• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

Wharfedale EVO 4.1 Review (Speaker)

Rate this speaker:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 67 26.5%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 142 56.1%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 30 11.9%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 14 5.5%

  • Total voters
    253

MZKM

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Dec 1, 2018
Messages
4,240
Likes
11,462
Location
Land O’ Lakes, FL
Preference Rating
SCORE: 4.8
SCORE w/ sub: 6.8


Sensitivity: 86.3dB (300Hz-3kHz ; spec: 87dB)
Frequency response: +/- 3.7dB 64Hz-20kHz ; +/- 3.6dB 80Hz-20kHz


Spinorama 96.png
Horizontal Directivity 89.png
Horizontal Directivity Normalized 88.png
Vertical Directivity 86.png
Vertical Directivity Normalized 86.png
chart 100.png
 
Last edited:

Walter

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Aug 25, 2020
Messages
856
Likes
1,242
Looks like EVO 4.1 is a kind of forced decision due to single tweeter for whole EVO 4 line. Most of other EVO 4 speakers use 2" dome midrange and higher crossover for tweeter.
This speaker is bad compromise as it uses small and heavy woofer (to have decent bass) with this AMT. Proper crossing it around 4K would make lower distortion but most probably induce big suckout in mid-highs, so design team leaned towards "showroom sound".
Yeah, I've been expectantly awaiting the review of another Wharfedale stand mount speaker Amir previously teased, hoping it was either the Diamond 12.2 or the EVO 4.2, both of which are on my list of possibilities for my next system--or even the 12.0 in case I decide to stick with a pure desktop approach. I never anticipated it would be this one, as it really seemed to be the odd duck in their lineup. But maybe that is what made it appealing to test.
 
Last edited:

abdo123

Master Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Nov 15, 2020
Messages
7,424
Likes
7,940
Location
Brussels, Belgium
Oh, ok, thanks! Sometimes it's hard to tell with the tweeter response.

Edit to add: Upon looking a little closer, I can see that removing the binding straps cleans up the near-field responses by removing the contamination coming from the nearby driver (the woofer response bleeding into the tweeter response and the tweeter response bleeding into the woofer response). But you still have the lack of baffle step compensation on the woofer and some possible irregularities on the tweeter response due to the nearfield measurement. When removing the binding straps, you don't need to do nearfield responses to see the woofer and tweeter responses. Just a normal frequency response on axis for each would be revealing of driver responses and would tell us some about the crossover slopes.

Why would you want him to generate the spinorama again? We already have it.

There won’t be any new information revealed if he just measured one driver.
 

valerianf

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Dec 15, 2019
Messages
691
Likes
442
Location
Los Angeles
This bookshelf speaker has a beautiful design with a very well designed passive radiator.
Please Whaferdale, get rid of the AMT tweeter and replace it with a performant dome tweeter.
The marketing department people have never been audio experts!
 

DSJR

Major Contributor
Joined
Jan 27, 2020
Messages
3,314
Likes
4,427
Location
Suffolk Coastal, UK
Ribbon tweets are fashionable 'HiFi' in some circles and I believe the sibling Quad speaker alternatives use something not too dissimilar as tweeters.
 

bigjacko

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Sep 18, 2019
Messages
721
Likes
359
I feel the 4 kHz peak can be addressed by crossover, so maybe the parts do not have tight tolerance on this speaker. Other than that and high distortion, high directivity past 6 kHz but not completly out of control, this speaker is reletively good engineered. No major distortion or resonance problem apart from low end and 2 kHz peak from tweeter, no port noise due to passive radiator, somewhat controled and smooth directivity. Not sure if they did any engineering for the passive radiator since it operate in somewhere like a slot, but even they did anything we probably can't know that they did anything. Interesting speaker in the end to see the peformance and evaluate it.
 

Koeitje

Major Contributor
Joined
Oct 10, 2019
Messages
2,292
Likes
3,880
I was surprised to see such an odd frequency response considering the other Wharedale measured looked really good. That was a far cheaper model. Pretty sad about that, was hoping that Wharfedale could be one of those brands you can recommend pretty much blindly.
 
Last edited:

MZKM

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Dec 1, 2018
Messages
4,240
Likes
11,462
Location
Land O’ Lakes, FL
I was surprised to see such an odd frequency response considering the other Wharedale measured looked really good. That was a far cheap model. Pretty sad about that, was hoping that Wharfedale could be one of those brands you can recommend pretty much blindly.
Maybe they should stick to some tweeters.

Now the question is how does the 3-way 4.2 model play, as well as their flagship Elysian models:
g336ELY4WN-F.jpg
 

ralph

Member
Joined
Feb 1, 2021
Messages
60
Likes
67
Location
Ländle, Germany
Looks like the Wharfedale Diamond 12.x series though cheaper is better designed and a better deal. I'm not too surprised having seen some other measurement before this one. Thanks @amirm for measuring speakers from both series.
 
Last edited:

Lambda

Major Contributor
Joined
Mar 22, 2020
Messages
1,785
Likes
1,519
One of this products that is "ok" if you don't listen to loud. don't need bass and don't care about the upper mid peak.
But looking at the price and the competitions its hard to justify this short comings.

Its defiantly not terribly bad.
 

noel_fs

Active Member
Joined
Dec 12, 2018
Messages
270
Likes
181
could have been really solid if it wasnt for that little mountain
 

q3cpma

Major Contributor
Joined
May 22, 2019
Messages
3,060
Likes
4,416
Location
France
Am I the only one who find those yellow AMT ugly? And they're rarely good or well integrated in passive designs (Adam, HEDD and Eve are decent), unlike "true" ribbons like in the Philharmonic BMR or Mesavonic that are arguably very good (except laser like vertical frequency, but that's inherent to ribbons)
 

ralph

Member
Joined
Feb 1, 2021
Messages
60
Likes
67
Location
Ländle, Germany
Am I the only one who find those yellow AMT ugly? And they're rarely good or well integrated in passive designs (Adam, HEDD and Eve are decent), unlike "true" ribbons like in the Philharmonic BMR or Mesavonic that are arguably very good (except laser like vertical frequency, but that's inherent to ribbons)
I like their look. The Elac Velas are also using yellow AMTs - I was listening to the Vela VS 407 and found them to be good. They are not cheap, manufactured in Germany, including the AMTs.
 

aleksandar

New Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2021
Messages
1
Likes
3
Registered here just to say that i am owner of a said pair of speakers and enjoying then very much. They sound great in a small treated room 4m x 2,5m. All i did was slight eq around 400-500hz 2db down and 6-18khz 3db up. Eq was done by hearing. Fiio K5 Pro as dac and Cambridge Audio axa35 integrated
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom