Wharfedale Diamond 220 Budget Speaker Review

[sweetchaos]

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

Yes, see thread.

 

[Soniclife]

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

My thoughts are that full range speaker EQ derived from the anechoic data be used as the starting point, and a user, or tester then free to apply room EQ below the transition frequency as required. The speaker EQ is akin to using a much better crossover, if indeed it works as predicted.

 

[amirm]

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?

I am mostly with Dr. Toole but not 100%. Indeed Dr. Olive's research into Room EQ showed that directivity error could be compensated for in EQ with positive results.

Clearly though it is better to not have directivity error.

 

[MZKM]

Yes, see thread.

Also, I added the 1-4 rating of these for my preference sheet as well as the speaker selector sheet. I was trying to do a bubble chart where the speaker bubble increases with panther rating, but Sheets is real limited in making fine tunings, so I will have to work on that; I plan on only showing those that get a 3-4 (omit headless & shrugging panthers).

 

[restorer-john]

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

Often the "enclosure" is just a metal/plastic can around the ceramic magnet structure like this Yamaha example:

This tweeter weighs 1.5lbs.

There is no actual enslosure. The rear cavity behind the dome is just the space between the end of the pole piece and is usually damped with felt/fibre. A circle of material about 20mm diameter and a few mm thick is glued or sits freely on the pole piece, trapped under the dome.

What Wharfedale have done coud be similar- the magnet large can/housing around a ferrite magnet makes a tweeter look more "serious" to audiophiles- especially in cutaways. Consider their previous tweeter (used across the Diamond range for years) was a tiny neodymium magnet dome that was particularly fragile, and only the diameter of the dome itself.

 

[sweetchaos]

Also, I added the 1-4 rating of these for my preference sheet as well as the speaker selector sheet. I was trying to do a bubble chart where the speaker bubble increases with panther rating, but Sheets is real limited in making fine tunings, so I will have to work on that; I plan on only showing those that get a 3-4 (omit headless & shrugging panthers).

Thanks, that helps.
I noticed 3 speakers have a rating on your spreadsheet, but no panther on Amir's review.
Can you double check these?
- Ascend CMT-340 SE Center
- Revel F208 Tower Speaker
- Verdant Audio Bambusa AL-1

 

[MZKM]

Thanks, that helps.
I noticed 3 speakers have a rating on your spreadsheet, but no panther on Amir's review.
Can you double check these?
- Ascend CMT-340 SE Center
- Revel F208 Tower Speaker
- Verdant Audio Bambusa AL-1

Changed AL-1 to N/A.

I took liberties with the others, Amir said he wouldn’t recommend the 340, but it wasn‘t overly poor sounding, I put that as a shrug (2). As for the F208 being a 3, he said he would recommend it, but mentioned the on-axis wasn’t as flat as one would expect. If Amir disagrees with my assumption, I’ll change it.

 

[ROOSKIE]

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.

While I understand your point and fully realize that right now less people use EQ than do, I would rather have the rating be based on what Amir finds while using EQ.
Many "audiophile" journalist rate speakers that cost $400 while powered by 5k amps, they clean their vinyl with moon dust and connect $1000 RCA wires. In the face of that I am completely down with some one doing something during the review process that actually positively affects the sound and I want to know what is possible with the speaker.
PEQ is also so easy to come by now in high quality - even completely FREE on a laptop or many phones. Because I am so happy with it's affects I would love to see reviews that promote it and thus open the gateway for more folks to dive in.
I realize there is a market for PEQ and other advanced EQ that is untapped now - tap it. As beautiful as "inherent" abilities are it is a daydream, nothing can affect HIFI more positively than DSP and advanced EQ (or at least PEQ). & really it is a much more accessible way to make many of the crossover mods you have made so generously for all these years - in fact it is even much better.

 

[q3cpma]

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.

Gedlee's metric is step in the good direction at least. Personally, I'd like to know if this "euphonic distorsion" even exists as a purely sonic concept or if it's only a psychological thing (mix of wanting to be part of the audio nuts club, nostalgia and maybe detail masking in recordings that may make it better as elevator/dinner music).

 

[andreasmaaan]

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.

Gedlee's metric is step in the good direction at least.

Actually, some very interesting work has been done in this area. See this paper.

The authors found a strong correlation between predictions made by two models in particular ("DS" and "R(nonlin)") and subjective rating.

They also examined the correlation between the older THD and IMD metrics vs listener rating and found (as expected) very poor correlation (listener rating on the y-axis, distortion according to given metric on the x-axis):

But the more sophisticated DS and R(nonlin) metrics gave far stronger correlations:

The authors write:

Both the DS and R(nonlin) metrics prove to be highly correlated with subjective ratings, and therefore are good metrics in evaluating the perception of nonlinear distortion. While the R(nonlin) provides a slightly higher correlation to subjective ratings in the evaluation of artificial distortion, the DS metric also proves to be highly correlated. In contrast, the THD & IMD metrics prove to be highly uncorrelated with subjective perception of distortion. In terms of efficiency of use, the DS metric provides a faster calculation of the metric as fewer steps are involved and less complex filtering is involved in the computation of the metric. However, the R(nonlin) metric may prove to be more versatile, as it has been shown to be highly correlated to distortions produced by real transducers as well.

 

[nekosnugz]

Surprised it measured this flat. Really disliked their 210 Diamond. If the grill is the same it really is poor, either too much treble or too little

 

[celroid]

Between this and the DBR-62, If I don't want to bother with the EQ isn't it just better to get the DBR-62?

 

[Ajax]

FYIW I have a pair of these speakers, which I play via the 80hz cross over in an old second hand Velodyne 12" sub. I leave the grills off as it sounds better to my ears (and looks OK), however, I never realised there was a technical reason for this.

I paid AUS$500 for them 2 years ago but don't feel ripped off (maybe annoyed that they are so cheap in the US) because the sound performance / cost ratio is still very good to my ears.

We normally pay excess for our hifi gear in Oz (30% increase for exchange rate + transport half way around the world) and it is why there are only one to two HiFi shops remaining as everyone buys on line now.

 

[andreasmaaan]

Between this and the DBR-62, If I don't want to bother with the EQ isn't it just better to get the DBR-62?

Definitely. But unless I'm mistaken the DBR-62 is three times the price

 

[celroid]

Definitely. But unless I'm mistaken the DBR-62 is three times the price

If they will last at least a decade It'd be worth it for me. But I'm still holding out for more Dynaudio reviews as I hope they might have something even better than the DBR-62 at a good price (the emit m10 or m20s)

I could find the Diamond 220 for 256 euros in my country and the DBR-62 for 498 euros.

 

[ezra_s]

Between this and the DBR-62, If I don't want to bother with the EQ isn't it just better to get the DBR-62?

400 $/€ more... soooo... really depends

 

[nn_in]

The new Diamon line (12) is about to be released so this model is 2 generations old now. It would be interesting to see what gains have been realized.
https://www.wharfedale.co.uk/diamond-12-1/

Whathifi did the 5 star thing already...
View attachment 87991
View attachment 87992

Wharfedale have gone to back porting with 12 series .Maybe the collaboration Karl Heinz (consultant) influenced that. Does it lower the driver and xo cost and easier in production assembly for back ported designs ?

 

[Frank Dernie]

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.

Could not agree more.
Whilst young and enthusiastic people might most will not whether on a budget or not.

 

[ROOSKIE]

Wharfedale have gone to back porting with 12 series .Maybe the collaboration Karl Heinz (consultant) influenced that. Does it lower the driver and xo cost and easier in production assembly for back ported designs ?

Zero affect on the crossover (XO) as the port design has nothing to do with the crossover.
Zero affect on driver cost.
The port parameters would be basically the same wether on bottom, top, sides, back whatever. One might adjust the tuning a bit depending where on the box it is but once a driver is selected all that boils down to is how long the tube is for a given tube diameter and box volume and not much else.
Likely less expensive to produce but who knows. Some design changes are just to create an obvious change to stimulate excitement in something new.

 

[beagleman]

Correct me if I am wrong, but why do the distortion plots show LOWER distortion at around 350 hz for the 96db sweep compared to the 86 db sweep?

I would think if anything, it would rise higher?