Great for surround sound

A lot of people will look at the mirages as a curiosity, maybe a gimmicky type speaker system. It's not for everyone, but the omnidirectional design gives you a wonderfully large sound stage,a " cloud of sound" effect that heightens the surround sound experience.

Unfortunately, Klipsch bought the group of well regarded Canadian speakers well known with audiophiles --- Mirage, Energy and Athena. They've been jerking models off the market and raising and lowering prices. The cheaper Omni 150 bookshelf versions of this omnidirectional design has disappeared and prices have gone up recently for the nanosats.

Compared to my well reviewed, conventional two-way Paradigm mini-monitors, I prefer the Mirages. They have a much more open, large and surprisingly cleaner sound. I thought the Paradigms would be more accurate, with precise imaging vs the Mirages " cloud of sound " and that maybe the highs would suffer, but the Paradigms sound very boxy and a bit flat in comparison to the Mirages.

My initial interest in the Mirages, was sparked by an article at the infamous " The Audio Critic ". There was a lot of hype at the time at the techie review sites, over a very cheap system, designed as PC speakers using the Mirage omnisat type design which used a cheaper tweeter and woofer. That was discontinued. It had the same small bowl like enclosure with a tweeter that pointed upward and a small woofer that was angled upward too. It got raves from tech websites, but no serious audiophile magazine reviewed it.

Then " The Audio Critic ", gave it a rave review claiming it came surprisingly close to what he considered one of the best speakers in the world, the Linkwitz Orions. The reviewer also proclaimed he was disinterested in reviewing most conventional two and three way speakers which he called "monkey coffins ", due to their usual boxy sound.

Obviously after reading that, my interest in the higher end Mirage speakers grew. Personally I think they sound very good as straight audiophile speakers but are particularly amazing as surround sound speakers for your home theater. The large sound stage with or without surround sound, is noticeably different from conventional speakers. I would definitely check them out if you can find a set of nanosats nearby if you are thinking of buying a moderately priced home theater setup or even one for listening to music. For movie watching, it does have more of a "you are there ", kind of realism. The small size is also a huge plus in terms of placement flexibility.