Mission 770 Speakers Pair

Mission 770 has always been manufactured according to the Mission principles of quality and value for money. New Mission 770 further exemplifies these two edicts; balancing fine craftsmanship, natural sound quality, and affordability inside a beautifully proportioned loudspeaker that has been bought in its millions right across the globe through its various incarnations.

The original 770 was well known for its warm, rich and natural sounding character and the new Mission 770 retains that standing but imbues it with an open, detailed performance that will entice you to explore your whole music collection, once more.

"No need for rose-tinted glasses here. Mission’s resurrected 770 offer an excellent alternative to the established class leaders"

Full review

Emphasis on Design

The emphasis for the design of the new Mission 770 is, indeed, that combination of polypropylene cone and resonance controlled cabinet. Accordingly, Mission has developed a new polypropylene driver, mimicking the extended response and low colouration of the original, while upgrading the motor system to take account of modern power handling and dynamic requirements. Naturally, like the original, the driver is built onto an 8-inch die-cast chassis with larger rear ‘windows’ to reduce early reflections back through the cone. Special care has been taken to marry a low-density nitrile surround to the cone to match its impedance and reduce reflections from the cone edge.

Drivers Anew

A new 20cm polypropylene mid/bass driver was developed for the re-engineered 770, mimicking the extended response and low colouration of the original, while upgrading the motor system to take account of modern power handling and dynamic requirements.

Like the original, the driver is built onto a die-cast chassis with large rear ‘windows’ to reduce early reflections back through the cone. Special care has been taken to marry a low-density nitrile surround to the cone, to match its impedance and reduce reflections from the cone edge.

The new polypropylene cone is loaded with minerals to make it stiffer than the original, yielding fast, tight bass that enables the listener to hear exactly how bass instruments are being played. This is balanced by tuning the cabinet and reflex port to a very low frequency, avoiding the ‘one note bass’ that is typical of a lot of bass reflex systems. In addition, the port is strongly flared at both inlet and outlet to smooth airflow and eradicate distortion. Bass extends powerfully and cleanly to below 30Hz in the room, which is remarkable for the size of the speaker.

The Woven textile soft dome treble unit – true to form, with a high flux ferrite magnet, is engineered for smooth, detailed HF extension. This new treble unit uses a lightweight, damped microfibre dome with an ultra-smooth response, backed by a damped rear chamber that pushes the fundamental resonance well below the crossover region. The quality of this 28mm dome marries perfectly with the mid/bass driver to ensure evenness of character throughout the range of the whole speaker.

Endless Development

The highly researched crossover – 1000s of hours of listening tests perfect the coherent, seamless musical output that is both thrilling and natural in its rendition of any source material.

IAG’s Director of Acoustic Design, Peter Comeau, has worked tirelessly to ensure seamless integration between the drive units, so the speaker behaves as one music-making system.

Today’s advanced software crossover mapping and measuring techniques allow Mission to perfect the balance between bass and midrange and adjust the crossover to the treble unit by mapping the acoustic crossover slopes with extreme accuracy. Even so, the choice of EQ and crossover for the new 770 involved hundreds of hours of listening sessions using a wide variety of music, and over 170 circuit iterations were tried before the final crossover was settled upon.

The circuit was then mapped out onto separate bass and treble PCBs using very short signal paths and accommodating high-quality components such as super-transparent polypropylene capacitors and air core inductors, maintaining the simplicity and elegance of the original whilst improving critical elements. The resulting transparency to musical detail ensures the thrilling emotion of the music is fully conveyed, whilst maintaining a seamless transition between the mid/bass and treble units.

The Cabinet

The drivers and crossover are housed in a real-wood veneered cabinet with a white laminated front baffle echoing the style that made the Mission 770 a stand-out hi-fi product in the 1970s and ’80s. Beneath the rich, rosy-tinged walnut or black veneers lies further technological advancement. While the original 770 reduced midrange colouration using the BBC-influenced technique of a thin-wall cabinet damped by mass loading with bitumen pads, the new 770 features a twin-wall sandwich of high-density MDF and particle board bonded by a layer of an All-new treble unit with 28mm microfibre dome delivers smooth and extended high-frequency performance high-damping adhesive. This results in a cabinet with panel resonance well below audibility, allowing the drive units to do their job unsullied by cabinet colouration at all frequencies.

Internal bracing adds strength to the front baffle and braces the drive unit to the cabinet, creating mechanical support that aids the dynamic performance of the Bass unit and reveals the microdynamics of the musical performance. This is complemented by a layer of acoustic foam and damping fibre, strategically placed to absorb reflections inside the cabinet without overdamping the bass quality.