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Mission 770
The project’s design and engineering team was led by Peter Comeau, Mission’s current Director of Acoustic Design. Peter was a young reviewer for Hi-Fi Answers when the original 770 launched and well remembers its impact (he subsequently co-founded loudspeaker maker Heybrook in 1979). For Peter, the new Mission 770 is a labour of love; just as it was for Farad Azima all those years ago.
The 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.
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 room, which is remarkable for this size of 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.
IAG’s Director of Acoustic Design, Peter Comeau, has worked tirelessly to ensure a 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 signa 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 music is fully conveyed, whilst maintaining a seamless transition between the mid/bass and treble units.
Internal bracing adds strength to the front baffle and braces the drive unit to the cabinet, creating a 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.
