Details
Building on Wharfedale's Diamond reputation
If you've spent a lot of time reading speaker reviews (like me), you may have noticed a trend with Wharfedale's Diamond Series speakers. They're continually praised for offering excellent sound at an affordable price. Sure, there's a level of additional performance to be had if you want to spend a whole lot more. But the Diamond 12.1 bookshelf speakers can certainly hold their own against lots of more expensive models.
New high-tech drivers
These speakers are a complete redesign from the previous generation. The 5-inch Klarity™ woofer is a mica-infused polypropylene cone. What does that mean? Polypropylene is very light, so it responds quickly to audio signals — important for any speaker to reproduce music accurately. Mica is a mineral that adds stiffness to the polypropylene. That keeps the woofer from losing its shape, which can cause distortion. Combined with the 1-inch soft-dome tweeter, these new Klarity woofers offer sound that's impressively accurate and smooth.
Great for stereo or rounding out a surround system
This is a great pair of speakers if you're putting together your first "real" stereo system, or if you want an affordable system for a secondary room. Either way, I recommend pairing them with a good amplifier — they'll definitely benefit from solid power. These speakers would also make excellent rear speakers in a surround sound setup.
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 behaviour. 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.
