In the movie Kate & Leopold, Leopold (Hugh Jackman) finds himself vaulted from the 19th century into the early 21st century. Given the fascination this time traveler shows with new technology, the three home theater speaker systems here would certainly have raised his eyebrows. Like the four systems we looked at in the previous installment of "Thinking Outside the Box" (February/March), the Mirage Omnisat 6 ($1,700), Mission fs1 ($999), and Morel SoundSpot Applause ($2,400) all vault out of the stodgy 20th-century box into the fluidity of 21st-century design.
I chose Kate & Leopold to evaluate these stylish systems even though it features Meg Ryan (Kate) with her worst hairdo ever. The movie provides a challenging soundscape without rockets, submarines, or war. Its wide variety of everyday sounds enhanced by great Foley effects (sounds created in the studio that can sound more convincing than the real thing) and close-miked dialogue dare any speaker to earn its place in your home theater. The sound of an elevator motor in one scene, for instance, goes deeper into the bass than most rocket launches, and the frequent rain and storm scenes test a system's high frequencies as well as its surround capabilities. You'll get a good taste of the film's wide dynamic range when Leopold accidentally turns on a stereo system at full volume. And the sounds of hooves and carriage wheels on cobblestone streets, dinner plates clattering into the sink, and a slap in the face all demand accurate, rapid response to instantaneous changes in the audio signal.
My Denon AVR-2802 receiver provided the Dolby Digital decoding and the 90 watts per channel that drove these systems in my 15 x 25-foot room. I positioned the front left and right speakers in the same plane as the screen of my 42-inch widescreen Toshiba TV and about a foot to either side, and I placed the center-channel speakers atop the set. Each subwoofer was about a foot out from the left wall and about 2 feet from the corner, and the surround satellites were to the sides and slightly behind my viewing position.
With my gear all warmed up and my test discs by my side, I was ready to see if these three futuristic designs could provide decent sound in the present.
Morel SoundSpot Applause
A quintet of SA-2 satellites and the IS-9A SoundSub subwoofer make up the Morel SoundSpot Applause system. The midrange driver enclosure of the silver steel SA-2 (also available in black or white) is about the size of a large grapefruit with the front sliced off. A similarly truncated spheroid on top, about the size of a large cherry tomato, contains the tweeter. Matching gray cloth covers the front of both parts.
A gold metal post on the bottom has an adjustable tilt for mating with the supplied shelf stand/wall mount or an optional floor stand. You remove the black rubber ring around the shelf stand to use it as a wall mount.
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The dark-gray IS-9A subwoofer (also available in piano black) has less elaborate binding posts with plastic knobs. It's not as flamboyant as the Morel satellites, but that doesn't mean it's the same as any old small-system sub. For one thing, it has a larger cabinet than most to accommodate its two 9-inch direct-radiating drivers. And unlike most other subs, it stands upright on its narrow end instead of lying flat. Be aware, though, that with the drivers on the front and a port in the rear, you can't position this sub as freely as one that radiates downward.
In addition to line- and speaker-level inputs and outputs, the back panel includes controls for continuous phase adjustment, setting the crossover from 40 to 160 Hz, and level adjustment. As with many subs, the crossover knob has markings only at the top and bottom of its range, so you'll probably have to experiment with different settings over time to get the best results. I set it by ear.
The system comes with a 19-page all-English instruction booklet that also serves as a catalog for all Morel home theater systems. The diagrams are good and should help most users install and connect the system correctly.
Morel claims its aluminum "external voice coil" design supports the cone or dome of the satellite's drivers, preventing flexing and buckling. This also allows them to be shallower than usual for their size, yielding better dispersion. The midrange driver combines ferrite and neodymium magnets with a damped polymer-composite cone.
The SoundSpot Applause system does not sacrifice sound for style. The satellites may be grapefruit size, but they pump out watermelon-size sound—without any seediness. Distortion remained pleasingly low as the soundtrack soared and subsided. This was one of the smoothest, most intimate-sounding small speaker systems I can recall hearing. There wasn't even a hint of discontinuity in the crossover between the sub and the satellites. And the bass sounded awesome.
My home theater is in a fairly solid room, but the low frequencies rattled anything that was even slightly loose, without impinging on the dialogue or being out of proportion to the rest of the sound. Transients were clean and immediate, as evidenced in the sounds of a knife and fork cutting meat in Kate and Leopold's first dinner scene, or that of the plates clattering into the sink following that scene, or of the triangle in the musical score. The only area that I felt needed slight improvement was articulation in the dialogue.
The SoundSpot Applause acquitted itself equally well as a stereo and 5.1-channel music system—and it's one of the few systems where you don't have to turn down the subwoofer to enjoy music. The imaging was precise and natural with stereo material. In the recording of André Previn conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Holst's The Planets, the deep but effortless and unpretentious bass coexisted beautifully with the rest of the musical spectrum. The system was very kind to Brian Stokes Mitchell and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in the new Broadway-cast recording of Man of La Mancha, smoothing whatever harshness might exist in the recording without adding a hint of nasality or chestiness. Once again, a tiny bit more articulation would be nice, with a hint more ambience, but overall I could easily relish the Morel as a primary music system.
Mirage Omnisat 6
Mirage's Omnisat 6 home theater speaker system nearly defies description. It breaks with tradition not only in style, but also in shape, construction, and philosophy. The Omnisat 6 also parts with current trends by being manufactured in Canada instead of China.
The five Omnisat satellite speakers are about the size and shape of a football sliced in half, but you'd strain your arm trying to pass one of them—each weighs a hefty 7 pounds. The bottom, which is also in effect the speaker's backside, is flat to allow for various mounting and positioning options. A removable plastic clip slides into the bottom to facilitate mounting the speaker on the wall or ceiling or on the optional floor stand shown below. The two large, recessed binding posts on the bottom proved a tight fit for large fingers. They accept bare wire or spade lugs easily, but you'll have to work to pry off the plastic plugs if you want to insert banana plugs.
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Mirage believes that the proper balance between reflected and direct sound is 70% reflected and 30% direct (as opposed to the 30% reflected sound you get with most systems). All the drivers and reflectors in the Omnisat are mounted at precise angles to achieve this effect when the speaker is placed with its bottom flat. In this position, the baffle will point up at about 30° (or down if it's ceiling-mounted) and the tweeter will radiate almost straight up (or straight down), but the spoon will disperse its output spherically. Mirage calls the Omnisat's radiation pattern "omnipolar," as opposed to dipolar or bipolar, since it spreads sound all around the speaker.
The Omnisat satellites and LF-150 subwoofer come with separate short but useful instruction manuals with three pages of text and two pages of diagrams. The manuals seem much bulkier because the diagrams are separated from the English text by many pages in other languages.
Compared to the satellites, the rectangular subwoofer appears to be the epitome of ordinary. But its driver cone is made from the same material as the satellite's cone driver. And the ported front panel also conveniently holds the phase switch and the level and crossover controls. This not only simplifies placement but allows you to position the box either vertically or horizontally. The back panel has both line- and speaker-level inputs, but Mirage recommends using the third input, labeled Xover Bypass, and letting your receiver handle the crossover chores. I took that suggestion.
The Omnisat 6 system lived up to all of Mirage's claims for accuracy, wide dispersion, and low distortion. The all-encompassing, enthralling sound field it created from the Kate & Leopold soundtrack placed me inside the movie in a way few other home theater systems, even much more expensive ones, have been able to do. This soundtrack includes considerable ambience in the surround channels, and as played through the Omnisat system, it enveloped me without drawing attention to the surround speakers. The system's incredibly open sound kept the dialogue centered on the screen while everything around it seemed fluid. An off-screen siren sounded like it was coming from outside the house instead of from between the speakers.
The dynamic range was wide and uncramped, from the soft sound of rain to the blasting stereo system that startles Leopold, without any obvious colorations in the sound. The commanding bass kept my heart pounding during the elevator scene even though it didn't go quite as low as it had with the Morel system. Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman's voices had just the right amount of articulation, sounding a touch more open and clearer than they did with the Morel.
The Omnisats gave an equally excellent performance with music. Holst's The Planets orbited very nicely in both stereo and Dolby Pro Logic II surround playback. The horns were a bit brassy, but otherwise the sound was pleasingly smooth as well as full, deep, and wide. For music listening, you might want to switch the input so you can use the subwoofer's controls to tweak the bass response. When I did that, the system produced plenty of natural low bass, but I would have also liked to hear more upper bass.
Since the Omnisat 6 system is designed to produce widely dispersed reflected sound, I didn't expect spot-on stereo imaging. But the imaging was so convincing during stereo playback that I had to double-check to make sure the center channel was actually off! Even more pleasing, the system stayed true to the ambience of the recorded environment in both two-channel playback and multichannel playback using Pro Logic II processing. Whether the recording was done in a studio or on a Broadway stage, it sounded like the singers were in an actual space. Mirage's Omnisat 6 speaker suite produced a superbly three-dimensional soundstage—not only broad but tall and deep as well.
Mission fs1
I have a good friend who says "neat" whenever something fires her imagination. And that was my first reaction to the Mission fs1 home theater system—"neat." Instead of conventional drivers, Mission used NXT SurfaceSound flat-panel "exciters" to create a dramatically attractive yet ultra-thin compact speaker system.
The left/right satellites are four satin-silver oval plastic columns, a bit over a foot tall, 3 inches wide, and only 1 1/2 inches deep, with silver metal grilles. The recessed bottom contains the input jack and two deep, round holes for seamlessly and securely mating the columns with the supplied shelf stands and wall mounts or with optional floor stands. The matching, slightly longer horizontal center speaker has an integral shelf stand for placing it on top of a TV. It's so narrow and light that it should rest securely on virtually any set, even an LCD monitor. You can thread cables through all of the stands to help keep wires out of sight.
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Because it has only a level control, the sub relies on your receiver's bass management for all other adjustments. Mission recommends selecting "large" for all the speakers in your receiver's bass-management setup menu. The brief instruction manual Mission provides is exceptionally clear and concise, with photos illustrating every point. Being able to refer to photos instead of diagrams helped speed setup and installation.
The fs1 system produced a bigger sound than I'd have expected from such small satellites. The elevator rumble in Kate & Leopold didn't shake the room, but it was forceful enough to make my finger instinctively reach for the emergency button. The system superbly reproduced sharp transient sounds like pounding horse hooves, carriage wheels on cobblestones, and clinking glasses. Voices were clear and solid, if a little nasal. And while the dynamic range couldn't match that of the Mirage and Morel systems, it was wide enough to keep my adrenaline pumping. The only noticeable problem was a lack of three-dimensional depth. While the surround sound field was sufficiently deep at the listening position, it didn't seem to extend beyond the plane of the TV screen.
My experiences with music-only listening pretty much paralleled those with movies. Of the three systems here, the Mission benefited most from using multichannel modes for music listening. While imaging was good at low levels during two-channel playback, it became blurred at high levels. Switching to multichannel playback eliminated this problem. Although the stereo image didn't have much depth, it did have a good horizontal spread. The subwoofer faithfully reproduced the timpani in The Planets, and the voices in Man of La Mancha sounded natural. But I remained aware that I was listening to good vocal reproduction instead of having the illusion of artists singing in an actual space.
Considering that the Mission system costs only slightly more than half as much as the Mirage system and considerably less than half as much as the Morel, it provided ample bang for the buck. And it can certainly hold its own against other systems in its price range. Since the NXT flat panels don't have ports or vibrating enclosures, the satellite drivers interact very little with surfaces and room boundaries. This makes positioning the speakers relatively easy. And their ultra-compact size, shape, and design made them even easier to place. The only thing Mission overlooked was mounts for attaching the front satellites to the sides of a TV.
Choosing the best decibels for the dollar among these systems is almost as hard as picking a favorite color of M&M. The remarkable audio ambience of the Mirage Omnisat 6 was mightily enticing, but some might find its high-tech industrial design distracting. The Morel SoundSpot Applause is a first-rate speaker system regardless of its styling, but you have to pay a premium over a comparable vinyl-on-composite-board box system. And the Mission fs1 breaks barriers with both its styling and value, but it lacks the refinement and richness of the Morel and Mirage. All three systems, though, show that home theater speakers have truly evolved as they've moved from the 20th to the 21st century.
MORE: In the Lab
Klipsch ProMedia GMX D-5.1
In my mind, Klipsch was synonymous with the huge, magnificent corner horn speakers from the early days of hi-fi. But the company has evolved dramatically since then and now sells one of the hottest brands of computer speakers around. Unlike the other three home theater systems reviewed here, the stylish ProMedia GMX D-5.1 system was designed for multimedia use—but that can include doing home theater duty in a modest-size room. And at $299 the GMX D-5.1 is a phenomenal value no matter how you use it.
The package includes five satellites, a compact powered subwoofer, and a disc-shaped control unit/surround processor. The satellite consists of a bullet-shaped main unit, attached by a ball joint to an integral shelf stand, with a smaller bullet-shaped tweeter on top. A trio of decorative metal bars extends over the midrange driver, more for looks than protection. The subwoofer has a 6 1/2-inch driver and six amplifiers rated for 100 watts total continuous power. The controller, about the size of a dinner plate, handles Dolby Digital and Dolby Pro Logic II (DPL II) processing, so you can enjoy surround playback from two-, four-, and 5.1-channel sources without need of a receiver, amplifier, or other processor. There are both Music and Cinema modes of DPL II.
You use five supplied speaker cables to hook the system up. Bare wire goes into spring connectors on the sub and RCA plugs go into the jacks on the satellites. You then interconnect the control disc and the sub using both signal and power cables. (All sub adjustments are made through the controller.) Next you wire the optical or coaxial digital output from a DVD player, satellite receiver, or home computer to the controller, which can also accept analog stereo inputs. You can balance the satellites individually using the controller's pink-noise generator.
Considering that $300 gets you a multimedia computer speaker system with processor that can also double as a home theater system, the ProMedia sounded surprisingly good. It could play only about half as loud as the three dedicated home theater systems reviewed here, but the sound was fairly clean even at full volume. Dialogue and music seemed to have an upper-midrange peak, but that didn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the system.
You can't beat the ProMedia as a budget home theater system for a summer house, a dorm room, or a den. Considering that it's self-contained—just add a program source—it can compete favorably with systems costing hundreds of dollars more. — R.W.
Klipsch Audio Technologies, www.klipsch.com, 317-860-8100