What Hi-Fi?(UK)
Best standmount speaker under £300, 2024
Wharfedale's affordable standmounts deliver fantastic audio for a modest sum.
What Hi-Fi?(UK)
Best floorstanding speaker under £500, 2024
Whafedale's refined, entertaining and affordable floorstanders take the top spot for yet another year.
What Hi-Fi?(UK)
Best speaker package £500-£1000, 2024
Fluid, composed and consistent, these speakers are the best you'll get at this price.
What Hi-Fi?(UK)
Best speaker package £1000-£1500, 2024
With a mature sound and stylish looks these speakers are a fantastic choice for any movie fan.
What Hi-Fi?(UK)
They resolve a large amount of information, but also present it in an organised and controlled way. We appreciate the articulate and expressive midrange and the seamless integration between the drive units, and like how Wharfedale has avoided excess; there’s enough bass weight to satisfy but not so much that it spoils the balance of the presentation. The lows are agile, satisfyingly rich and textured with it.
What Hi-Fi - British Hifi Week
11 of the best Wharfedale speakers of all time
For many decades, Wharfedale has been famous for fusing even-handed neutrality and transparency with captivating clarity and expression. The Wharfedale DIAMOND 12 embodies that sonic goal.
The DIAMOND 12 series represents affordable, authentic hi-fi loudspeakers that truly capture the spirit of music, whatever you play – from rock to classical, jazz to electronica – whilst conveying the recording with truth and accuracy, as all great ‘hi-fi’ should.
Since 1982, Wharfedale’s famous speakers have served as the classic entry point to true high-fidelity sound, their exceptional value for money earning numerous accolades and ‘best of’ awards, around the world. With the introduction of the all-new Diamond 12 Series, Wharfedale is once again raising the bar for affordable, high-performance loudspeakers.
Klarity affords focus
NEW Klarity™ cone material, formulated from a blend of Polypropylene and mica adds stiffness to reduce flexing, enabling a lightweight cone with high rigidity, low colouration and lightning-fast response.
Low colour and expression
The Klarity™ cone is fitted with a low-damping surround, thereby achieving both low colouration and expressive dynamics. By simulating many different cone shapes and adding ribs to provide further stiffening, a flat response curve was achieved without resorting to a high-damping surround, thereby striking the ideal balance.
A magnet of forces
A precision-made magnet system with an aluminium compensation ring to minimise the effect of variations in inductance as the voice coil travels. This contributes to an absence of distortion and intermodulation generated by the ‘motor system’.
A voice coil beyond this class
The voice coil is wound on a high-power epoxy/glass fibre bobbin highly unusual in speakers at this price level. This has the advantage of not adding eddy currents and delivering greater power handling than an aluminium bobbin, whilst also being much stiffer than the Kapton type associated with this price-class.
DIAMOND highs
The 25mm dome is made from a woven polyester film with a high-loss coating to deliver open and smoothly extended high frequencies. The magnet system and the front plate have been optimised for wide dispersion and uncompressed behavior. The front plate is flat and exposes the dome as much as possible; only a very short duct on the front plate balances the acoustic load and improves the SPL (sound pressure level) measurement.
A crossover of style
The crossover network uses an acoustic LKR 24dB topology. This includes air-core inductors of the type more commonly found in high-end speakers, selected because they produce the lowest distortion of all inductor types. As the resistance of the coil is higher than a standard laminated steel or ferrite core inductor, the magnetic structure of the mid/bass driver has been modified to compensate, resulting in fast, clean bass with no distortion from the inductor.
Firm and fair
The DIAMOND 12.1 ’s rear-ported enclosure is precisely sized so that the internal volume works in harmony with the drive unit system to deliver the desired sonic result. A multi-layered sandwich design subdues the identifiable characteristics of the cabinet’s ‘sound’. Even the resonant properties of the glue between the layers was measured to determine the optimum combination.
Brace yourself
Inside the cabinet, Intelligent Spot Bracing connects opposite walls with a specific form of wood brace to achieve optimal reduction of cabinet resonance. These braces are precisely modeled by computer simulation to improve upon the commonplace ‘figure of eight’ brace, which may simply transfer resonance from one wall to another.
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