When a venerable audio brand leaves its founders behind, sometimes it loses its way. But sometimes it gets a whole new lease on life. That’s what happened when the International Audio Group (IAG, originally of Taiwan, now of mainland China) acquired a handful of British brands, including Wharfedale, Mission, and Quad. When I visited IAG’s design and manufacturing facility in Shenzhen a dozen years ago, I was surprised at how self-reliant it was. The resident speaker designer could have a custom part made and tested in 24 hours, rather than having to outsource it and wait for months, as Wharfedale’s British forebears had to do. Thus, he has the luxury of endless tweaking. Even so, Wharfedale hasn’t had a commanding presence in the U.S. market commensurate with the brand’s engineering resources and expertise. Will the new Diamond 200 series change that?
Diamonds Are for Now
The Diamond line includes three towers: the 250 ($1,599/pair), 240 ($1,199/pair), and 230 ($799/pair). There are also two monitors, the 220 ($349/pair) and 210 ($299/pair), as well as the 220C center ($299) and two subwoofers, the WH-D10 ($549) and WH-D8 ($399). There’s no dedicated surround speaker, so the monitors may be used on the rear channels—and that’s actually what I prefer to do in my reference system. This review features two pair of the larger 220 monitors in front and back plus the center and the larger sub. The line doesn’t currently include any Dolby Atmos–enabled speakers or Atmos add-ons.
Wharfedale has gone to great lengths to make the Diamonds sparkle like gems. The price may be cheap, but the look is not. The 1-inch soft-dome tweeter and 5-inch Kevlar-cone woofer (two woofers in the center speaker) sit in glossy baffles with individual round cloth grilles over each driver surrounded by metal accent rings. The rings look right at home in the Sandex white version of the speakers, though the contrast is a bit jarring to me in the rosewood, pearl walnut, and black ash vinyl finishes. The monitors and center each rest on a separate base plate that is screwed onto spacers and extends and conceals the down-firing port.
On the rear panel, the plastics-heathed gold-nut gold-plated biwire binding posts are staggered in a formation I’ve never seen before, with the posts aimed outward at different angles. After trying to twist my bulky Monster M1.2s cables onto the posts, to no avail, I resorted to a more flexible but discontinued Monster THX ribbon cable (similar to the non-THX Navajo in Monster’s current line).
Add up the design and decorative details, and it’s evident that plenty of out-of-the-box thinking went into the Diamonds. This is admirable and—in a budget speaker series—even remarkable. The binding posts and accent rings may be deemed overthinking, but better overthought than underthought.
The rated sensitivity of the Diamond 220 monitor is 86 decibels, on the low side of average, while the 220C center is a more efficient 89 dB. A budget receiver would probably run them adequately, but they might benefit from the greater oomph of a midpriced receiver like the one I used. Perhaps you’d like to spend what you save on the speaker purchase for better amplification. I may be tipping my hand a little early, but these speakers would be worth it.
The WH-D10 subwoofer has its 10-inch driver set behind a round grille and into a glossy baffle, which echoes those of the main speakers. Rated power is 150 watts RMS, pretty good for a budget sub. As with many subs, connectivity for this one consists of line-level inputs and outputs only—there are no speaker-level posts—and that’s OK for the 5.1-oriented consumer using the sub-out from a receiver or pre/pro. The sealed enclosure suggests a desire to trade bass wallop for bass articulation. The inquiring reader will find out whether the system’s promise is borne out in the Test Bench measurements and listening notes.
I should note in passing that two of the initial review samples were defective. The center and one of the monitors had something loose bouncing around inside. There were also audible, and probably related, driver outages: The center’s tweeter and monitor’s woofer were both silent. Shipping damage was likely the cause, so I had no qualms about bestowing a “You have the right to know.” Second samples of both speakers worked fine.
Associated equipment included a Pioneer Elite VSX-53 A/V receiver, Oppo BDP-83SE universal disc player for discs, Panasonic DMP-BD87 player for streaming, Micro Seiki BL-21 turntable, Shure V15MxVR/N97XE cartridge, and the phono stage of a Denon PRA-S10 preamp.
Best Budget
I’ll cut to the chase and raid my supply of superlatives: These are the best budget speakers I’ve heard in a long time. They are amazingly transparent for their price. With the right content, they are sweet and euphonic (though they don’t disguise substandard content). If you love the sound of speaking and singing voices, in surround or stereo, the Diamond 220C center and Diamond 220 monitors deliver a clean, communicative midrange that’s extremely adept at vocally sensitive frequencies. While the knuckle test revealed a touch of budget-speaker cabinet coloration, it didn’t become an audible issue. The top end is immaculate, and the bottom end tailors beautifully with the sealed-box sub. Once I got them working, I listened to these speakers for pleasure as well as business. They integrated effortlessly into my listening life.
And that’s why the listening notes have to start with my third binge-viewing of Breaking Bad (all five seasons, streamed in Dolby Digital Plus). I logged endless evenings and weekends listening to the precise timbre of Bryan Cranston’s voice and its almost Adele-like shifts in character: the menacing Walter White, the murderous Walter White, the bellowing Walter White, the pleading Walter White, the sweet-talking Walter White, and numerous variations of the lying Walter White. The 220C made these subtle timbral swings spellbinding, almost musical. And when a meth lab burst into flames, or an exploding nursing home took out a criminal mastermind, or someone pounded on a door, the sealed sub kept its cool. While it didn’t have the whack of a more expensive sub, what it delivered was well measured and unbloated by budget-sub standards.
Kingsman: The Secret Service (Blu-ray, DTS-HD Master Audio) sports a generic James Bond-esque soundtrack, in keeping with its send-up of the 007 franchise. The musically capable monitors rendered snazzy orchestral bits as aural catnip. When bass lines turned steroidal, the sub’s ability to adroitly render bass pitches became an asset, and it had no trouble filling my medium-sized room (your mileage may vary). In one scene, sleeping secret-agent inductees are awakened to find their dormitory bedroom filling with water. The immersive qualities of the identical monitors anchoring the four corners of the soundfield were at their best in this scene.
John Wick (DVD, Dolby Digital) was the only movie soundtrack of which the Wharfedales were intolerant. The movie’s aggressive treble, combined with the nature of this system, didn’t lend itself to the high-level blasting you’d hope for in a scenario about Keanu Reeves wreaking havoc as a vengeful not-so-retired hit man. In other words, as sweet as these speakers can sound, they’re not going to ignore the truth when it turns harsh. I adjusted the volume often to bring out dialogue while avoiding discomfort with the large measures of ballistic effects. If I’d been watching this movie as a nonreviewer civilian, I probably would have invoked the Pioneer receiver’s THX Loudness Plus mode to make the experience less adjustmentintensive.
Miles Ascending
One of my few Columbia “six-eye” LPs is Miles Davis’ Jazz Track, which includes music he recorded for the soundtrack of Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (a 1958 film released in the U.S. as Elevator to the Gallows, or Frantic). It was a happy day when I found the LP for sale on a sidewalk, in near-mint condition, and paid a buck for it. Side 1 has the film music, recorded with ace French session men, while side 2 features John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley. It would be hard to overstate how vividly the Wharfedale monitors imaged the trumpet on this well-recorded and well-preserved mono LP, pressed when the master tapes were fresh and frisky. The trumpet lingered in the air, vibrating luminously, with luscious and well-developed decay. I got a shiver of pleasure from it. The 5-inch woofers missed very little of Pierre Michelot’s string bass; switching from analog stereo direct to bass-managed 2.1 firmed up only the lowest notes, and only a little.
Bartók’s Violin Concerto and a pair of Rhapsodies for Violin and Orchestra arrived on a Hungaroton SACD featuring violinist Barnabás Kelemen, with Zoltán Kocsis conducting the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra. This recent multichannel recording is light-years ahead of my old Hungaroton LPs, hobbled as the earlier ones were by Soviet-era recording technology. Imaged by four Diamond 220s, the orchestra was all-enveloping, and the violin engagingly limned across the three front channels, loaded with reverb that was audible in both the front and back speakers. The high resolution of these surprising budget speakers delivered treats like the tangy, sonorous brass in the concerto’s opening movement and the gossamer hint of harp in the slow movement.
My CD of Fairport Convention’s underrated folk-rock treatise Tipplers Tales is the first-generation BGO issue. The supple rhythm section of bassist Dave Pegg and drummer Bruce Rowland was well served by the recording, monitors, and sub— full and well pitched, not overbearing. The distinctive voices of Dave Swarbrick and Simon Nicol got their full measure of tone color. Again, the Diamonds impressed me with their handling of violin, especially the double-tracked, echo-chambered fiddle interludes that turn the traditional tune “Jack O’Rion” into an engrossing folk-proggy epic.
Wharfedale’s Diamonds sound astonishingly good, not only for their price but in absolute terms. It’s clear that the designer took full advantage of the company’s engineering resources, and their potential for endless tweaking, to produce a well-rounded speaker system that does most everything right. This is how I want speakers to sound—not only budget speakers, but any speakers. If you want high performance and value in the same package, the stewards of the Wharfedale brand deliver on its noble legacy.
VERDICT
The Wharfedale Diamond 220 speaker system looks and sounds far beter than its modest price tag would suggest.