What Hi-Fi? Awards 2022 Winner – Standmount Speaker of the Year
"Right Up There with the Best" – Stands Included
The Mission 770 represents one of the most iconic models in the long history of Mission loudspeakers. It's a speaker that embodied the Mission pioneering research through the late 70s and 80s, with a bloodline dating back to 1977.
The original Mission 770 debuted in 1978. It quickly became Mission's best-selling speakers. The project's design and engineering team was led by Peter Comeau, Mission's current Director of Acoustic Design. For Peter, the new Mission 770 is a labor of love.
The original 770 was well known for its warm, rich, and natural sounding character. The new Mission 770 retains that standing but imbues it with an open, detailed performance that will entice you to explore your music collection all over again.
"Earns a Warm Recommendation"
England's What Hi-Fi? magazine's Awards 2022 issue named the Mission 770 its Standmount Speaker of the Year. "Our conclusion? We think these new Mission 770 are right up there with the very best at this price. While the link to the past will be the main attraction for some, for us that's put in the shade by the speakers' excellent all-round performance. The 770 have a range of sonic talents that sets them apart from most rivals and earns them a warm recommendation."
Brand New Driver and Tuned Cabinet
A new 8" polypropylene mid/bass driver was developed for the re-engineered 770, mimicking the extended response and low coloration of the original, while upgrading the motor system to take account of modern power handling and dynamic requirements.
As on the original 770, the driver is built on an 8" 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 lets you 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 the inlet and outlet to smooth airflow and eradicate distortion. Bass extends powerfully and cleanly to below 30 Hz, which is remarkable for this size of speaker.
New Woven Textile Tweeter
The 770's 1" woven textile soft dome tweeter with a high flux ferrite magnet is engineered for smooth, detailed, high frequency extension. This new treble unit uses a lightweight, damped microfiber 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 1" dome marries perfectly with the mid-bass driver to ensure evenness of character throughout the range of the whole speaker.
Coherent, Seamless Crossover
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. 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 simplicitysxof the original while improving critical elements. The resulting transparency to musical detail ensures that the thrilling emotion of music is fully conveyed.
An Exceptional 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 a further technological advancement. The original 770 reduced midrange coloration 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 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 coloration at all frequencies.
Internal bracing adds strength to the front baffle and braces the drive unit to the cabinet.This mechanical support 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 fiber strategically placed to absorb reflections inside the cabinet without overdamping the bass quality.
Custom Stands Included
The inludedMission 770 stand is custom designed in conjunction with Mission's Director of Acoustic Design, Peter Comeau. Every aspect is considered to create the perfect presentation of the 770 speaker. Handmade in the England, with robust British steel, the 770 stand reinforces the no-compromise approach in the 'Made in UK' theme for the return of the Mission 770.
A Tradition of Quality and Value – Made in the UK
The new 770 heralds the return of UK-based manufacturing for the Mission brand, where a 25,000 square foot production facility has been built in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.
The Mission 770 has always been manufactured according to the Mission principles of quality and value for money. The new Mission 770 further exemplifies these two standards. It emphasizes 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.
