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Posted 20 hours ago

Mission 778X Integrated Amplifier (Black)

£274.5£549.00Clearance
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About this deal

The front of the amp sports a pair of rotary controls – one for source selection, the other for volume – surrounded by white LEDs to show current status. Between these are the IR sensor, power button and 6.3mm headphone output. Digital sources connected through the USB, coaxial and optical inputs, or paired via Bluetooth, are served by the 778X’s built-in DAC. This is based around the ES9018K2M chipset from the Sabre32 Reference family, enabling the amp to benefit from ESS Technology’s 32-bit HyperStream architecture and Time Domain Jitter Eliminator. Mission claims that hi-res PCM is supported to 32-bit/384kHz, alongside up to DSD256. Like all Vintage speakers, they also look gorgeous. The speakers are hand-built of birch ply, which has been hand-finished in oiled walnut veneer and burr walnut inlays. Like the larger Fifteen, it has an anodised gold trim and leather grille tab. Trust us when we say the pictures we took at the show don’t do justice to quite how nice they look. From the press release: “The preamp section is kept as simple as possible to maintain signal purity, with line input signals passing to a precision, microprocessor-controlled analogue volume stage. Much effort has gone into the physical layout of the 778X’s circuitry, protecting the sensitive preamp section from noise interference.”

The Cyrus is more in your face but doesn't hide a poor recording. It's a fantastic amp that, once set up is easy to use and doesn't even require that you add a source (stream Qobuz high res to it and see just how good it can be). It's that initial setup, however, that can get really frustrating. It's not intuitive and it rarely works first time. Get by that and you have a beautiful, compact and quirky but of hifi. Ultra-low Noise Digital Audio File Compability (384kHz PCM, DSD256) • Bluetooth 5.0 (aptX / AAC) Support The Mission 778X is a revisit of a classic Mission amplifier concept that was the Mission 778 – an affordable integrated amplifier that offered simplicity in operation but over-performed in the driving of loudspeakers.The Naia also has a titanium vertical bearing housing and spindle, tungsten balance weight shaft and weight, and uses Rega’s one-piece polished aluminium arm tube. As an added layer of allure, it uses the same ZTA zirconium-toughened alumina (ceramic) material as the Naiad for its central bearing. The end result is a seriously cool-looking turntable. Wharfedale originally teased the Dovedale at Munich High End 2022, but it only properly lifted the lid on the new speakers in February.

CA1, CA2, CA3, CA4, CA5, CA6, CA7, CA8, CA9, CA10, CA11, CA12, CA13, CA14, CA15, CA16, CA17, CA18, CA19, CA20, CA21, CA22, CA23, CA24, CA25, CA26, CA27, CA28. The Fyne Audio Vintage Five were a wonderful surprise hit with the What Hi-Fi? team at the Bristol Hi-Fi Show 2023 in February. The 778X's power amp stage is a Class AB design incorporating a low-noise 200VA toroidal transformer, followed by a 2x15000uF reservoir capacity (30000uF in total). The amp's output is “conservatively rated” at 45W into eight ohms and 65W into four ohms. Where I said with alternative (and generally more expensive) products that have streaming built in, the downside is that the streaming module is likely to become obsolete relatively soon, before the amplifier (and DAC...); is that really true? I imagine the hardware and wifi components have a reasonable life-span, what can be expected? Is it more just a risk that firmware updates will be discontinued at some point and that might affect functionality somehow?

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Well done Mission! It’s a winner in my opinion! I’ve heard more expensive amps that don’t perform as well.

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