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Friday, 24 March 2023

Bristol Hifi Show 2023 - Highly Commended - Mission / Audiolab

 Mission's sister brand Wharfedale has been pursuing the retromod path for 3 or 4 years now with various 1970s re-boots.  Now Mission has joined the fray and Peter Comeau has chosen a recreation of the original 1980s Mission 770 for the job.  Visually very similar to the original, its structurally quite different - being based on a heavily constructed cabinet and a mineral filled polymer mid-bass rather than pure polymer.  With the stands these are £3.5k speakers, so not longer in the modest cost / good VFM market that Mission has occupied for the past 20 years or so.

On the end of an all Audiolab 9000 system, this was a very enjoyable room - sitting for 3 or 4 tracks enjoying what it does.  Clear mid-range and vocals were a strength of the originals and this is captured well again here, but is accompanied by far more sophisticated, controlled, rounded frequency extremes.  The room was possibly too big and the speakers definitely too far apart which may have contributed to the feeling that a bit more bass drive / bite would be welcome.

So a great showing, and I'm in the "like" camp on the looks, but I can see why not everyone might agree.




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