use them for a bedroom system. I have this system in a large multi purpose basement room-24 feet deep and 18 feet wide so hopefully this will be a good system.
Like rnatalli, at first I was disappointed with the 550 sound,it was very diffuse, "distant" sounding and lacked some midrange detail in my subjective opinion. However, also like rnatalli, the sound quality has grown on me as well. Mirage's brief owners manual says they need 100 hours of gentle "break-in" to allow "the transducers to loosen up". I realize that speaker "break-in" is controversial at best. I am skeptical it is necessary but then I am not knowledgeable on that topic. Perhaps my ears simply adjusted to the Omnipolar diffuse sound quality but subjectively as I have listened to the 550s more and have about 120 hours into them they have seemed to become slightly more detailed with music. With four of them in a 5.1 system they really produce a substantial amount of bass and a very wide/dispersed sound effect. I purchased the sub mainly for movies.
The 550s are very good with classic, acoustic and some new age music. Not as good with R&R, Country or jazz because some of the midrange detail and separation of instruments and vocals is not as audible-again all of this is obviously in my subjective opinion. I prefer a speaker with a lot of detail and that's why I went with the Energy RC 70s up front. But the 550s really do disperse the music around the room. Perhaps they are better with movies but 65% of my use is for music and I haven't used them much on movies.
Vann's has a really good deal on cherry vinyl 550s: $149.88 but they are not currently in stock; rather they are "on order". They look pretty sharp for the money. My 550s are black because the cherry was unavailable when I purchased them in mid-2007. Wished I had the cherry now but can't have everything my way. The Mirage OMD 28 is a larger version of the Omni 550 and I assume much better in quality and sound. It is really gorgeous in a burled maple finish. It's $1299.88 each also at Vann's which is out of my price range but it looks cool.
Hope this is useful to you even though subjective.
