New toys! Wharfedale Diamond 10.2

[basite]

Hi all!

2 years ago, I never thought I'd be buying another pair of speakers "any time soon" (read, for the next 10 years at least)

well, turns out I did. We're building an "attic Cinema room" at the moment, and I decided we needed decent sound up there too. (slightly in disagreement with my younger brother, who said that a Cambridge audio PC surround system would do just fine).

That said, I ordered a pair of Wharfedale Diamond 10.2 speakers.
Some of you might have noticed that I recommended these a few times already here on AR.

They arrived 2 days ago, I haven't had that much time to listen to them, neither can I place them in my main system at the moment. I installed them now for PC sound use, driving them with a Rotel RA-06 amplifier. speaker cables are Kimber 8PR's, both the rotel & the kimber's are "borrowed" from the living room system, which isn't really used that much atm...

Here they are right out of the box:





What I can say now already is that, for their price (€320), they have no right to look this good. The curved sides, while also improving the sound quality, make the diamonds look classier than alot of other rectangular bookshelf speakers, and floorstanders too.
Finish, is impeccable: while for the budget, they simply couldn't have used real veneer, the synthetic veneer finish now looks amazing. Nothing like you'd expect on speakers of this price. Very natural look. The front is made out of a high quality composite, I'm not always fond of the shiny black finish on the front, although it does kinda work here, but a matte black might have been better IMO, the high gloss finish makes them look slightly "plasticky", when the lighting is wrong, fingerprints are inevitable, but good cleaning helps to keep the plastic look away... other's might like the high gloss front though. I like that the grill can be attached "invisible", the grill pins go in small holes from the screws that attach the drivers, so no ugly holes in the front neither.

the cabinet feels sturdy too, a knock test confirmed this, and while playing music, the cabinet didn't really vibrate or resonate neither.

So far so good

I hooked them up, and let them play in a little, sound changed drastically in the first hour. At first the tweeters seemed a little shy, slightly shrill, harsh sounding, but this quickly went away and it all smoothed out. Bass was also a little wooly, this improved too.

First thing I noticed is that these speakers image very very good, even when sitting pretty near field. Dynamics also seemed nice. I did notice a small hump, around 100-125hz, while this could be the platform they're standing on now though (still have to build stands), it does sound slightly colored. Highs are natural, never too much, they're definitely not a bright sounding speaker, rather on the warmer side, we'll see how this evolves...

So far, after 2 days, my brother is "beginning to see my point about decent sound"...

Detailed review coming up in a couple of weeks
anyone else had experience with this Wharfedale range?

Keep them spinning,
Bert.