Wharfedale Diamond 12.1 Review (Speaker)

[IndieSynth]

Thanks for the responses, makes sense!

 

[beagleman]

Just ordered a pair of these.
Want to see what they sound like mostly, and like the idea of them being an English brand, and the looks.

My wife is starting to wonder what is wrong with me though......She thinks one pair of speakers are all a guy needs!

 

[Laserjock]

Just ordered a pair of these.
Want to see what they sound like mostly, and like the idea of them being an English brand, and the looks.

My wife is starting to wonder what is wrong with me though......She thinks one pair of speakers are all a guy needs!

They sound pretty good. Need to revisit them.

I won a pair from a contest.

I have more speakers than room to put them in. Lol

 

[thewas]

Want to see what they sound like mostly, and like the idea of them being an English brand, and the looks.

Don't want to disappoint but on this Diamond generation the engineering and tuning was done by ze Germans

 

[beagleman]

Just got my pair in yesterday!

My opinion: VERY neutral, and just extremely listenable. Nothing draws attention, nor feels lacking for the size.
Resolution is quite good, and everything bass to treble, simply sounds very coherent and just "Right"
Vocals are extremely smooth and neutral sounding.
I felt no need to EQ, which is always a good thing to me.

Paired them with a sub and the sound then went from very good to close to excellent overall, especially considering their price and size. I simply did not notice the "lack of energy" in the 2-3 Khz range at all, and found them oddly enough, one of the most listenable speakers I have heard under $1,000, I expected somewhat less for some reason.


KEF LS50 IMHO, is now a notch or two down in sound to these, in some key ways.
Quite amazed overall.

 

[TheBatsEar]

Just got my pair in yesterday!

My opinion: VERY neutral, and just extremely listenable. Nothing draws attention, nor feels lacking for the size.
Resolution is quite good, and everything bass to treble, simply sounds very coherent and just "Right"
Vocals are extremely smooth and neutral sounding.
I felt no need to EQ, which is always a good thing to me.

Paired them with a sub and the sound then went from very good to close to excellent overall, especially considering their price and size. I simply did not notice the "lack of energy" in the 2-3 Khz range at all, and found them oddly enough, one of the most listenable speakers I have heard under $1,000, I expected somewhat less for some reason.


KEF LS50 IMHO, is now a notch or two down in sound to these, in some key ways.
Quite amazed overall.

Once EQed they look very similar (LS50 is dotted, you have to pick the EQ to show what i see):

Easily compare loudspeakers measurements

www.spinorama.org

 

[Yorkshire Mouth]

A quick question. If you had a sub, and a system with bass management, where would you set the crossover between speaker a sub for this?

 

[Willem]

80 Hz for the Diamonds and 90 Hz for the Kef? However, such integration really needs measurement. Also, in most situations (at least) two small subs will be better than one bigger sub.

 

[TheBatsEar]

80 Hz for the Diamonds and 90 Hz for the Kef?

Depends on how you can place the woofer, how large your room is and if you like to let it rip.

If there where two subs in a stereo like placement, i would go to 120Hz or even higher, for both. You would reduce distortion and get higher clean SPL. Even if it's just one sub, it may be worth it to try to cut off higher. You really have to listen, or better measure, and see what works best in your particular room.

 

[tw 2022]

Depends on how you can place the woofer, how large your room is and if you like to let it rip.

If there where two subs in a stereo like placement, i would go to 120Hz or even higher, for both. You would reduce distortion and get higher clean SPL. Even if it's just one sub, it may be worth it to try to cut off higher. You really have to listen, or better measure, and see what works best in your particular room.

i have emo b1's(Dennis Murphy mods) in a small room mid field set up , single svs pb1000 pro crossed at 110 , no noticeable localization, but the sub is under the left speaker so i'm "cheating" a bit...btw , i'm in no rush to upgrade any of it...

 

[beagleman]

I have mine, at least for now, crossed at 120hz, and obviously NOT the most ideal frequency with a single sub, as there is some localization up close to the sub, but oddly enough mostly only on male newscasters voices.

Further away it integrates better and gives the small 12.1's Far better power handling.
Erin hinted at issues with output, but frankly I play mine only moderately loud and found and heard no actual issues.

At the 120 hz High pass frequency they almost work more as mids/tweeters, with only a bit of upper bass. Quite clean, and distortion free.

I tried 160hz and 200hz and while it cleaned up the Wharfedales even a bit more, it was far too easy to "hear" where sub was.

 

[beagleman]

My point was that it isn't a directivity error but a crossover design issue. Either the speakers aren't correctly level-matched at the xover point, they are out of phase, or both. Boosting that region will help with a flatter response but will also increase the midrange distortion, seeing that the 2-4kHz region already has some distortion at moderate listening levels.

I am almost certain it was simply designed to be this way. So, the choice was intentional.
Simple roll off either the woofer or tweeter a bit further from the other driver and a slight dipped area is created.

I own these, and "Fixing" that dipped area via EQ, does make Pink Noise sound a tad more neutral, but vocals, I am not so sure.

I went back and forth for like an hour, and could not decide which was truly better overall.
More neutral kept sounding a bit annoying, even though it was neutral.

The dip just seemed oddly more listenable overall.
EQ'ed It tended to sound great at first and then slowly sounded a small bit too forward. I was using LESS eq than Amir. about 1-1.5 db
2db simply sounded like "too much" for me.
Amir felt different, and I am sure it varies by individual.
I know neutral is the goal, but in the BBC dip case, a case can be made for less than neutral.

 

[Triliza]

The designer of this speaker posted a while back about the dip:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-12-1-review-speaker.26780/page-8#post-951979

 

[Chaconne]

The designer of this speaker posted a while back about the dip:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-12-1-review-speaker.26780/page-8#post-951979

Thank you for saving me the trouble of looking for that post (which I was just about to do)! Yes, folks the dip is indeed intentional, and it's there for a reason, though some may not agree that it's a good reason.

 

[thewas]

Thank you for saving me the trouble of looking for that post (which I was just about to do)! Yes, folks the dip is indeed intentional, and it's there for a reason, though some may not agree that it's a good reason.

Yes, that depends also on the room acoustics, listened recordings and personal preferences, Amir for example liked it on most tracks more with flattening this dip:

This made the vocals, especially that of females, to stand out more which I liked. And added a bit of resolution to them as is typical of this type of boost. On some tracks I thought there was a bit extra brightness but overall, I liked it better with EQ than without.

 

[Yorkshire Mouth]

Yes, that depends also on the room acoustics, listened recordings and personal preferences, Amir for example liked it on most tracks more with flattening this dip:

The enlightening thing about those comments, for me, was that Amir preferred it with EQ, but could see why some tracks might sound better without. When you look at the estimated in-room response, it’s a reasonably-sized dip - just looking at that graph you’d have thought it’d have been a major issue, but that’s not how Amir’s comments come across.

It’s good that he offers details of his EQ so people can do a fairly simple A-B comparison.

 

[thewas]

The enlightening thing about those comments, for me, was that Amir preferred it with EQ, but could see why some tracks might sound better without. When you look at the estimated in-room response, it’s a reasonably-sized dip - just looking at that graph you’d have thought it’d have been a major issue, but that’s not how Amir’s comments come across.

A dip in that region definitely takes the edge from some harsh recordings, although the dip actually is bigger in the PIR and the sound power than on the direct sound and listening window as its a result from the directivity mismatch.

It’s good that he offers details of his EQ so people can do a fairly simple A-B comparison.

Yes, people even can even import his data and create more precise filters based on those, have done it quite few times and members like Pierre and Maiky76 provide also nice computed filters based on those.

 

[Yorkshire Mouth]

A dip in that region definitely takes the edge from some harsh recordings, although the dip actually is bigger in the PIR and the sound power than on the direct sound and listening window as its a result from the directivity mismatch.

That’s well spotted. Interestingly, I’ll be sitting fairly near-field with these (around 1.5m or just under), so that may require a smaller db drop in the EQ. But I’ll be comparing and contrasting.

 

[TheBatsEar]

Yes, people even can even import his data and create more precise filters based on those, have done it quite few times and members like Pierre and Maiky76 provide also nice computed filters based on those.

And they are always highly appreciated. I wish someone would do the hard work and import these to spinorama.org as well, but i guess it's just too much hassle.

Then again, if you have the speakers, you should bother yourself with reading the entire thread and discover those posts anyway.

 

[beagleman]

Yes, that depends also on the room acoustics, listened recordings and personal preferences, Amir for example liked it on most tracks more with flattening this dip:

I own the 12.1 and found Amir's EQ to flatten it, just a bit too much.
1 db to me sounded ideal. So yes it varies by taste for sure.

It is literally the difference between well recorded female vocals (Suzanne Vega, Diana Krall etc) sounding a tad recessed and smoother, versus them sounding a tad forward and just a bit too "There" if that makes sense.
1db seemed to be the ideal boost.

Acoustics, tastes and I am sure variations in speakers etc might account for my feelings on this.
The funny thing, I found just Eqing the 2.5 Khz range and not the lower dip actually seemed to help a bit more. Not a lot, but just more ideal IMHO