Wharfedale Diamond 9.1 Main / Stereo Speakers

stereophile review link: http://www.stereophile.com/bud​getcomponents/1105wharfedale/#

anyone seriously interested in hifi will know how respected the stereophile reviews are. totally no nonsense, unlike the 'what hifi' reviews which read like they were written by work expereince types who parrot the manufacturers sales literature.

interestingly the high opinion of this speaker is not reserved for this one reviewer, on their list of 'best standmount speakers' this beauty is picked by more than one of their testers!

i have two pairs, love them and plan to make a home cinema based on them.

There is a lot of high praise for these speakers and they won many awards in the hifi press a few years back. Similarly the same sort of praise is levelled at the almost exact same sized Tannoy Mercury M1. However, I think there is no better way to judge whether anything is as good as they say until you actually listen yourself. I decided I would try them both in comparison to each other and my very large Wharfedale Airedale SP monitors. The Airedales are massive beasts over a meter tall and half a meter square with a measured response from 28Hz to 22kHz and they sound spectacular.
The first thing that is overwhelming obvious with small speakers is the lack of any deep bass response. Secondly and, in my view, more important is that both the Tannoy M1 and the Diamond 9.1 have a resonance from the enclosures at around 125Hz This is, to my ear, most annoying and distracting especially when listening to acoustic pieces. The Mercury boxes perform worst here, driving me almost to the point of despair at times. If you use a notch frequency filter/equaliser this can be filtered out but it’s a lot of trouble and the level of filtering needs to be tweaked for each different piece of music for best results.
The 9.1 units are front ported whereas the Tannoy's port is in the rear. This makes room placement much easier with the Wharfedales. There is a distinct lack of lower bass from the Tannoys but the Wharfedale's have a little more 'oomph' so they do sound better here.
The high end response is also different by orders of magnitude. The Tannoy M1's are sharper and clearer. The 9.1 are less pronounced and some detail is lost, however, they are much easier to listen to for long periods with no listening fatigue.
In the end you pay your money and make your own choice. I can’t highly recommend either speaker because of the resonance problem but if I had to choose between the two, my money would go on the Wharfedale Diamond 9.1

For me the sound promise, price, and design was the main point in purchasing these speakers. They didn't let me down - awesome sound! Punchy and deep bass, excellent clarity. WOW, really. I received them in walnut finish and that is again, perfect. Not real wood veneer, but really hard to distinguish from that. Easy to wire (can be bi-wired, too) and nicely sized. Beautifully designed, lovely curves. Great, really.

I thought long and hard before buying these speakers as my Hi-Fi has a rated output of 50 Watts at 4 Ohms rather than the usual 8 ohms. These are rating at 6 Ohms, so no problem.

And I needn't have worried! These things really are awesome. I use that word sparingly as everyone uses it, but these things really do have to be heard to be believed. Stupendous bass, crystal clear mid range, and a top end that is bright but without being false or over emphasized.

Their build quality is superb, even down to the gold plated plugs which allow bi-wiring if necessary.

If you can't choose, then BUY THESE!

For the money, they really ARE stupendous.

i CANNOT WRITE A REVIEW BACAUSE I HAVE NOT AS YET USED THE SPEAKER. BUT THIS WRITE REVIEW KEEPS POPPING ON MY EBAY AND IF I WRITE LESS THAN 100 CHARACTERS, IT JUST KEEPS POPPING I HOPE THIS WILL REMOVE IT