WHARFEDALE Diamond 12.0 — Bookshelf Speakers

Wharfedale’s Diamond 12.0 bookshelf loudspeaker cuts to the heart of music with a degree of precision, clarity, and magnitude unimaginable at its price point even two years ago. Akin to all of its Diamond 12.0 Series counterparts, the most compact model in the range is completely redesigned from the ground up to set new performance benchmarks in its class. Offering generous freedom of placement, the two-way bass-reflex speaker mines prized detail, tonality, texture, depth, and spaciousness from your recordings with thrilling insight and engaging energy.

Klarity Equals Focus

New Klarity cone material for the drivers, formulated from a blend of polypropylene and mica, adds stiffness to reduce flexing, enabling a lightweight cone with high rigidity, low coloration, and fast response. The Klarity cone is fitted with a low-damping surround, thereby achieving both low coloration 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 an ideal balance.

Precision-Crafted Magnet System Keeps Driver Moving as a Piston

A precision-made magnet system with an aluminum compensation ring is employed to minimize 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. In addition, the voice coil is wound on a high-power epoxy/glass-fiber bobbin – highly unusual in speakers at this price level. It has the advantage of not adding eddy currents and delivers greater power handling than an aluminum bobbin, whilst also being much stiffer than the Kapton type associated with Diamond 12.0 Series’ price class.

Going High

The one-inch soft-dome tweeter 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 optimized for wide dispersion and uncompressed behaviur. 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 measurement.

Crossover in Style

The crossover network uses an acoustic LKR 24dB topology. This includes air-core inductors of the type more commonly found in high-end speakers, selected because they produce the lowest distortion of all inductor types. As the resistance of the coil is higher than a standard laminated steel or ferrite core inductor, the magnetic structure of the mid/bass driver has been modified to compensate, resulting in fast, clean bass with no distortion from the inductor.

Firm and Fair

The rear-ported enclosure is precisely sized so that the internal volume works in harmony with the drive unit system to deliver the desired sonic result. A multi-layered sandwich design subdues the identifiable characteristics of the cabinet. Even the resonant properties of the glue between the layers was measured to determine the optimum combination.

Brace Yourself

Inside the cabinet, Intelligent Spot Bracing connects opposite walls with a specific form of wood brace to achieve optimal reduction of cabinet resonance. These braces are precisely modeled by computer simulation to improve upon the commonplace ‘figure of eight’ brace, which may simply transfer resonance from one wall to another.