What Mapman said!!
I still have my Mirage M5si's, which are technically bipole speakers, but have narrow depth to be as omni as possible. I've had them in daily use for nearly 19 years.
I also had Mirage Omnipolars in my 2-channel living room. Omnis sound natural. They generally sound like live music played in a live space. They throw a realistic 3-D soundstage, and as with live music, you can even listen from outside the pair of speakers and still have an even-sounding soundstage, just as you would with live music.
Reviews of omnis frequently mention that "you won't get pinpoint imaging" as you would with mini-monitors or whatnot, but overwhelmingly, you don't get pinpoint imaging in live performances either unless the ensemble is small and you're sitting fairly close.
Another thing I learned when I was shopping for speakers two years ago--the overall soundstage and imaging of omnis is not that different from a front-firing speaker with wide dispersion and uniform in-room power response. In other words, good off-axis frequency response. In particular I was auditioning Sonus Faber Venere 2.5s and--although they have a different overall dispersion pattern--they had a pretty similar forward-firing presentation to my Mirage OMD-15s.
To me, absolute edge-defined pinpoint imaging, while fascinating, is sort of a parlor trick and doesn't often reflect the live music experience.
Unless you're a gotta-have-it pinpoint image junkie, omni directional speakers do just fine, throw a very sociable soundstage, and are less prone to localized suckouts and beaming.
I still have my Mirage M5si's, which are technically bipole speakers, but have narrow depth to be as omni as possible. I've had them in daily use for nearly 19 years.
I also had Mirage Omnipolars in my 2-channel living room. Omnis sound natural. They generally sound like live music played in a live space. They throw a realistic 3-D soundstage, and as with live music, you can even listen from outside the pair of speakers and still have an even-sounding soundstage, just as you would with live music.
Reviews of omnis frequently mention that "you won't get pinpoint imaging" as you would with mini-monitors or whatnot, but overwhelmingly, you don't get pinpoint imaging in live performances either unless the ensemble is small and you're sitting fairly close.
Another thing I learned when I was shopping for speakers two years ago--the overall soundstage and imaging of omnis is not that different from a front-firing speaker with wide dispersion and uniform in-room power response. In other words, good off-axis frequency response. In particular I was auditioning Sonus Faber Venere 2.5s and--although they have a different overall dispersion pattern--they had a pretty similar forward-firing presentation to my Mirage OMD-15s.
To me, absolute edge-defined pinpoint imaging, while fascinating, is sort of a parlor trick and doesn't often reflect the live music experience.
Unless you're a gotta-have-it pinpoint image junkie, omni directional speakers do just fine, throw a very sociable soundstage, and are less prone to localized suckouts and beaming.