Mirage Omni S10 demo and questions

 

Bronze Member
Username: Bvg

Arvada, CO

Post Number: 29
Registered: May-06
I see that Magnolia (in Best Buy) and Great Indoors are Mirage dealers (might be bad news, I suppose...). Since there's a Great Indoors near us, I stopped by to have a look see. After some fumbling by the staff and intervention on my part, we got it hooked up in a room where they were showing "The Day After Tomorrow".

HT receiver was a Yamaha RX-V2600. DVD player was a Yamaha C950 changer. Sub connection was to the LFE jack. Fronts, center and surrounds were tiny Boston Acoustics Micro 110x/c series speakers. Crossover filter was "off" on the sub. I have no idea how they had the V2600 crossover set up, and neither did they...

They actually had the DVD player sitting on top of the receiver (!), until I took some speaker wire rolls and used them as stand-offs. The bottom of the DVD changer was too hot to touch! Sigh. But I digress...

First, the Mirage is a lot smaller than I expected. This is good, as far as I'm concerned. We didn't experiment with sub positioning much.

The overall HT impression was quite good, actually, surprisingly so, despite the tiny sats. But 5.1 music playback with this system was very thin, also as expected. The little Micro sats just couldn't deliver full sound. Might have been an issue with the crossover setting or positioning in their room.

Overall my first impression of the sub for HT was quite good. For music, more research is required. They're selling the Mirage for full list, and have them in stock. At least I can pick one up and try it at home, with the option to return it easily if it doesn't work out.

We currently have an older Technics SA-AX730 Dolby Pro-logic HT receiver (5.1: 5 discrete amps rated to 80wpc and 6 discrete inputs, but not Dolby Pro-logic II or later - power supply rated to 290w).

This receiver has no bass management provision, nor any documentation that I can find regarding the crossover frequency. We're going to have to live with this for a while. Hence my questions.

Questions:

1) For the sub's speaker level connection, there are inputs only. The Mirage manual (downloaded it) states to use this connection for music applications. OK, so do you run separate lines to the sub and your fronts from your receiver?

There are no outputs for the fronts on the sub. Doesn't this make the load for the fronts at the receiver 4 ohms? I've never heard of doubling up 2 speakers on the same amp output. That's always been a "bad thing".

2) If you use the LFE connection, will the sub receive a signal when playing 2-channel sources? I imagine this is a feature of the receiver in question, but what do you look for in the receiver spec's to confirm?

3) We have some older JBL Sat series speakers with a passive subwoofer. Again, we'll have to live with these for a while, so I'm looking for a powered HT sub that will work for music too. Fronts are rated from 150 Hz north. I've actually been toying with leaving the passive sub in place for now. It bottoms out at 40 Hz.
Is this advisable?

Sorry for the long post, and thanks in advance.
 

Bronze Member
Username: Bvg

Arvada, CO

Post Number: 30
Registered: May-06
PS. I did go through a long list of posts here, without finding a satisfactory answer to the questions above....
 

Gold Member
Username: Edster922

Abubala, Ababala The Occupation

Post Number: 4236
Registered: Mar-05
I have an S12, similar design just bigger.

1. You should be able to double up on your fronts' speaker outputs, shouldn't be a problem because the sub will only take the signal not the power from your receiver/amp. Try it at low volumes at first, your receiver will let you know real quick if it's reading a 4 ohm load.

2. Yes, as long as your receiver's settings are correct ("subwoofer on"). But since you're dealing with such an old receiver without any documentation, you'll just have to try it and see.

3. You could aways try it with the passive sub too but I'd try it with only the S10 first. Unless your room is truly huge, the S10 should be fine.
 

Bronze Member
Username: Bvg

Arvada, CO

Post Number: 31
Registered: May-06
Thanks, Edster. How is the S12 for music?

Given that carpet, a sofa and a big screen are going to eat what's left of our budget, I'm trying to "cheat" a little - beef up our existing HT gear until we can replace the little Technics with a better receiver, and the JBL's with better speakers.

So I'm poking around trying to find a musical sub for low to mid-3-figures that has enough chutzpah to do HT too. It should integrate well with better speakers at a later date. We're looking at Paradigm Atoms, Axiom Epic Midi or PSB Alphas for the future.

The Mirage Omni series subs popped up in numerous discussions. I think if we can get reasonable output in the low 20Hz range, we'd be happy for HT, but I really don't care for loose bass when playing music. The Kef's upstairs have spoiled us, I guess.

As far as the crossover is concerned, I'm thinking that we'll be left with a "hole" between 120 and 150Hz if we take the passive sub out of the picture, and just run the Mirage. Our room is small, roughly 12x12, altough it opens into a recreation area that's 12x20 along one side. Clearly, I have some experimenting to do with positioning no matter what we go with.
 

Gold Member
Username: Edster922

Abubala, Ababala The Occupation

Post Number: 4239
Registered: Mar-05
The S12 has had me smiling from day one, and it has about 6000 cubic feet (open plan LR open on both sides with 18 foot cathedral ceilings) to deal with and it is NOT corner-loaded. So in a smaller room, if you corner load an S10, you should be fine.

Another sub to consider in your price range would be the BIC H100, and the Hsu STF-2 which goes for $350 shipped b-stock.

For your speakers, also consider the Ascend 170s and the Onix XL-S, as well as the SVS SB-01s; also consider going cheap on the surrounds so you get better quality up front where it matters most.
 

Bronze Member
Username: Bvg

Arvada, CO

Post Number: 32
Registered: May-06
I heard a pair of Ascend 170 and a Hsu sub (2.1) system just recently, driven by a NAD 370. They had a very nice sound, but were a little warmer than I'd like.

I've also auditioned Paradigm Atoms, and was pleasantly surprised.

We're definately leaning towards better front LRC, and will hold the line on the surrounds unless we fall into a pile of money. I may even take our current front sats and reuse them as surrounds for a while.

I've kindof decided that the fronts and center should be able to reach 60Hz or so. That would leave a full octave of overlap with the Mirage.
 

Gold Member
Username: Edster922

Abubala, Ababala The Occupation

Post Number: 4240
Registered: Mar-05
Especially since you found the Ascend/NAD combo a bit too warm, I'd suggest trying out the digital switching Panasonic xr57 with the Ascends, you may be very pleasantly surprised.

Search the AVS Forum for the xr55 and xr57 threads and you'll see why.
« Previous Thread Next Thread »



Main Forums

Today's Posts

Forum Help

Follow Us