from the
test bench
MIDRANGE $$–$$$
Definitive Technology Mythos
SSA-50 Speaker System
Surround sound — friend or faux?
“This is by far the best-sounding single-cabinet system I’ve heard to date”
the world. Now Definitive has
decided to take the next step
and make a Mythos all-in-onecabinet, five-channel surround
speaker system.
Despite the fact that I do not
currently own a flat-panel TV,
Definitive declined my suggestion to send along a matching
plasma TV so I could accurately
judge the true aesthetic value of
the Mythos SSA-50 speaker
system hanging on the wall
underneath it. It’s yet another
example of a company that has
little concern for the hardships
that reviewers endure. Nevertheless, I slogged on.
From the front, with the grille
on, the 46.25-inch-long Mythos
SSA-50 retains the upscale, lessis-more physical appearance
found in the rest of the Mythos
line. There’s nothing to indicate
whether it’s a big center channel,
an LCR combo, or what it actually is, a
full-blown five-channel speaker system.
Even at that length, the speaker cabinet
almost disappears because it’s only a
little over 4 inches deep and 5 inches
high, and you can mount it on the wall
(under the big flat-panel TV that I didn’t
get) or set it on top of a large rearprojection display or shelf.
BY DARRYL WILKINSON
When Definitive Technology
originally introduced its Mythos line of
speakers, the slender, curved, aluminumcabinet tower models were matched by
equally svelte, under-5-inch-deep onwall and center-channel models using
the same form and style turned horizon-
“It’s amazing ...
wrapping the
surround effects
around the room”
tally.Awhile ago, the company literally
expanded the Mythos center-channel
speakers by packing the front LCR
speakers into one horizontal cabinet to
help appease the speaker-phobic folks in
BYOP (Bring Your Own Processor)
Unlike other all-in-one systems that include
source inputs and utilize their own active
applification and Dolby Digital/DTS
decoders, the Mythos SSA-50 provides
none of that. Instead, it relies on your
current A/V receiver for the amplification
and processing for whichever format you
choose — or a future A/V receiver, if you
plan to upgrade. In this respect, it’s no
different than having five separate speakers
in your system, except for the fact that all
the speaker wires run to the same place: a
heavy-duty bank of binding posts on the
back of the Mythos SSA-50. In a small
way (again, literally), this is a tiny problem.
The short height of the cabinet and the need
to keep the posts near one another for wallmounting unfortunately requires that the
posts be placed very close together. This
makes it a bit of a pain when you’re using
anything larger than bread twist-tie wire
to hook up the speakers. I’m not sure I
know of a good solution to the problem,
though, so it’s a good thing you only have
to connect the wires once.
Another byproduct of packing so many
speakers into such a small cabinet is that,
short of using some sort of quantum entanglement effect, there’s no way to get the
kind of bass you need for a real home theater. So, as with most of the Mythos speakers, a subwoofer is almost mandatory. For
my modest-size room, Definitive sent a
300-watt 8-inch active/8-inch passive
ProSub 800 ($399) which turned out to be
an ideal match for the Mythos SSA-50.
Why Did the Speaker Cross
the Talk?
Now we have what are essentially five
bookshelf speakers jammed into one
cabinet sitting in the front of the room.
Although this is similar to the way most
department stores demonstrate their HTIB
systems, it doesn’t usually make for great
surround sound. Well, while you can
think of the Mythos SSA-50 as being a
collection of five speakers, it’s actually
loaded with drivers, twelve in all, in an
unusual configuration.
To begin with, in order to shave some
inches off the width of the cabinet, Defini-
HIGHLIGHTS
Connections for all five speaker
channels
Wall-mount bracket and top-of-TV
leveling feet included
Uses your AVR’s surround processing circuitry
tive mounted the 1-inch aluminum-dome
tweeters for the LCRs smack dab in front
of three of the midbass drivers. Putting a
tweeter — or anything else, for that matter
— in front of another driver can easily
muck up the sound, so Definitive designed
a special geometry for the tweeter housing
that’s meant to minimize this issue.
Of the twelve drivers, only eight of them
directly reproduce the five channels. So
what’s up with the other four? They’re
crosstalk-canceling drivers — part of what
Definitive calls Spatial Array technology
— and they work in conjunction with
every channel except the center. Very
simply, if you’re listening to a speaker on
“the room layout
doesn’t affect the
Mythos SSA-50’s
performance nearly as
much ... a great deal
different than systems
that rely on the listening-room walls to create
the surround effects by
reflecting the sound”
your left, the sound it creates arrives at your
left ear first and then, a tiny bit later, makes
it to your right ear. This sound mix-up is
called interaural crosstalk, and it does detrimental things in stereo imaging. Two of
these extra drivers are dedicated to canceling out the crosstalk created between the
front left and right speakers by producing
an inverted audio signal. The other two provide the same service for the left and right
surround drivers. This particular aspect
makes the Mythos SSA-50 a great deal
different than systems that rely on the
listening-room walls to create the surround
effects by reflecting the sound. Room
layout doesn’t affect the Mythos SSA-50’s
performance nearly as much as some other
all-in-one speakers.
Although the surround drivers are sitting
in a box in front of you, Definitive uses a
technique known as a head-related transfer
function (HRTF) to trick you into believing
that sound is coming from the back of the
room. A filter on the surround drivers
changes the sound’s spectral balance in a
way that mimics how the shape of your ear
affects sounds that originate from behind
your head.
“the speaker cabinet
almost disappears”
Spinning an Amazing Tale
It’s amazing how well the combination of
crosstalk cancelation and HRTF works for
both enhancing the separation among all the
channels and wrapping the surround effects
around the room. In Spider-Man 3, for
example, as New Goblin chases SpiderMan for the first time, you get the very real
sensation that the characters, as well as New
Goblin’s flying bombs, are moving vigorously around the room. Even more impressive, though, is how well the Mythos SSA50 transitions from the fast-paced mayhem
to the more subtle, quiet city sounds after
the chase is over. Later in the movie, as the
soon-to-be Sandman stumbles into the
middle of a particle physics test (I hate
when that happens), the sound of the test
apparatus spinning around the room is
almost dizzying.
In the bone-chase scene in Night at the
Museum, when Ben Stiller first meets the
flesh-challenged T. rex, the Mythos SSA50 reproduces subtle details in music and
sound effects without being harsh or
overemphasizing — something that not all
single-cabinet systems are adept at. Stiller’s
tentative whispers clearly and cleanly echo
throughout the empty museum and are soon
followed by the loud shaking and rattling
of the T. rex’s skeleton. In both cases, soft
and loud, there was no sense of fatigue or
from the test bench
DEFINITIVE TECHNOLOGY MYTHOS
SSA-50 SPEAKER SYSTEM
strain in the sound, and the voice in the
center channel came through very clearly.
Here, as well as during Spider-Man 3, the
ProSub 800 quite nicely pressurized the
room. As the sports announcers say, it
always stayed within itself. It blended so
well with the Mythos SSA-50 that I only
knew there was a subwoofer in the room
because I couldn’t believe that much bass
could be coming from a speaker that slim.
AT A GLANCE
DEFINITIVE TECHNOLOGY MYTHOS SSA-50 SPEAKER SYSTEM
à SUBWOOFER: PROSUB 800
Connections: Speaker-level, line-level
Enclosure Type: Passive radiator
Woofer (size in inches, type): 8, poly cone (1);8, medite flat
Power Rating (watts): 300
Crossover Bypass: No
Available Finishes: Black,White
These listings are based on the manufacturer’s
stated specs; the HTLabs box below indicates
gear’s performance on our test bench.
SPEAKER:
Type:
Woofer (size in inches, type):
Tweeter (size in inches, type):
Full-range (size in inches, type):
Connections:
Available Finishes:
Dimensions (H x W x D, inches):
Weight (pounds):
Price:
Dimensions (W x H x D,inches): 10.3 x 12.9 x 15.8
Weight (pounds): 28
Price: $399
MYTHOS SSA-50
Two-way,12-speaker
4.5, cone (3)
1, aluminum dome (3)
4.5, cone (2); 3.25, cone (4)
High-level (5)
Black, Silver
46.25 x 5.4 x 4.25
31
$1,099
HT Labs Measures: Definitive Technology
Mythos SSA-50 Speaker System
L/R Sensitivity:
à
88 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz
Center Sensitivity:
à
89 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz
Surround Sensitivity:
à
86 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz
This graph shows the quasi-anechoic (employing closemiking of all subwoofers) frequency response of the
Mythos SSA-50 L/R (purple trace), ProSub 800 subwoofer
(bluetrace), center channel (green trace) and surround (red
Whereas some of the lower-priced subs
tend to boom at certain frequencies, the
ProSub 800 sounded consistent from 100
hertz down until it rolled off.
But I Thought It Was a FiveChannel System
At first it might seem sacrilegious or, at the
very least, silly to listen to two-channel
music through a single-cabinet speaker
radiator (1)
trace).All passive channels were measured with grille at a
distance of 1 meter with a 2.83-volt input and scaled for
display purposes.
The L/R’s listening-window response (a five-point average of axial and +/–15-degree horizontal and vertical
responses) measures +1.80/–3.07 decibels from 200 hertz
to 10 kilohertz.The –3-dB point is at 128 Hz, and the –6dB point is at 112 Hz. Impedance reaches a minimum of
4.81 ohms at 3.3 kHz and a phase angle of –49.20 degrees
at 170 Hz.
The center’s listening-window response measures
+1.25/–4.82 dB from 200 Hz to 10 kHz. An average of
axial and +/–15-degree horizontal responses measures
+1.37/–4.73 dB from 200 Hz to 10 kHz.The –3-dB point is
at 134 Hz, and the –6-dB point is at 116 Hz. Impedance
reaches a minimum of 4.74 ohms at 302 Hz and a phase
angle of –53.11 degrees at 139 Hz.
The surround’s listening-window response measures
+1.96/–15.34 dB from 200 Hz to 10 kHz.The –3-dB point
is at 227 Hz, and the –6-dB point is at 198 Hz. Impedance
reaches a minimum of 5.14 ohms at 429 Hz and a phase
angle of –37.85 degrees at 5.9 kHz.
The ProSub 800’s close-miked response, normalized to
the level at 80 Hz, indicates that the lower –3-dB point is
at 34 Hz and the –6-dB point is at 32 Hz.The upper –3-dB
point is at 159 Hz with the Low Pass Crossover control
set to maximum. — MJP
system designed to trick you into believing
there are speakers all over the room. But it
turns out that the Mythos SSA-50 is exceptional at reproducing music as well as
movie soundtracks. I listened to several cuts
by Anonymous 4, a female a cappella group
that performs primarily medieval music.
The distinct placement and layering of
voice was quite amazing for a set of speakers packed together in such a small cabinet.
Another impressive trick is how well the
Mythos SSA-50 created a soundstage that
was wider than I expected, considering how
relatively close the left- and right-channel
drivers are to each other.
“the Mythos SSA-50 is
exceptional at reproducing music as well as
movie soundtracks”
Is the Mythos SSA-50 (and its partner in
crime, the ProSub 800) the death knell for
high-performance multi-speaker discrete
home theater systems? Hardly. The technology still hasn’t been developed that can
totally fool you into believing there are
honest-to-goodness speakers producing
sound behind you in your room. On the
other hand, this is by far the best-sounding
single-cabinet system I’ve heard to date, not
only when it comes to watching actionpacked Hollywood multichannel blockbusters, but also with more intimate twochannel music. If I can’t have the real deal,
I’ll take this deal anytime.
Mythos SSA-50 Sound Array Speaker, $1,099;
ProSub 800 Subwoofer, $399
Definitive Technology, (410) 363-7148
www.definitivetec h.com
Dealer Locator Code DEF
11433 Cronridge Dr. • Owings Mills, MD 21117
(410)363-7148
For information and dealers
www.definitivetech.com
Reprinted from Home Theater / August 2008.
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