It presents the music in a wonderfully warm, open, fluid, pure and natural way. The sound stage is wide and deep and each individual instrument and voice is placed with pinpoint accuracy mobile truck engine repair

None . .

Great treble and highs. Has a dry crisp clarity to treble and most midrange. Fantastic imaging, the stage feels very three dimensional and well defined between individual sources. Great value when purchased used. Despite the listed cons I still am happy with them.

The upper mid bass and bass are both pretty low in capability. The woofer does seem to have a problem with distortion when pushed and the speakers as a whole would be much more rewarding if paired with a small high quality, sealed subwoofer. These speakers do not seem to work well when placed close to a wall and like some space. I had a lot of port chuffing that I had to EQ out but later remedied by filling the ports with foam.

I've owned these speakers since 2000. In that time, every other piece of associated equipment has been upgraded - amps, pre, analogue & digital sources, line & speaker cables etc. I have never had any desire to change the Missions, they maintain their transparency and exceptional timing and drive. Not quite up there with ProAc, Ruark et al but they hold their own. One can clearly distinguish the sonic signature of interconnects and speaker cables. The current system is an Acoustic Signature turntable with hot rodded RB250 arm, DL304 cartridge thru a tube phono stage directly into 2x Tripath TK2050 power amps vertically biamped with custom cat5 diy cables. Interconnects are Cardas with Eichmann plugs. This incarnation is bliss!

I also had the well documented 'weeping' driver syndrome, and the Missions failed :/ however the distributor here in Aus replaced the keraforms with replacement Audax drivers, no change in sonic signature.


A couple of caveats: Speaker cables must be carefully chosen to avoid treble brightness. as another reviewer has already mentioned, avoid silver cables. Biwiring improves the already excellent focus, biamping takes it to the next level. With the right speaker cables and amp(s) hey presto, there's the bass others have claimed is lacking. Use good mass loaded stands. I use Dynaudio stands filled with sand. I found that quite a lot of toe-in achieves pinpoint imaging.

In summary if you find a pair on the secondary market with replaced drivers (if they work, they've been replaced) snap them up. I've seen them sell on -that- auction site for <$100 which is a crazy bargain, hence the 5* value rating for a discontinued product

It is a good pair of speaker. Smooth and warm sounding with detail. Sing sweetly and very clear wth good sound stage and imaging.

musical, timing, voices

mid/bass drivers fail to last - below reputation for a company like Mission
Won't mind a high quality amp

Hi,
we bought these speakers to replace my sons jbl control 1, basically to upgrade his system. Got them for about half price, 500 A$, they had them on special. We compared them with Quad's 11, which appeared to be more lean, less colourfull and anyhow less musical. The Mission showed more emotion and speed, may be more vibrant in sonic terms.They look stunning, almost sexy, with real timber veneer. They are excellent in small to medium sized rooms and enjoy good stands.
Unfortunately the mid/bass keraform drivers didn't last long, as I found out Mission had more then a problem with those divers, and we assume they were using them in the shop as demos for quite some time.
Anyway, we had to wait 7 weeks to have them fixed under warranty, which was a bit annoying.
But since then they never missed a beat, and we are very happy with our choice.
My son is thinking now to upgrade his amp, a Teac 300 Reference midi unit, as those speakers are capable of much more, as we found out when we paired them with a quad 34/306 amp.
As Mission has stopped producing this series now you should calculate a pair of mid/bass drivers in, they are around 135 A$ per driver in case you go for second hand ones. The latest version of those drivers are slightly bluish in colour
and should last, according to Mission.

Customer Service

7 weeks to get almost new speakers fixed was too long in our opinoin.
The shop denied knowing the problems with the drivers.

Similar Products Used:

Quad's 11 (overrated)
Wharfedale 70 Ann. Edition (overrated)
JBL Control 1 (if you get them cheap they are ok, but then you get what you pay for)
Magnat Quantum 501(good value for money, but not in the same league)

Transparency, midrange.

Bass.

I'd read the glowing reviews that adorned these speakers a couple of years back, I'd heard a pair in a hi fi store and had been impressed with the midrange and clarity of these missions. However they didn't have the drama and bass of bigger speakers. I'd been getting by for years with a pair of kef coda's and more recently an mj acoustics pro 100 sub. I saw these speakers advertised by some fool who'd bought them to go with a kef centre speaker in a surround set up, only to realise he'd be better off with matching speakers. He was lumbered with 2 month old speakers, warranty covered,with receipts, I took them off his hands for a measley £80 plus postage. A friend of mine has a set of Dynaudio 52's which are superb, better than the missions in the bass department, but the missions have an ever so slightly sweeter midrange and treble. I would say the Dynaudios are easily better allround speakers but they cost far far more. I'd been considering a set but felt the money would be wasted as I'd only be paying the extra for improved bass and as I already have a decent sub this was unnecessary. With the mj woofer, the missions work sublimely, better than the dynaudio's alone and for less money. I'd recommend this set up to anyone. Sweet and detailed yet with the excellent mj sub making up for the missions bass shortcomings. A lack of bass is the only criticism you could aim at these speakers, but for their tiny size they do a good job. Anyone expecting more bass from such small boxes is after all asking for a little too much. I've also heard they can be difficult to drive, my amp(a tag 60i) is powerful and dynamic so I've never had any problems. However, from what I'e heard, I'd think very carefully before pairing them up with anything less than a decent 50w amp.

open sounding,rythmic bass.

none of any significance

The 78 series are onethe better Mission speaker ranges.Due to the use of the now better silk dome tweeters. Fast and lively speakers with good rythmic ability.Quite refined(not as smooth the Dynaudio 42 though)

Great speaker for the size and price!

Problem with the base unit. Water droplets seems to form in Hong Kong Weather

The sound and image are firm and solid for a price and size of the speaker. Sounds great!! But had some problem with my base unit, since the first day I bought the speakers. water droplets seems to form at the base unit and now the base unit doesn't work and I had to get it fixed with the cost of 1/3 of a new unit!

Similar Products Used:

B&W 603 S.2 Quad 11L

Exceptional imaging, better so than a pair of Quad ESL 989's i heard the other day, although the sound appeared to come away from the speakers more with the Electrostatics and was very lifelike and convincing. Imagine is some of the best for width i have had the pleasure of hearing. Good transient response, very detailed treble, and transparent and open with the correct cable. I know many of you will be reading this review thinking of whether to go for the Mission 780/780SE's or the Quad 11L's. Well I have heard the 780 and 11L, the Mission has far superior imaging and soundstage, however the Quads do have a feeling of fluidity about them, also tend to do a good job of poor recordings. Its very personal as to which one is best, and also depends on your other equipment

Can be very frustrating if matched poorly with the wrong (not nessesarily bad - the QED Silver Anniversary is 5* rated by what hifi) speaker cable.

Great loudspeaker, I enjoy the sound that it produces NOW. Initially I had many problems with partnering equipment. Used to run them with a Cambridge Audio Amp and CD Player which didnt do them justice at all. With this equipment they sounded really bright, and gave me a headache after 10 minutes of listening. Swapped the CD player for a Marantz CD63 which is a little smoother, and helped a bit. Recently I was fortunate enough to swap my amp for a Quad 77 integrated. This helped somewhat, having slightly more weighty bass. I realised the part in my system which didnt go to well with the speakers when playing with some van den hul "The Clearwater" speaker cable. Suddenly the sound opened out, and bass which was before missing, was now apparent, however with very slight loss of treble detail. The QED Silver Anniversary speaker cable is not the stuff to use with these speakers. I then promptly went out and listened extensively to different cables. In the end i came home with some Van Den Hul Teatrack (£25/m), whcih has really made all the difference. Bass is nicely extended without loss of treble detail. Now I can happily listen for hours, to a system which is actually on the warm side and very smooth.

Similar Products Used:

Quad 11L's Mission 702e's Mission 700's Quad ESL63's Quad ESL989's Bose 401's B&W 601 S2 Eltax Monitor III's Mourdant Short MS25i Pearl's Various other poorer speakers.

Dynamic well controlled bass, Sweetly informative, clean treble, Smooth and smooth, fantastic midrange, Biamplifying terminals, Design

I've found only Wharfedale pacific Pi 10s in this class that have better stereo imaging and convey more excitement, but in terms of midband frequencies 780s are something else.

I have 780s for six months beside my ears and in front of my eyes, but sometimes I forget that these are HiFi speakers, their small size may fool everyone and lurks their capabilities and performance; And when the mid/bass driver begins to move soon it will be approved that 780s are double award winning speakers in WHAT HiFi magazine. I demonstrated Dynaudio Audience 52s which cost nearly two times more expensive than Mission 780s, but my ears didn't find something to enjoy ( music source was the same ) The same was true while listening to B&W 602 S3s, big speakers, sound of them lacked control and detail, and treble wasn't sweet, also those big boom producer big boxes couldn't even get close to these gorgeous, highly acclaimed, perfect sounding speakers. WHAT HiFi says : " Their midrange performance is close to magical at this price point " and it's absolutely true, when two times more expensive speakers produce offensive midband. It seems that 780s guess what is on music source seconds before it's actually played. If you want to listen to music in order to enjoy it, not to shake room glasses or announce neighbours! don't lose 780s.

Similar Products Used:

JBL Xti 20 - Dynaudio Audience 52 B&W 602 S3 - Wharfedale Pacific Pi 10 Tannoy MX4 - Eltax -JBL LX 5 JBL CM 52 with sub 6