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The Short Form

Price $3,598 (AS TESTED) / definitivetech.com / 410-363-7148

Snapshot

A superb pair for serious music that's equally capable on a multichannel team.

Plus

•High-rez, hugely dynamic sound •Impressive deep-bass may eliminate need for a sub •Dramatic tall-and-slim looks

Minus

•Tall image for some layouts •Still requires a serious sub for full-bore bottom-octave

Key Features

•($1,799 each) 6 x 10-in racetrack woofer, (2) 6 x 10-in racetrack passive radiators, (2) 5.25-in cone midranges, 1-in dome tweeter; 300-watt Class D woofer amplifier; 51.5 x 6.8 x 9.5 in; 70 lb

Test Bench

The Mythos ST has excellent sensitivity, uniform directivity, and good bass extension for a small tower. The floor-bounce notch at 150 Hz can be partly compensated by increasing the bass level if the user can accept an additional 4 to 5 dB of bass below 100 Hz. The upper-frequency response was marked by a 3-dB dip between 6 and 8 kHz. The speaker's bass limit was 32 Hz, where it hit 70 dB SPL before exceeding our 10% distortion threshold. Full Lab Results

PERFORMANCE Occasionally, I fire up a loudspeaker and know immediately that, generally, it sounds very, very good. This was one of those times. Within 60 seconds, I had identified even, full-range balance from the top to the bottom frequencies, with genuinely deep bass, a wholly uncolored midrange, and generous but smooth, clearly extended treble. In short, all the major musical food groups were at the party.

Voices sounded uniformly natural and "uncanned," no matter what I played - and the Mythos STs produced the same kind of wide, deep, and spatially convincing stereo image that makes me think, "Oh, yeah, that's why," whenever I stop into the better big-buck audiophile demo rooms at trade shows. A great example of this came via Amanda McBroom's Amanda live-to-disc CD, which I've heard hundreds of times on hundreds of systems. Its dramatic depth and almost excessive ambience virtually leapt out of the STs, throwing a broad, deep, richly detailed big-band stereo soundstage across the front of my listening area.

I also encountered the kind of "hear-into" detail that made me anxious to move on to higher-def recordings, which I did without delay. I have an SACD of the Brahms Clarinet Trio and Clarinet Quintet that offers intimate ambience and tremendous resolution. Played through the STs, this sounded up-close, honest, and detailed, capturing every rasp of the clarinetist's escaping breath and every rosiny touchdown of a bow. The quick runs up and down the clarinet stayed absolutely sure in location as well: The instrument was rock-steady laterally, and I almost felt the forward/back movements as the player made emphatic gestures on accented notes. Each of the other instruments "owned" its space, too, in a way that only top-level playback squeezes out of stereo.

From there I moved on to the 48-kHz, 24-bit stereo mix on the DVD-Audio disc of Donald Fagen's classic Kamakiriad, a recording that's about as clean as studio pop gets. The DefTechs played ungodly loud with no sign of strain or dynamic shortfall, and their ability to pump out quick, snappy rock bass approached world-class. At truly ridiculous volume, the bottom end simply stopped getting louder but without producing ugly noises, and the top became a bit, um, steely - which might be attributable to the amplifier reaching its endpoint, too. But honestly, if you're listening that loud, you deserve whatever you get.