Notice something different about the speaker in our photograph? No, we haven’t placed it upside down: it’s supposed to look like that, because the new Mission 750 bookshelf speakers have the same inverted driver arrangement as their more expensive siblings.
Mission calls it Inverted Driver Geometry, or IDG for short, and it places the mid/bass driver where you’d normally expect the treble unit (see the best stereo speakers we’ve tested for reference – but you get the idea) and vice-versa. According to Mission, “by placing the mid/bass driver closer to ear level with the treble unit positioned beneath, the path lengths from the two drivers’ acoustic centres are equalised so that the sound waves coincide at the listener’s head height.” The result? Improved stereo imaging that “contributes to the speakers’ seamlessly coherent and transparent sound.”
It’s tempting to dismiss that as marketing spiel, but the inverted drivers of the Mission 700 speakers garnered praise for their “sonic authority” alongside a very respectable four-star review from our sister site, What Hi-Fi? – and a quick scan of our more historic Mission reviews reveals some top performers. Simply put, these new bookshelf speakers promise to do the same as the Mission 700, for considerably less cash.
Mission 750 speakers: price and key features
The 135mm mid/bass driver is polypropylene, which Mission says is “loaded with minerals to make it stiffer” – something designed to deliver particularly taut and accurate bass for genres ranging from the heaviest of metal to the most delicate classical pieces. It’s built to the same specs as the one in the 770 and 700 range, with a specially designed motor and a rigid die-cast chassis. The cabinet and rear-firing bass port are tuned to a very low frequency to deliver impressive performance below 42Hz that belies the small size of the cabinets: 355x216x270mm (HxWxD).
The treble unit features a lightweight, damped, 28mm microfibre dome backed with a damped rear chamber which Mission says “is both smooth and detailed” without compromising on clarity or smoothness.
Although these speakers are billed as bookshelf models, Mission does recommend that you put them on stands rather than on a shelf: Mission’s own Stance stands come in at a surprisingly low £129 (which is around $160 or AU$249) per pair; as someone currently shopping for speaker stands I’m used to seeing some manufacturers charging considerably more.
And the speakers themselves are pretty affordable by high-end hi-fi standards: the MSRP is £899 (so around $1,135 or AU$1,725) or whether you choose the walnut or black wood veneer version. Both versions will be available from mid-April.