Mirage Omnisat v2 FS Company Overview

Founded in 1977, Mirage has enjoyed both critical and commercial success from the get-go with consistently innovative products, tracing its design roots to the seminal research done by the company's VP of Engineering, Ian Paisley, at Canada's NRC (National Research Council) research facilities in the early 1970's.

Based on the concept that realistic reproduction of music requires a ratio of 30% direct sound to 70% reflected sound, Mirage's Omni products are but the latest chapter in the company's success story. Beginning with their first, the Mirage M-1 (chosen by The Absolute Sound as Speaker of the Decade) Ian and the rest of Mirage's design team have managed to rack up literally dozens of awards over the years for their products. Not bad.

The original implementation of the 30%/70% mix of direct/reflected sound required a costly, complex architecture of front & rear-mounted drivers (operating in phase as bipolar radiators) and, likewise, complex cabinetry. That changed in 1997 when Andrew Welker joined Mirage. Tasked with the daunting challenge of creating a loudspeaker system capable of producing the Omnipolar sound - without having to resort to the usage of front & rear mounted drivers... Andrew came up with the Omniguide.

The Omniguide is a saucer-shaped contrivance whose outwardly simple appearance belies the two years of research & engineering that went into its creation. With each Omniguide perched at the top of a line array of 6 woofers (2 active, 4 passive) its easy to imagine these systems throwing a very wide soundstage in the listening area.

Given the v2's enviable pedigree and the unique features found in this system, I looked forward to the opportu nity to setting them up and putting them through their paces.