Wharfedale Diamond 10.4 Floor Standing Speakers

Many audiophiles will recognise the this speaker from years ago when they started out on their own journey to hifi heaven. Year after year, Wharfedale engineers have strived to improve the performance of the loudspeaker, and here we find ourselves with the latest incarnation of the most famous Wharfedale floorstanding speaker ever, the Diamond 10.4 It's predecessor, the 9.4 swept all before it, it was our best selling floorstanding bookshelf speaker by far. Wharfedale have evolved the design further for this season, keeping the positive elements and changing those parts where improvement in sound quality could result. The 10.4 offers even better sound quality than previous models due to a number of refinements in the design - the curved cabinet walls are retained from the 9.4, but they are now stronger due to improved bonding techniques and superior internal bracing, which reduces overall cabinet resonance - in other words, the cabinet does not 'speak' when the loudspeaker 'speaks'. Pretty impressive stuff! The piano black composite front baffle provides a very inert and stable platform for the three drive units, so that when the drive units move, the baffle does not (flex). That way, the listener gets to hear everything on the recording. The 125mm bass and 125mm bass-midrange driver is anchored to the baffle with six huge bolts via a heavy duty flange, so that the coupling of driver to speaker is perfect. The bass-mid driver surround has a unique diamond pattern embossed in it's design which helps greatly the reduction of standing waves, which can lead to boomy bass - this speaker has the tightest bass in it's class as a result of this feature. The reflex ports have been removed from the front baffle to the rear to reduce distortion, and you can hear this instantly when you play a bass heavy track. The twin 125mm bass/ bass-midrange drivers endow it with deep, powerful bass whilst at the same time keeping the front aspect of the speaker slim and elegant - we like. On the tweeter front, a metal gauze diffuses high frequencies and produces smooth highs, together with improved stereo imaging. The front cloth grill is held by pegs which fit securely into the hexagon bolt heads holding the drive units, which gives a very clean look to the front aspect . Which ever way you look at it is a superb budget floorstanding loudspeaker.