Mirage's Nanosat System

As an apartment dweller, my home theater options are limited. My living room is small. My furniture arrangement is less than ideal for home theater. And the room must serve a number of different purposes, from listening to music to entertaining guests. These problems are typical of most folks who want great sound to accompany their movies, but don't have room for huge speakers. So, when I had the opportunity to try out Mirage's Nanosat surround system — I couldn't wait to get the speakers home.

First impressions and setup

This system comes with 5 surround satellite speakers and a powered subwoofer. Right out of the box, I noticed two things about the satellite speakers: they were tiny and sturdy. They fit easily in the palm of my hand, but had a durable build quality. Another thing I noticed was that the speakers did not come with any cables. I'd recommend purchasing some with your speakers so you can dive right into setting up your room. Luckily, I already had a small home theater system setup, so I was able to transfer my speaker cables to the new speakers. With my speaker cable already run to the correct locations, setup of the system took me between 10 and 15 minutes.

The Nanosats were small but sturdy.

During setup, I chose to perch the satellite speakers around the room. The front speakers and center channel sat on the top of my entertainment center, and I situated the rear speakers on end tables at the sides of my couch. If you're planning on a permanent setup, I'd suggest purchasing speaker stands or wall-mounting the speakers with the attached keyhole brackets. The Nano sub is solid and small, and easily slid near the wall in my living room for easy hookup to a close-by outlet.

Following setup, I turned on my receiver, an Onkyo TX-SR502, and changed the settings to accommodate the new speaker system. I ensured the speaker size was set to small, and checked the speaker distance settings for accuracy. In Mirage's simple 2-page instructions, you're advised to set the receiver's crossover frequency to 120 Hz, since the subwoofer's crossover is preset and not adjustable. Once that was done, I was ready to watch movies and listen to music.

Background on Mirage speakers

With all this in place, I wondered if these speakers would live up to their reputation. Mirage speakers are known for producing high-quality "dispersed" sound. What does that mean to those of us who aren't audio geeks? Well, most home theater speakers are capable of creating a localized, focused "sweet spot" or prime listening position. For example, when you're watching a movie with a group of friends, one or two people hear the soundtrack as it was meant to be heard. The rest, in other spots around the room, hear a less realistic, less engrossing version of sound — either because the speakers are too close to them or too far away. Mirage claims to increase the sweet spot or soundfield so that more people will be able to hear movie sound as it was produced in a movie theater or cinema.

My living room setup is a great place to challenge this claim, thanks to its odd size and setup. I have my entertainment system placed along a wall for ease of cable connections. Directly across from this system is my couch and the prime seating location for this system. I have a smaller couch situated next to the larger couch, where the two then form an "L" shape. You hear primarily the right sound effects when seated on the smaller couch. With a large crowd present, this means that half the people watching a movie are listening to distorted sound.