Speakers for a large room for around $1000

Mirage OMD-15, available in black or rosewood. These were originally designed to sell at $2500/pair, but Vann's, who's an authorized Mirage dealer, sells them at $1K/pair in either finish. I paid $1700 for mine two years ago and don't regret it because of the value I've received.

As to your room-filling needs, my living room is very similar to yours--13.5 x 19 ft, with 15' tall cathedral ceiling, set in an open architecture living space. Since the entry hall is part of this living space, the immediate space is more like 20 x 19 ft. plus the arched ceiling.

Anyway, I have been using a pair of Mirage OMD-15s in a primarily LP-based 2-channel system in the living room for about two years. The OMD's are omnidirectional, so they are particularly adept at energizing the entire room and living space. Because the speakers were designed to interact with the listening space, the timbres and soundstage are like live music. I know, because I got married in this living room and we had live music. These speakers match the timbres and how the source music interacts with the room acoustics with notable accuracy.

They are also not power hungry. I power mine with a modestly priced Onkyo A-9555 integrated amp, rated at about 85/170 watts/channel into 8/4 ohms respectively. I got the amp from Amazon a couple years ago for under $500. It's an excellent match for these speakers.

Hey Dmastri, in what way do you find Mirage floorstanders deficient? Can you articulate it beyond your "but Mirage? C'mon!" comment? What may be self-evident to you is not apparent to many of us.

The Mirages I recommended list at $2500/pair but are available right now at the OP's target price with return privileges and full factory warranty. They use cloth surround titanium dome tweeters and titanium-coated midrange and bass drivers. The enclosures are curved and tapered to avoid in-cabinet standing waves. Their crossovers, phasing, and dispersion patterns are based on at least three decades of research into psychoacoustics and room interactions. The Mirage M1, their initial bipolar design that started their bipolar/omnipolar/omnidirectional evolution, was a Stereophile Class A speaker. The second generation version was the personal choice of Brent Butterworth when he was editor of Home Theater magazine. And when Chris Martens of The Abso!ute Sound recently reviewed the OMD-15's big brother, the OMD-28, he bought the review pair and made it his reference.

Furthermore I listen regularly to a pair of the Mirages I recommended in a setting and application nearly identical to the OP's, and they fill the bill better than pretty much anything I could imagine at that price point.

I don't know why you think that Vandersteens are somehow several levels above Mirage. Vandersteens have always been good at imaging and phase relationships, of image focus, but Mirages have long been good at timbre accuracy, linearity, bass extension, and interacting with the room like live performers.

The Vandersteen 2Ce has a sensitivity rating of 86 dB and recommended amp range of 40-150 watts/channel. That's a pretty limited dynamic range and not so suitable for such a large listening space. The Mirage OMD-15 has a sensitivity rating of 91-93 dB, power handling of 250 watts, and can be biamped as well.

04-26-10: Blnd2spll
I am drawn to the Vandys because from what I can tell they have a reputation for being very musical speakers and have a very full and rich sound (even if that means a slight loss of detail). Are there any speakers that fit a similar description, but are a bit more wife-friendly?

The Mirage OMD-15s are very attractive and non-intrusive; they have a footprint of about 8x12" and are about 43" tall. They are available in elegantly understated high gloss piano black or more extroverted rosewood. Despite their modest size, with a good high current amp they have strong bass down to the low 30's, and are smooth and transparent with a nice rich sound. This does not mean they're boomy, tubby, or indistinct. They are very listenable on a wide range of material. Out of the box they sound OK, but they take awhile (100 + hours) to break in. As they break in, you find that they have superb resolution of low level detail, but never exaggerate it.

Johnnyb53 - I'm intrigued by the Mirages, but I can't find a lot of other reviews or discussions about them.

Home Theater mag review
Soundstage!
Home Theater Sound (an editor's choice)
OnSpeakers.com (pay no attention to their fear that they wouldn't be able to fill a large space; they can with ease)
Amazon user review
Crutchfield customer review
Buzzillions user review

04-29-10: Hi_hifi
One thing you will find is that all the good speakers and electronics in the world will only constitute some portion of the resulting sound. The room size, shape, and furnishings will drive a bunch of the results and the location of the speakers in the room will also drive a bunch of the results. Clearly, the speakers and the speaker interaction with the room are key considerations, none of which almost ever synchronizes well with the WAF.

That's one of the reasons I strongly recommend the Mirage OM-15s. They are designed to interact well with the room, and I've found them to be pretty forgiving with placement. You can even position the speakers pretty far apart and not lose the center image. The OMD-15 is fairly petite and is available in gloss black or rosewood, depending on your wife's preferences.

I don't know where this perception that the Mirage is an inferior speaker came from. The OMD-15s were designed to compete at the $2500 price point, which they do very well. Sometimes I'm simply stunned by the detail and ambience they can retrieve, while never sounding hyped up or artificially detailed.

Presently, however, new owner Klipsch has discontinued Mirage's two top-line floorstanders, so they are available from Vanns.com for 60% off list, but with 7-day return privileges and full factory warranty. Their tonal balance is neutral, the dispersion pattern emulates the average thrown off by live music, and therefore they yield excellent results when speakers have to be placed in a living room rather than a dedicated listening room. The soundstage stays put no matter when you sit or stand in the room.

The Vandersteen is a great speaker, and in fact the 2Ce and OMD-15 have a very similar tonal balance, one I find to be very natural. The Vandy has an advantage in image specificity because it is a phase coherent design. But the Mirage has the advantage in soundstage, and its imaging isn't bad. For tubes, the Vandy has a benign impedance curve, but you still should use a tube amp with 4-ohm taps. On the other hand, they're not efficient. Stereophile's test report measured its sensitivity at a very low 84 dB (at 1w input). Even with two speakers and the in-room boost, the sensitivity rating would be around 87 db tops, where the Mirage puts out 93 dB under the same circumstances. That means the Mirage can achieve the same SPL as the Vandy on one-fourth the power. Think about that--15 wpc instead of 60, or 40 wpc instead of 160. Like the Vandersteen, you should use the 4-ohm taps (on a tube amp so equipped), but the Mirage doesn't require much of a damping factor. The bass drivers are a mere 5-1/2 inches in diameter, so motion control is not a big deal. My amp has a low damping factor of 25, yet bass is extended and tight. They achieve their deep bass owing to a Mirage design and patented surround which enables greater cone excursion while maintaining linearity.

04-30-10: Metman
These are available from both Audioadviser and Best Buy (the Magnolia room) for $1000.00 I don't own them but heard them playing at Best Buy on a HT receiver and they sounded great. Not sure you could do a whole lot better new for the money

You mean the NHT Four's, right? They're $999 each, not per pair. Currently Audio Advisor has them on sale at $750 each, or $1500/pair.

05-04-10: Metman
Martin Logan at Best Buy? Are you sure? This must have something to do with the new owner

Best Buy has been selling several Martin Logan models for a couple of years now but only at locations that have the Magnolia room

Correct! Magnolia Audio-Video (formerly Magnolia Hi-Fi) is a reputable dealer of high quality home entertainment electronics, originating in Seattle many years ago. Being a Seattle resident for several years I've been accustomed to visiting their high end rooms and seeing/listening to Krell, McIntosh, Sonus Faber, Vienna, Martin-Logan, Def-Tech, etc. for some time.

A few years ago they struck up a deal with Best Buy to set up high quality audio/video rooms in some of the Best Buys, meaning you can get Martin-Logans at some Best Buy stores.

I just got my AudioAdvisor Closeouts catalog and was going to recommend those M-L Prefaces on this thread but you beat me to it.

I will add, however, that these M-Ls have a sensitivity rating of 92 dB (good for a large listening area), and M-Ls have traditionally worked well with tubes.

05-04-10: Hi_hifi
Now you are headed in the direction of seriously good sound, although maybe not with a high WAF. Martin Logans are poplular electrostatics, but to do their magic they will want to be reasonably far out from the back wall (check the Cardas formula) and they won't resemble much else in the way of typically high WAF furnishings. I'm not sure how much ML speaker you can really get for $1k, but if you can relax the budget and the WAF specs, there is no doubt that in a decent room electrostatics and tubes can reproduce music beautifully.

Not these M-Ls. They aren't electrostats; they aren't dipolar at all. They use a proprietary M-L "ATF" (Advanced Thin Film) forward-firing driver for the treble, augmented by 3 woofers in (I think) a 2-1/2 way configuration. They occupy a fairly modest 9"w x 17"d footprint, are slightly under 40" tall, and don't have to be far out into the room to "breathe." Also available in dark cherry finish. Read about 'em here.

Developing this ATF driver combined with dynamic mid/woofer drivers enables M-L to compete more effectively in the HT and WAF market segments.

05-05-10: Sgtr
I am also in the market for that price range. How about the following:

a. Vandersteen
b. Paradigm
c. Quad
d. PSB

Any ranking of these please?

Depends on room size and shape, listening habits, positioning flexibility, and amp type and power driving the speakers.

Also your musical and tonal preferences. For example, Paradigm and PSB are both Canadian companies that do a lot of research as Canada's National Research Foundation. Yet Paradigm tends to have more boom 'n' sizzle while PSB is known for a transparent, honest midrange and incredible frequency linearity. They're both similar in sensitivity, impedance load, and dispersion pattern. Personally my taste strongly prefers PSB, but YMMV depending on taste and music selection.

TAS has chosen SIX different PSB speakers at different price categories for at least the last two years running.

Still, each of the speakers you listed has special "gifts." Vandersteens have a realistic tonal balance, focused midrange, low cabinet resonances and diffraction distortion. They're phase coherent which makes for the most scintillating imaging and facilitate hearing deep into the music and the soundstage. Quads are famous for sounding lifelike at low to medium volumes. Paradigm probably leads the four for bass slam and overall speed. I consider the PSB to be a well balanced all-rounder with a better-than-expected midrange, both timbrally accurate and transparent.