Mission M74 (1 Viewer)

[Ryan Cruz]

Anyone audition these yet? They're pretty new and don't have reviews yet online.

 

[Yee-Ming]

I haven't, but I've seen many reviews in UK magazines.
the short one-line summary from What Hi-Fi (May 2002 issue) says "Almost impossible to fault at this price -- a near perfect blend of scale and cohesion." price being 300 pounds. 5 stars out of 5.
the one-liner from Home Entertainment (April 2002) says "A lot of speaker for the money; fine for blockbusters, loses its grip with music." 4 stars out of 5
any help? I'm not sure what to make of it myself, being tin-eared and all. a friend has the m74s as part of his hi-fi (should I say mid-fi?) system, and I've wanted to have a listen; if I do I'll post my views, but remember I'm a tin-eared newbie...

 

[Ryan Cruz]

Sure. thanks for the help if you know of any online links to those articles please post them.
thanks again

 

[Yee-Ming]

www.hifichoice.co.uk has this review:-
m74 review
there's a different review in the May 2002 issue of Hi-Fi Choice, where they conducted a Bench Test of 8 speakers in the 300-600 pound range. FWIW, the others were Acoustic Energey Aespirit 300, Arcaydis AKF, B&W DM602.5 S3, Castle Durham 3, JBL Xti 80, JMLab Chorus 715 and Tannoy Eyris 1.
I'll skip the preamble discussing build and finish, type Sound Quality and Conclusion:-
"SOUND QUALITY
The listening tests here gave rather contrary results between two different presentations, perhaps reflecting the underlying contrast between this model and the group norm.
On the one hand there's definitely a touch of boom 'n' tizz about this speaker, thanks to the combination of a full, deep bass with a treble that's definitely brighter than most, relatively sepaking. The result is an impressively wide-bandwidth sound, with ample headroom and bags of weight, scale and sparkle.
The down side, however, lies in the rather limp dynamic expression -- very like its m73 stablemate -- and this found some listeners compalining that the m74 wasn't very good at sustaining interest and involvement. Perhaps because there's limited dynamic grip, the net result seems a little sluggish.
CONCLUSION
Although this m74 clearly offers greater headroom than the m73, any other advantages are difficult to pin down, and the strong, bright treble will not be to everyone's taste. That said, it goes loud with confident aplomb and delivers plenty of bass weight to boot. "
there's a sidebar, The Lab Report:-
"This is yet another of our floorstanders that has the capacity to exciye in-room bass modes but is the only one that actually did in Paul's listening tests. The big 'anti-turbulence' port is tuned quite sharply to a low 38Hz but there's also a quarterwave resonance at ~160Hz that escapes to joint the peak output of the LF unit at the same frequency. Avoid room boundaries and particularly avoid aiming the rear of the cabinets anywhere near a corner. Otherwise, the averaged third-octave response looks rather smooth with just a hint of extra treble that's easily tamed by sitting sufficiently above the tweeter axis. A narrowband analysis shows this to be a potentially aggressive peak around 11kHz, so just add a couple of extra cushions under your bum for good measure. I am pleased to report that the 'high-sensitivity' m74 really does get very close to Mission's 91dB specification at some 90.7dB (500Hz-8kHz re.2.83V/1m). "
whew.