Mirage /ma-'räzh/ n [F, fr mirer to look at. fr. L mirari] 1: an optical effect that is sometimes seen at sea, in the desert, or over a hot pavement, that may have the appearance of a pool of water or a mirror... 2: something illusory and unattainable, like a mirage.
During our long wait for the now well-known Mirage M-1, this latter definition seemed the more apt. Its journey started in June of 1987, when I made a special trip up to the Audio Products International suite after that year's Chicago CES had closed down. All the Canadian worthies from API were sitting back after a…
All dipoles have traditionally shared many features, as well as most of their disadvantages. Dipoles typically consist of light sheetlike diaphragms driven more-or-less over their entire area, which gives them big advantages in transparency, "quickness," coherence, and lack of mechanical energy storage (compared to conventional cone drivers). This last advantage is a big one, which is what I think most people describe as "speed" in the bass. Big sheets also have a bunch of disadvantages, principally beaming and ringing: there simply is no free lunch—you can't have a big sheet in perfect…
Setup
Readers may be getting used to the lack of difficulty I experience setting up speakers in my listening room; I certainly am. The M-1s were positioned with their backs 7' from the rear wall (though there is an 8'-wide archway in the middle of that wall leading to a hallway an additional 5' from the back of the speakers), their centers 5½' from the side walls, and 8' apart. I sit 10' from the centerline between the speakers, this giving me a favorably high percentage of direct sound, mediating the tendency of my room to echo a bit. (The overall room size is 20' by 35', with 11½'…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Two-times three-way, bipolar, bass-reflex, dynamic loudspeaker. Driver complement: two 8" polyflex-treated, carbon-filled polypropylene woofers with PVC/nitrile surrounds; two 4½" trilaminated carbon-filled polypropylene midrange cones with foam surrounds; two ¾" treated-cloth hyperbolic dome tweeters. Crossover frequencies: 100/300Hz, 2.3kHz. Crossover slopes: most complex (see text). Frequency response: on-axis, 25Hz–23kHz, ±2dB; 75° off-axis, 25Hz–10kHz, ±2dB. Sensitivity: 83dB at 1m for 2.83V. Impedance: nominal, 6 ohms; minimum, 4 ohms.
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Sidebar 2: Review System
My equipment for reviewing the Mirage M-1s consisted of the same things I used with the Altec 550s reviewed in April—to much different effect, as you will see. Digital sound was provided by the CAL Tempest II, preamplification was Mark Levinson No.26, power amplification Levinson No.20.5, turntable the Well-Tempered, and cartridge the AudioQuest 404i-L reviewed by TJN in March running through the Levinson No.25 phono preamp.
One-third of the way through the review process, I was fortunate enough to try out the latest Win Labs FET cartridge through its own…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
Looking first at the manner in which the M-1's impedance changes with frequency (fig.1), the moderate peaks at 455Hz and 2500Hz are presumably due to the midrange and tweeter crossover filters. Overall, the M-1 should be relatively easy to drive, though the droop in the top octave would suggest that low-powered tube amplifiers should probably be best avoided. The fundamental box resonance is well-damped and appears at a low 42Hz, the bottom note of the string bass, while the port minimum lies at 28Hz, suggesting good low-frequency extension. This was confirmed by…
It's a strange sort of progress: As culture and commerce evolve, most people look for simple, easy solutions to their needs. Enthusiasts, however, go out of their way to complicate matters, often choosing products that are expensive and difficult to use. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the world of home audio, where typical consumers have embraced the notion of smallish, self-contained music systems—yet audiophiles, who are surely as crazy as bedbugs, seem bent on parsing an ever-increasing number of individually distinct products from the basic concept of a music system.
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At first, I tried to limit myself to comparing only the Linn Lingo and Naim Armageddon power supplies and changing nothing else. But that proved impossible—not because it couldn't be done in a material sense, but because I just couldn't wrestle the 700-lb gorilla in one corner of the room without at least saying hello to the one in the other: The Linn Ekos ($3000) and Naim Aro ($2750) tonearms, which are as different from one another as can be, and which surely influenced the development of their respective companies' motor drives.
And try as I might, I couldn't escape the pattern that…
As January 1, 2000 approaches, and the MP3 whirlpool continues to swirl, one simple fact has made me feel as if I'm stuck at the starting line of the entire download controversy: The sound quality of MP3 has yet to improve above that of the average radio broadcast. Until that changes, I'm merely curious—as opposed to being in the I-want-to-know-it-all-now frenzy that is my usual m.o. when to comes to anything that promises music you can't get anywhere else. According to Gene Hoffman, the 23-year-old CEO of Emusic.com, which sells music in the MP3 format, the quality issue will be solved…
John Atkinson's track-by-track written evaluation in the July 2003 issue of his new Editor's Choice: Sampler & Test CD (Stereophile STPH016-2) drew me like a magnet. Here was a reviewer-editor putting into words his musical perceptions, gathered while he served as the engineer for the various recordings sampled on this compilation. JA's dual roles of writer and engineer merge complementary perspectives, yielding what should be useful descriptions of the sonic values of some of my favorite reference CDs. As I was about to start my review of Piega's new hybrid loudspeaker when I read this…
