Mirage Nanosat 5.1 (platinum/black)

Pros: Tiny speakers, clean crisp highs, evenly matched sound, good subwoofer, easy setup

Cons: Not the deepest bass ever...but who cares?

Summary: If you live in an apartment, or have a small room you'd like to fill with superlative sound, look no further. For $800 you get quite a package with the Mirage Nanosat surround system.

The drawback of many a surround system is generally in its ability to produce a "transparent sound field." Sounds are often obviously from a particular speaker, and that can pull you out of a good movie or musical experience. This is where the Nanosats excel--they produce one of the most seamless sound fields I've ever had the pleasure to encounter.

Since all five "surround" speakers are identical, there's not much configuration to do. I have the luxury of owning an amp that measures sound intensity for each speaker and calculates levels accordingly automatically; it nailed it the first time with these beauties. If I closed my eyes, it was difficult to tell where speakers were placed; sounds seemed to have sharp spatial definitions. Listening to an SACD of Linkin Park's "Reanimation" brought out the best in these little babies. The broad frequency range, the crisp production values, and the very very cool spatial effects were presented utterly transparently.

Some might complain that the subwoofer's frequency response (120-20Hz)isn't spectacular. I live in a 1 bedroom apartment; it's more than enough to annoy the hell out of the neighbors and rattle the windows out of their frames if I so choose, and it will do so with practically no distortion. There's no crossover since this is a matched set, but this is a plus in a surround system application. Set the crossover point with your amp...and that's it!

Overall, in terms of literal boom for buck, it's hard to beat this system. I love it!