Sounding Spectacular

Mel Tormé. Mel Friggin’ Tormé! Are you kidding me? Sitting in my den, I’m not only listening to a guy that’s too square for even my septuagenarian parents, I’m mesmerized by him. “The Velvet Fog” is crooning, and I’m swooning. I have no idea what he’s singing, but the tune is tolerable enough. The thing is, it’s not the song that ensnares me, it’s the presence, vibrancy, and vitality of the music. Mel Friggin’ Tormé is actually in my den, putting on a command performance.

At least that’s the way it seems as I listen to a pair of Definitive Technology’s flagship Mythos ST SuperTower loudspeakers. The odds that I’d ever choose to sample the speakers by listening to old Foggy are about a trillion to one—or around the same odds as Congress repealing the 22nd Amendment so that George DoubleU can run for a third term. The CD is courtesy of Definitive president and co-founder Sandy Gross, who is slouched in my La-Z-Boy, smirking as I shake my head incredulously and gush about his speakers.

Accompanying Gross on this speaker demo is Paul DiComo, vice president of marketing. He chuckles as I mumble something about my initial impressions of the Mythos STs and my newfound appreciation of Tormé. That’s when my wife arrives home and joins us. Ronda generally couldn’t care less about great audio—most of her listening takes place at work through earbuds or cheap amplified speakers connected to her MP3 player—but she begrudgingly takes a seat on the couch. I introduce her to Mel.

A few minutes later, she’s saying that it sounds like he’s actually in the room with us, performing live, but that the room seems two or three times as large as its 13-by-18-foot dimensions. Ronda says it sounds like the Velvet Fog is rolling in from about 25 feet away, although she’s sitting about 8 feet from the speakers. I explain that her impression is created by the Mythos STs’ transparency and the grandiose soundstage they present. Then she notices the speakers’ spectacular imaging. “It sounds like the singer is over there, the trumpet is there, and the piano is over in that corner. It’s soooo cool!”

Hmmm…Mel Tormé. Cool? “Mel who?” she asks. Mel Tormé—that’s who you’re listening to. “Never heard of him,” she says. So I play some stuff with which she is familiar: Enya’s Paint the Sky with Stars, UB40’s Promises and Lies, and The Beatles’ Love from the Cirque du Soleil show, along with a few other select tracks. It’s an eclectic mix, but it serves its purpose. The Mythos ST SuperTowers astound us by reproducing anything we throw at them with incredible accuracy. From UB40’s thumping reggae bass line to the lilting layers of nuance in Enya’s New Age notes, Definitive’s speakers deliver. Even Love sounds spectacular, Ronda agrees, as I remind her that we’re listening to it through a $900 integrated audio receiver, not the multi-million-dollar system on which we’d heard it while seeing the show just a few months earlier in Las Vegas.

The Mythos ST SuperTowers do an equally spectacular job of bringing movie soundtracks to life. For my demo, Definitive provided a Mythos Ten center-channel speaker, along with a pair of Mythos Gem XL surrounds. The Ten incorporates the same 1-inch aluminum-dome tweeter and pair of 5.25-inch midbass drivers as the SuperTowers, but it includes a pair of 5-by-8-inch, racetrack-shaped passive radiators. Each SuperTower, meanwhile, sports a pair of similarly shaped, 6-by-10-inch radiators flanking a 6-by-10 carbon-fiber subwoofer cone, driven by a built-in, 300-watt SuperCube amplifier. Each Gem XL has a 1-inch tweeter and a pair of 4.5-inch midbass drivers.

It took mere minutes and just one scene to appreciate how well these speakers complement each other and how brilliantly the SuperTowers perform as the heart of a surround sound system. The five-speaker setup provides perfectly matched timbre and flawless imaging during a challenging scene in House of Flying Daggers, in which a protagonist flings pebbles at drums encircling a chamber. The whine of pebbles whipping across the room is startling in its realism, and the plunk of each one hitting its target reveals the speaker system’s exceptionally accurate imaging. The beauty and effectiveness of the SuperTowers’ integrated subwoofer design is evident with every pebble-flinging, bass-drum-thumping interlude. Because the subs are built right into the elegantly arched SuperTower cabinets—which are so solid, they seem carved from a single hunk of aluminum—deep bass melds seamlessly with the rest of the audio spectrum.

That kind of audio perfection is indicative of the SuperTowers’ overall performance. Frankly, their performance, styling, and astonishingly affordable price are simply beyond reproach. While the Mythos ST SuperTowers may tempt listeners to immerse themselves in the Velvet Fog, there’s nothing hazy about the question they raise: What more could anyone want in a loudspeaker?

DESCRIPTION
4-foot, 3-inch towers of superb full-range sound.

COMPONENTS
MYTHOS ST SUPERTOWER LR: Two 5.25-inch polymer upper-midrange drivers, one 1-inch pure-aluminum-dome tweeter, one 6-by-10-inch carbon-fiber subwoofer powered by a built-in, 300-watt Class D amplifier, and two 6-by-10-inch passive radiators
MYTHOS TEN CENTER CHANNEL: Two 5.25-inch midbass drivers, two 5-by-8-inch passive radiators, one 1-inch aluminum-dome tweeter
MYTHOS GEM XL SURROUNDS: Two 4.5-inch midbass drivers, one 1-inch pure-aluminum-dome tweeter

CONNECTIONS
Five-way metal binding posts

DIMENSIONS
MYTHOS ST SUPERTOWER: 51.5 x 6.75 x 9.5 inches (hwd)
MYTHOS TEN: 34.5 x 6 x 4.3 inches (hwd)
MYTHOS GEM XL: 12.6 x 5.5 x 4.5 inches (hwd)

PRICE/CONTACT
PRICE: Mythos ST $1,999 each, Mythos Ten $899 each, Mythos Gem XL $349 each
CONTACT: 410.363.7148, Definitivetech.com