As a sort of Christmas gift to myself, I made a couple upgrades to the audio of our home theater a few months ago and I’m finally getting around to putting up a note about it. You may be thinking, “what, didn’t you just build all that just a couple years ago?” Well, true, but all the audio gear was existing equipment we’ve had for several years. The speakers came in a theater-in-a-box type package so they weren’t particularly great. The receiver in the set was actually pretty decent, but it long pre-dates HDMI connections, HD resolutions, and the new audio formats (like Dolby TrueHD). I never had any complaint with sound quality of the original setup, but I suspected it was a tad muddled in general and somewhat underpowered in the center channel. The one place I did invest when building the basement was with a quality subwoofer. I got it second-hand off eBay, but it’s a 150W, 12inch, THX-certified monster. The sub by itself greatly improved the original sound by adding strong support to the small satellite speakers. With this upgrade I was looking at keeping the sub, replacing the satellites and receiver, and rewiring components.
I knew I wanted to stick to a satellite speaker system, and honestly, for quality sound there aren’t a ton of options. After reading many reviews I decided on the Prestige line by Mirage. Mirage is one of only a handful of manufactures that really does a nice job with small form factors. They use a unique design in which the majority of the sound is reflected before reaching the listener. The effect is one where the sounds has less pinpoint directionality and the overall soundscape is more seamless. Mirage has a couple different sets: the Nanosat set (recommended by gizmodo), and the Prestige set which has a little higher efficiency (89dB/91dB) and a little more solid center speaker. Either can be purchased with or without a sub, and since I had didn’t need the sub I opted for the higher-end set. Luckily the website Vanns.com runs some great sales from time to time.
I was a little reluctant before buying them, especially since I couldn’t listen to them locally first hand (typically something I’d urge anyone to do). But once they were all mounted (which was a little tricky with these) and the audio rebalanced, the sound was notably better. At this point, I still had the same receiver, but I noticed more high end definition and more continuity across different frequencies and around the room.
The next step was to replace the receiver/amp. I’d been keeping an eye on the receiver market for a while. At a couple points I was close to either an Denon or an Onkyo, but a Harman Kardon eventually won me over. I went with the AVR 2600 which is a 7.1 receiver with a decent amount of power and support for all the latest audio formats like Dolby True HD and DTS-HD. Of course I’m only running the system as 5.1 now, but if I ever decide to add the two back speakers (which are already prewired) the amp with be ready for them. It’s also HK’s lowest end model that’ll handle video transcoding to 1080p using a respectable Faroudja processor.
