Wharfedale Diamond 220 Budget Speaker Review

[infinitesymphony]

What does that tell us? Toole writes eloquently about the problem. Yes distortion matters, but we still have little to no understanding of what makes for benign versus objectionable versus euphonic distortion.
A metric of level dependence would be interesting but mostly of academic value. Level dependence itself has a time dependence component. Frequency response often has similar issues and they would be useful.

Here's where I'm coming from, and maybe I can bring the thread back to the Wharfedales in the process. My apologies for starting this tangent.

The way I see it, these Wharfedales are like the anti-Pioneer SP-BS22-LR.

The Pioneer SP-BS22-LR received a 5.0 preference rating. In the review thread, a number of people who had owned the speaker stopped by to emphatically say how much they had disliked it and to express surprise about the relatively high score. To quote one person: "They suck."

The Wharfedale Diamond 220 received a 3.6 preference rating. One person called it "a gem" and it received a golfing panther.

So, somewhere the preference rating is not lining up with real-world experience. Are distortion characteristics that missing piece?

 

[wwenze]

Means bass = important and the preference rating system needs to apply different weightage to different frequencies. Me for example I don't give too much feck about >16kHz and I'm sure the smoothness between 4kHz to 16kHz can be as smooth as a puberty boy's face and it still gives a good overall sound as long as I get a controlled 4kHz to 1kHz, a boost from 1kHz to lower, and sufficient total bass quantity.

 

[Francis Vaughan]

So, somewhere the preference rating is not lining up with real-world experience. Are distortion characteristics that missing piece?

IMHO, they are most certainly part of the puzzle. That the Olive rating does not line up is not a surprise. This come up with monotonous regularity here. There is a lot going on. Amir starting to choose panthers on the basis of realisable sound quality with application of some correction. Except for traditional purists who regard the bits as sacrosanct, this is clearly a reasonable thing to do in the modern world. So panthers don’t fit the Olive score for good reasons. If a speaker can be tweaked it is redeemed.
But there remains a lot of work and knowledge to be found. The measurements made here are already probably one of the largest and most complete available anywhere. I can imagine speaker companies eagerly looking at the results of rival designs to understand better their competitors. Making such measurements is out of reach of many.
It is unfortunate that many readers confuse the Olive Preference score with ASR. Some even call it the ASR score. The only ASR score is the panther. I think many of us hope there will be enough information available soon to derive a new score. And even that will be a work in progress. How and when distortion, compression artefacts, and many other ills may get folded in is an open question. Hoping for a single figure of merit is almost certainly doomed.

 

[amirm]

Correcting speakers above the transition frequency is tricky, our mono in room mics are not the same as what we hear, if ready made EQ could be downloaded that corrected above the end user may get to optimise the hardest part easily.

Such corrections would be based on anechoic measurements as I provide, not in room.

 

[julian_hughes]

Much of the Wharfedale range have been using the same very sweet tweeter since aprox. forever by modern standards https://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/1105wharfedale/index.html

They got bookshelf speakers right a long time ago. I have a pair of the very tiny Diamond 9 (tweeter and very small woofer, single front facing port) on a bookshelf. In a slightly larger room I have a pair of the 9.1 (nicer cabinet, same tweeter, dual front facing port, slightly bigger woofer) on stands. They have a *very* mildly enhanced upper bass to compensate for the diminutive size. Each set sounds really nice in its appropriate environment. They are not going to satisfy in a 20' by 30' living room but they are ideal for modest spaces with constraints such as being placed near corners, against walls, on actual bookshelves etc. I don't know how that sounds in the US market but here in UK most of us live in very modestly sized homes and we like Wharfedale bookshelf speakers!

 

[Dennis Murphy]

I have not but it is clear that in most cases EQ significantly improves the performance of these speakers. To some extent we have to decide if no-EQ version even matters!

Of course it matters. It's up to the engineers to get it right out of the box. How many people buying speakers in this price range are going to correct for the factory's mistakes by following your EQ advice, assuming it's valid for a wide variety of listening environments? It's late, and I'm sure I would have posted something kinder and gentler in the morning, but I really am bothered by the emphasis you're placing on EQ in evaluating speakers. It's useful information, to be sure, but I think you need to step back and rate speakers on their inherent performance attributes.

 

[restorer-john]

Without the grille it's kind of got an interesting, almost steampunk vibe to it

That aint "steampunk vibe", it's just hideous looking. They clearly never intended the grilles to be ever removed or anyone to see the absolute mess they made of the drivers.

They are the one pair of speakers I have promised to never drag home and put in the listening room- even if they are sitting on the kerbside pickup for free.

 

[restorer-john]

And 2. The tweeter enclosure - appears to be more than a waveguide on the front?

I think they are going for consumer confusion, knowing full well the Elac has a concentric mid/tweeter in the 3 way Uni-Fi. A very similar looking unit all considered and yet the IAG Wharfedale is just a two way. They are playing tricks IMO.

One step away from the "three" (2) way speakers of the 1980s in cheap rack systems where the big bass driver was just a passive radiator masquerading as a 12" woofer.

 

[PoorishDecision]

I think they are going for consumer confusion, knowing full well the Elac has a concentric mid/tweeter in the 3 way Uni-Fi. A very similar looking unit all considered and yet the IAG Wharfedale is just a two way. They are playing tricks IMO.

One step away from the "three" (2) way speakers of the 1980s in cheap rack systems where the big bass driver was just a passive radiator masquerading as a 12" woofer.

It looks to be a decoupled tweeter, similar to the type q acoustics and jamo use. wouldn't surprise me if they'd implemented it as a cost effective fix because the wharfedale tweeter had a weird resonance issue that would go off at certain frequencies on the 9 series.

 

[Willem]

They got bookshelf speakers right a long time ago. I have a pair of the very tiny Diamond 9 (tweeter and very small woofer, single front facing port) on a bookshelf.

I often work abroad for a few months and up to half a year or so. Years ago I bought a pair of Diamond 9.0's to take along because they were the smallish and lightest remotely decent speakers I could take in a suitcase, and I have been very pleased with them for that purpose. Later, when excess luggage charges on intercontinental flights had skyrocketed and I had to downsize to a Tivoli radio for my sabbaticals I moved the Diamonds to a bedroom system until one of them failed. The 9.0s were a very small speaker with a 100 mm woofer, and they were certainly not the best of the range (I think the models with the 130 mm woofer are), but I liked the balanced design without any very obvious flaws. They were far better than any computer speaker and gave me real musical pleasure away from home. Their biggest sonic limitation for me was that the drivers did not integrate that well in near field - I did not like them as desktop speakers for which at first sight they had seemed quite suitable.
Of course my Quad 2805s and Harbeth P3ESRs sound better, but that is neither here nor there. There is clearly a room in the market for smallish budget speakers. So I would think it is a good idea to have more tests of them as far more people are probably looking for those than for expensive stuff. Don't we all get asked by friends and family from time to time what they should buy? And as someone here reminded us: do poorer people not deserve decent sound as well?

 

[BDWoody]

..i just enjoy railing about social justice in places that it really is never valued in a real way ...

 

[BYRTT]

The peak between 6-10 kHz drilled my brain every time i listened to these. Now i know why.

Not shure but some of the reason could also be because low end reach is light for this model, graphs in animation below is using Amir's spindata for Diamond 220 and cover the 9x directivity curves that base the spinorama plots listening window and other curves than on axis looks relax the area and same do the directivity index in its climbing (beaming) into same area..

 

[leeroy 85032]

View attachment 88140

well that's certainly an uninformed opinion..par for the course for keyboard hard guys.. carry on pards

 

[MediumRare]

I think they are going for consumer confusion, knowing full well the Elac has a concentric mid/tweeter in the 3 way Uni-Fi. A very similar looking unit all considered and yet the IAG Wharfedale is just a two way. They are playing tricks IMO.

One step away from the "three" (2) way speakers of the 1980s in cheap rack systems where the big bass driver was just a passive radiator masquerading as a 12" woofer.

Interesting. Doesn't the tweeter enclosure from the rear look like much more than a 1" tweeter would need?

 

[amirm]

Of course it matters. It's up to the engineers to get it right out of the box. How many people buying speakers in this price range are going to correct for the factory's mistakes by following your EQ advice, assuming it's valid for a wide variety of listening environments? It's late, and I'm sure I would have posted something kinder and gentler in the morning, but I really am bothered by the emphasis you're placing on EQ in evaluating speakers. It's useful information, to be sure, but I think you need to step back and rate speakers on their inherent performance attributes.

To be clear, I am mostly basing my subjective evaluation on the speaker as is. I do however add a bonus if EQ can make things better. And take away a point if it is hopeless with EQ.

 

[BYRTT]

An important decision, imo, and something I've always wondered myself. I know I bring up the Revel outdoor speaker a lot, but that speaker is a perfect speaker to highlight the with EQ vs without EQ decision. Tonally that speaker was a mess, but it's directivity is some of the best we've seen(even better than the M105/M106 imo). It doesn't surprise me that after EQ that speaker might leapfrog many speakers that are tonally better out of the box. EQ can fix tonality issues, but not directivity issues. If I'm confident that I'll be using EQ, maybe I should be focusing most of my attention on the DI and beamwidth graphs.

We can get a paper feel in below comparison Amir's spindata Diamond 220/M55C/M16, stopbands for the nomalization of EQ LisWin is 4th order Linkwitz Riley @80Hz and 2nd order Butterworth @20kHz, they real close into right column and at that cost im close order a pair should they still be available after the storm ..

 

[Dennis Murphy]

To be clear, I am mostly basing my subjective evaluation on the speaker as is. I do however add a bonus if EQ can make things better. And take away a point if it is hopeless with EQ.

Right. I was reacting to the seemingly overly broad statement that the non-eq'd version was almost irrelevant. At the risk of getting us off topic, do you have any fundamental disagreement with Toole's statements concerning the uncertainties and risks of room EQ above the Schroeder Frequency? I've always assumed that his concerns applied mainly to speakers with uneven off-axis response. Is that how you view the situation, or do you have more fundamental disagreements with Toole's position?

 

[Willem]

To avoid confusion we must distinguish between room eq above the Schroeder frequency and speaker eq.

 

[ezra_s]

That's not the issue. What keeps these small speakers from getting loud is the deep bass. They try to do too much and fall apart before their max loudness delivery at higher frequencies. The Wharfedale is one of the few that limits the deep bass which then allows it to get quite loud relative to other budget speakers.

I have the 225 which by their specs seem to do lower than the 220, when I plugged them to my main music integrated (they are usually connected to the AVR) what I recall is they excell or do a very prominent realistic sound with the foot drums and indeed they sound awesome for the price.

Glad you told about the grill, will certainly remove them when I use them next! Cheers!

 

[beagleman]

Is there anywhere, that tells what the Panther ratings are, related to each pose??