Mission Cyrus 782

[LWB]

I was given a pair of these and wonder if there is any experience with them out there? They date from the late 1980's, and are in lovely condition: sun-faded, but no damage, all corners square and un-bashed. 4 Ohm.

Mission's usual stretchy black grille cloth is just barely clinging to the frames, the glue has dried up and failed, for the most part. I've glued the cloth back on.

I looked at the crossovers which, in Mission's usual style, are glued to the back of the speaker terminal plate. Four screws and it's hanging out by the wires.

I found that the large inductors had both fallen inside the cabinet, one had separated into two coils, but still connected. Cleaned those up and fastened them back to the plate.

There are three capacitors; 1 4.7 uF and 1 uF film type on the treble, and a 15 uF electrolytic on the woofers (two woofers in parallel, tweeter mounted between them). I plan on replacing the almost 30-yr old electrolytics with film caps.

Sound? It's good, although the treble seems harsh to my ears. Very strong bass and mids, and excellent transient response - my initial reaction was, wow, these are fast!. Very dynamic - but a tad harsh in the higher registers. Sorry about the non-technical description.

What do AK'ers know about these? Any experience, anecdotes or suggestions?

 

[Raynald]

Yes, I have some experience as I used to sell them when they were new. Very good speaker, more neutral and less colored than the regular Mission line that sold very well because they took a few liberties to make those sound more fun. Cyrus was their line of killer budget audiophile electronics and sometime around the late 80's they added three speakers:

Cyrus 780: Pretty much a deeper Mission 760i with real wood veneer IIRC. Sort of a budget ProAc Super Tablette. $399-$499?

Cyrus 781: Slightly smaller ported single woofer version of your 782. The most popular of the line. About $699?

Cyrus 782: The sealed enclosure resulted in tighter, more accurate bass than the 781 and the double woofers in a bigger box ensured good extension but it was not as warm in the bass as the 781 so it was not as popular though there was one magazine review that rated it very highly.

The 782 might be a bit dry sounding but I don't remember it being harsh. Could be degradation of crossover or tweeter with time. What are you running them with? Have you tried bi-wiring? I seem to recall they responded well to that.

 

[LWB]

Thanks, Raynald. Haven't tried bi-wireing yet. I'm running them with a modified, thoroughly refurbished Sansui AU-D11II. Lots of power, and the stereo imaging is excellent. Unfortunately, the amp's speaker connections are not conducive to two sets of cables, I'd have to make up a set. I hadn't planned to replace the film caps and resistors on the tweeter side of the crossover - there are actually two coated wire-wound resistors in parallel with the 4.7 and 1 uF film caps, but I've a 15uF film cap on its way to replace the electrolytic.

 

[Raynald]

Great, keep us posted!

 

[Goldjazz]

Joining the discussion months late. I am listening to a pair of these right now. There's something I like about their bass that I can't quite put my finger on. I think it's like a smoothness of integration with the midrange maybe, and a sort of effortlessness and naturalness about the bass and mid range. They don't play super deep but I find myself enjoying their lower range. I think the midrange and highs are lovely and smooth actually, there is nothing harsh or shrill about them ever on anything I've listened to on them so far. When turned up they really fill the room surprisingly with a big soundstage and instruments like the piano are quite big, present, powerful and realistic. They sound much bigger than their size would suggest.

 

[LWB]

I changed the electrolytic caps in the crossovers. One of them was out of spec. I put in ClarityCap ESA 15uF (same value as original) caps: some surgery to the plastic crossover plate was necessary to shoe-horn these big caps into the cavities. The large inductors were quite a mess after their attachment to the crossover plates had failed and they had fallen in to the cabinets (both speakers). I straightened them out and re-attached them to the crossover plate with silicone. The photo shows the better of the two. I was struck by the similarity between these 782's and a pair of Mission 761i's that I bought on clearance years ago. See my thread "New Life for Mission 761i" for the details. I modified the 761i's to mimic the construction of their big brother 782's. The 782's have patches of an acoustimat-like cabinet deadener on the insides of the cabinet sides. I added 3M Sound Reduction Mat to augment Mission's application and cover larger areas of the sides, the ends and the backs. The 782 has a substantial mid-cabinet brace, and there was no reason to tamper with that. I also added poly-fill to fill the gaps left by the poly-fill bats Mission stuffed them with. I wonder if a more careful stuffing of the cabinets could yield a small improvement?

The 782's are definitely improved, though the improvements were nowhere near as dramatic in their effects on sound as they were in the smaller Mission 761i's. The 782's are a very pleasing set of speakers; neutral, and yet very dynamic in presentation, and at 4 ohms, very efficient. My amp has no trouble driving them. The mid-range is a little fatter than I'm used to, but I like them a lot. Normally, I'm augmenting the low end with a pair of stereo subwoofers and this setup is very satisfying, even with my old Radford Studio 90 transmission line cabinets. I've listened to the 782's for a while without the subs; I find that there is too much roll-off in the low frequencies for my liking. Stereo subs, set up so that you don't know they are there until you turn them off, are addictive. Even with my Radfords, I use the subs to fill out the 20-40 Hz region. With the Missions, its 20-70 Hz that needs help. Not that there isn't output there; it's just rolled off too much in relation to the mid-range.

 

[Goldjazz]

Nice one LWB. Yeah definitely rolling off dramatically from 60Hz down (see my measurement attached). There is also a bit of a dip in the 1khz -5 khz range which may account for why you think the mid range is a little fatter. A side note, This is a measurement of one speaker at about 1m. When I measured the other, the response was almost identical, like ever bump was almost the same, I've never seen a left and right speaker so matched before. Not sure where the crossover point is on these, may be at that dip at 2.5K. Whenever I play around with a pair of speakers I create a play list of songs that sound good with those speakers, attached is the playlist for the Missions so far to give an idea of what I think they're good at.

The 761i's look almost identical.

 

[Goldjazz]

Here's te Stereophile review of it http://www.stereophile.com/content/mission-cyrus-782-loudspeaker

 

[LWB]

After my mods to the 761i's, I think they had better low frequency extension than the 782's (this is why I think stuffing the 782 cabinets more uniformly my help them out some). But I still bought a subwoofer to augment the 761i's for my daughter's system.

Yeah, JJ Cale, Miles Davis, John Martyn, I'm familiar with and they sound great on the 782's. I have about 80 test tracks I go through, if I can figure out how to export the list from iTunes, I'll post it!

BTW, I'm listening to the 782's atop 30" Sanus steel speaker stands.

 

[NAD80]

Found this information on the 782. https://www.scribd.com/document/267582548/Mission-782
Has the crossover freq for the three way listed.

 

[LWB]

Found this information on the 782. https://www.scribd.com/document/267582548/Mission-782
Has the crossover freq for the three way listed.

The "Mission 782" is not the same speaker as the "Mission Cyrus 782". They are completely different animals. I'm afraid those specs are meaningless in this thread.

 

[NAD80]

Sorry.

 

[LWB]

No worries, it took me a while to figure out there are TWO model 782's manufactured by Mission over the years.

 

[LWB]

My current test tracks (place-holders for the albums they are on). This looks like fodder for a new thread....

 

[Goldjazz]

My current test tracks (place-holders for the albums they are on). This looks like fodder for a new thread....

some good tracks there, yes good idea for a thread

 

[mahgister]

I have not listen to the 782... I just bought the 781 for peanuts, they replace the bookshelves mission volare v 60 that were pleasing to my ears... B ut the 781 are at another lever than the Volare ...Let me say that i put sorbothane and some stones tweaks on them and the results are stunning, a silky sound (without the stones the highs were a bit dry),precise 3-d imaging,no fatigue at all, they smash completely the volare v 60 ... They are audiophile sound for me...A gem because of the ratio used price/ quality...I drive them with a sansui AU-7700 amp. that possess for me an almost tube sound...It seems to me now that any upgrading will touch some diminishing returns peaks...

Thanks to this thread because i bought them after reading most impressions here.... thanks to all, particularly Raynald many post about the Missions 781...

 

[Raynald]

Glad it worked out, the 781 is definitely a sleeper audiophile bargain. I have seen a couple of pairs go for very low prices recently locally.

 

[LWB]

Just learned that ferrofluid doesn't last forever. From the ongoing comments of another thread, "New life for Mission 761i", concerning the common tweeter these models share, I obtained some ferrofluid and dismantled the 782 tweeters - quite easy to do - and checked the state of ferrofluid in these perhaps 38-year-old speakers. They were not dry; but they weren't especially wet, either, accepting a few drops of fresh ferrofluid to fill the slim internal void. I also took the opportunity to stuff some more polyfill into the void space around the drivers. Do they sound different, or am I imagining that the treble seems less directional? Very fine sounding speakers, especially with a subwoofer to fill out the lowermost frequencies.

 

[LWB]

Another mod to the 782's. After doing the work described earlier in this thread, I've been pleased with the improvement to the Missions. But.... I still prefer my other main speakers, ancient Radford transmission-line Studio 90's that I built many years ago. So the 782's don't spend much time in rotation, I haven't been completely satisfied with them. Their directional output, particularly the high frequencies, seems to have been cured by topping up the ferrofuid, but I was left looking for more improvement overall.

Looking suspiciously at the common-garden-variety film caps in the crossover network's stock high-pass filter, I wondered what better caps might do in place of these 38-year-old chicklets. If you go back to the beginning of this thread, there is a photo of my diagram of the crossover, showing a 4.7uF and 1 uF film cap in parallel, both rated at 100 volts. See post #6 for a photo of the high-pass filter in place, with my Claricap film capacitor substitution (shoe-horned into the space where a diminutive electrolytic once resided) in the low-pass filter. I ordered a pair of 6uF Auricap metalized polypropylene caps rated at 200V and switched them in today. The crossover is on the back of the speaker terminal block. The large inductors in the low-pass filters bear evidence that they had come loose and fallen into the cabinets; I discovered this when I first opened the cabinets a couple of years ago. I kind of kludged the inductors back together and fastened them to the terminal block with silicone. Yes, they are a mess, but I think they are at least functional. The 4.7 and 1 uF film caps had been fastened down with hot snot or something like it, and I hacked them out. The yellow Auricaps just fit in the space beside the high-pass filter resistors and the big messy inductor. Closed up again, the 782's have been playing now for several hours. Some of the fancy high-end cap reviews suggest these things need many tens of hours to break in, and maybe they do. But I am pleased to report after just a few hours that these premium caps have elevated the Mission Cyrus 782 into another class. They sound great, with an airy smoothness that just oozes a level of quality in their output that had been missing! Now I'm thinking I might have to refresh the film caps in my Radfords with something from today's high-end cap selection.

 

[AndyJay]

Hi LWB,
thanks a lot for sharing this info. This is very helpful.
I have a pair of Cyrus 782s (30+ yrs old) which I didn’t use for several years and think they sound a little off and different to what I remember.
Based on your info, I just ordered two ClarityCap ESA 15uF caps and two Mundorf MCAP Supreme 5.6uF caps and look forward to upgrading the crossovers. I assume you unsoldered the speaker cables in order to take out the crossover for replacing the caps.