This is a review and detailed measurements of the Diamond 220 from the British speaker company, Wharfedale. I purchased the set for this review from Amazon for US $199 including free shipping.
The 220 comes with inset covers for each driver, giving it a classy look despite its low cost. Here it is though without the grills:
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The top driver is just a tweeter with the surrounds being a waveguide. It is not a coaxial driver. The port shoots from a hole into the secondary bottom on the speaker.
The back panel is where you really notice this is a budget speaker, sans the fancy bi-amp terminals which you never see in this price range:
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Despite being small, the 220 is rather hefty and dense speaker.
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the
Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise.
Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I used 800+ measurement points which resulted in error rate of slightly above 1% in upper treble frequencies.
Temperature was 68 degrees. Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
The reference axis is the tweeter. As you see below, I tested the unit with the grill on and off.
Spinorama Audio Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws. Let's first see the measurements with the grill on:
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We see quite a disturbance in all of the graphs around 5 kHz. Looking at the driver response, we see modulations at multiples of 3 kHz in the tweeter as well:
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So I remeasured the speaker with the grill off:
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This is a huge improvement! Usually the impact of the grill is small but here, given how close it is to the driver, its comb filtering effect is amplified.
Early and important reflections indicate you should avoid floor and ceiling ones if you can:
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If you don't, this is the predicted response:
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Note that the issue is around 1.5 to 2 kHz so even a rather thin carpet would do the job (1 inch or thicker).
Impedance dips low as it typically does in this type of speaker:
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The waveguide is doing its job in creating a rather smooth horizontal dispersion:
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Vertical tends to be a lot more chewed up but it is not that bad here:
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You are OK within a ±20 degree window above and below the tweeter axis.
Edit: forgot the distortion data:
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Subjective Speaker Listening
Out of box experience with the Diamond 220 was very good. There was a slight boominess that prompted me to turn on the filter for my room mode. Past that, I decided to fill the dip in the response, and put in a shelf for the highs:
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And my usual high pass filter to get rid of extreme lows that just add distortion and not much more.
Once there, this is a truly hifi speaker. Every audiophile track I had whether it was female vocals, pop music, vintage jazz, etc., it all sounded very good.
The 220 could also play very loud. The only problem is that the port makes very obnoxious rattling sound that doesn't come out of the woofer. This only happens at very high volumes and you only hear it if you are close to the speaker.
Conclusions
I must say, I was not prepared for this speaker to sound good. The first measurement seemed poor and that set my context. Yet when it was all said and done, for a budget speaker, it does a lot of things very right. Good tonality, very good power handling, and nice looks add up to an attractive package.
I am
happy to recommend the Wharfedale Diamond 220 speaker.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Went to our garden and picked up the last of the zucchini and winter squash:
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There are so cute to look at, you almost don't want to eat them!
Oh, on our septic saga. Had my helper dig up the trench to expose the sewage pipe that was not sloped right, causing blockage. He spends the entire day on it and got the pipe nice and clear. Of course the plumbers are no where to be seen. Meanwhile a storm comes in, dumps a bunch of rain on us and the ditch caves in.
To make matters worse, the ditch goes partially under one of our two heat pumps, risking the whole $15,000 unit to topple down.
After a bunch more calls, they finally come to cut and replace a 7 foot section of pipe. The bill? A cool $400 for one hour of work! It was a trade off getting this review done or doing the work myself. You know which way I went.
The above is a fraction of the money I spent today. More on this later. Hopefully you can make me feel better by
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