Intro
Contents
Wharfedale is a big name in the hi-fi world. The originally British brand has put many beautiful – affordable – speakers on the market. It is now part of IAG – International Audio Group – Audiolab, Quad, Castle, Mission, Leak and for example Elco – A big player. Let’s see if Wharfedale can still make beautiful, affordable speakers!
The Wharfedale Diamond line is a well affordable line of speakers. It falls in the class of the well-known 600 series from Bowers & Wilkins, Bronze from Monitor Audio, Opticon from DALI, et cetera. The Diamond 12.2 costs 449 Euros per pair (without stands). That makes it possible to put together a complete system with this set of speakers for about 1500 Euro. Neat!
The assembly
The Wharfedale Diamond 12.2 is a cute, little speaker. Two-way, bookshelf, bass reflex, compact. In short: simplicity at its best! According to Wharfedale, this pair of speakers should reproduce from 50 Hz – 20 kHz +/- 3dB. In our measurements we see it gets up to steam at 60 / 65 Hz. But below 100 Hz we do not (yet) measure very reliably, so let’s turn a blind eye to that.
The efficiency should be around 88dB. That’s quite correct, we estimate, because we hear no significant difference with the Sonus Faber Luminas that have 86 dB efficiency. The cabinet is neatly reinforced to prevent unpleasant resonances.
The finish is neat with a walnut finish – black and white also available – and a plastic finish on the front. Both speakers come with a front cover to hide the units or protect them from (children’s) fingers. By the way, the tweeter is a soft dome and the woofer a 6.5-inch PP Cone. Wharfedale also calls it Klarity Cone. It is a mix of Polypropylene and mica. This is supposed to prevent flexing and is also very light.
