Hi-Fi: Mirage OMD-28 Floorstanding Speakers – Review – 75
Blue Mondays, stormy Mondays or any Mondays for that matter. It’s safe to say that I’m not a big fan of the first day of the week, less so when it’s only the third week of the year and it’s dragging like a blunt plow behind a worn-out old ox. Not even a big cup of fine, strong coffee could shake my blues, but the music pouring from a listening room hidden in Auckland’s North Shore was just what the doctor ordered. “Sounds good,” I thought as I felt my spirits lifting. My outlook got even brighter when I settled in to listen to a set of Mirage OMD-28 speakers.
The OMD-28 floorstanders are the flagships of Mirage’s range, and they’re not demure little wallflowers by any stretch of the imagination. Wide, deep and tall, they’re visually impressive, with polished plinths, a unique driver complement and impeccably finished curved cabinets covered in deep gloss rosewood or burled walnut veneers that add to their stature. They’re much more discreet with the grilles attached but that would be like displaying a classic car under a car cover, so leave the grilles in the boxes.
The driver mix is interesting, with two conventional but distinctive eight-inch carbon fibre woofers mounted on the face of the cabinet and the remarkable Omniguide module sited on the sloping top. This upward firing unit has a 5.5-inch midrange with a deflector suspended above it; the tweeter in turn is mounted in this deflector with its own deflector above. The deflectors disperse the sound around the room with only 30 per cent being heard as direct sound and the remaining 70 per cent reflected off walls, ceilings, floors and other surfaces. The result is a diffused sound field that theoretically resembles the acoustics of musical instruments.
In an effort to mellow out my Monday, I cued up Shelby Lynne’s Just A Little Lovin’ CD on the Yamaha CD-S2000 SACD player (the familiar matching A-S2000 integrated amp performing sterling service as usual). For relaxing, this album is better than valium or whisky; it’s an incredible recording and Lynne is as sultry a singer as anyone could wish for. Sonically, the OMD-28s were smooth, coherent and highly detailed, easily able to reveal the very subtle nuances and musical touches hiding just above the noise floor on the title track without the detailed character tipping into brightness at the top.
Time for a systems check: blood pressure? Down. Stress levels? Melting away. Clenched jaw and angry frown? Gone! The Mirages put the day on hold and almost stopped the review stone cold. I couldn’t listen to only one track per CD and even battled to write legible notes; instead I just luxuriated in self-indulgence.
Next up were Diana Krall’s The Girl in the Other Room on SACD and Damien Rice’s magical O CD and the results were identical. I started off with my favourite tracks but had to hear a few others as well. The instruments were full bodied and rich with the texture and character that adds to the all-important sense of realism, the vocals almost tangible and present in the room and the detail levels again very impressive. My semi-readable notes say “bloody fantastic” and “so good”. I could have listened for hours, years – these speakers would be very easy to live with over the long term.
By this point I was feeling quite amped up, so I decided to step up the tempo to see how the Mirages felt about more intense music. Mirage claims bass extension to 25Hz and there was useful output down to around 30Hz in the room. It’s obvious that they go low but low and slow is like Thai food without chillies, so to sample the bottom end, on went SMV’s debut album Thunder.
As you’d expect, a band comprising bass masters Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller and Victor Wooten will give the woofers on any speaker a workout and the Mirages weren’t asleep on the job. The bass isn’t the most agile I’ve ever heard, but it never feels as if it’s lagging behind and it grabbed the raw attack of the instruments by the neck with enough dynamics and scale to do justice to the music without losing any of the reverb, decay and resolution.
Massive Attack’s Collected CD had more of the same: masses of deep throbbing bass without getting muddy and congested, or harsh at high volume. Kurt Cobain’s frenzied vocals on ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night’ (from Nirvana Unplugged in New York) and Serj Tankian’s energy on System of a Down’s Toxicity showed that the 28s can get loud enough to shake the brain of anyone this side of a zombie and still remain composed and controlled.
Imaging was excellent, with performers placed in a wide, deep, three-dimensional stage. This isn’t the kind of ultra-focused imaging where you feel that you could aim a laser pointer and hit each performer on the nose. However, the images are impressively solid, there’s a vast sweet spot, and in any event, thanks to the radiated sound field, the sound quality doesn’t dramatically change or suddenly go mono if you move around.
Whatever I played had the effect of drawing me into the music, which was laid out on that big soundstage within the scope of what’s actually been recorded. The OMD-28s are pretty damn good with all kinds of music but their forte is reproducing the ambience and air in a recording. The vocalists, instruments and venue ambience are so vivid that the performance becomes more realistic and involving than many similarly priced speakers.
Things to be aware of: the OMD-28s demand a big room; be in no doubt whatsoever that they’ll overpower a small space. If you like the way they sound but don’t have the room, then Mirage has the smaller OMD-15s, which will better integrate into a typical Kiwi living room. The 28s will also need careful setting up; the omni-directional drivers bounce more sound off the walls and other surfaces than conventional drivers, and the interactions of this reflected sound can affect the acoustics for good or bad.
An overly dead room with lots of curtains and soft furnishings may end up leaving the Mirages sounding flat and rolled off on top, while a live room filled with hard surfaces could end up being bright and harsh. This aspect of owning the OMD-28s isn’t a train smash unless your partner or interior decorator won’t allow changes – a good audio dealer will be able to help optimize the room for the speakers if needs be. These speakers will also thrive on power, so amplification with some clout that’s capable of matching their abilities is mandatory.
If you appreciate realism in your music the Mirage OMD-28s can convey the illusion of actual performers on a stage in your room like few other speakers I’ve heard at anything near the price. Jazz, acoustic and live music in particular have the potential to amaze through the Mirages. They’re well worth an audition and I consider them a prime long-term investment in listening pleasure for the discerning music lover.
BRETT GIDEON
TECH SPECS
OMD-28
Floorstanding Speakers
$15,000
TWEETER: 28mm chambered titanium dome
MIDRANGE DRIVER: 133mm multilayer carbon fibre/fibreglass cone
BASS DRIVER: 2 x 203mm multilayer carbon fibre cone
POWER HANDLING: 50-300W
FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 25Hz-20kHz +/-3dB
IMPEDANCE: 6 Ohms nominal/ 3.5 Ohms minimum
SENSITIVITY: 87dB/1W @ 1m
DIMENSIONS: 118.1 x 27.9 x 33cm (H/W/D)
WEIGHT: 33.1kg each
FINISHES: High gloss in black, rosewood or burled maple
CONTACT
This Review is from Tone Issue 75.
Loading ...