Wharfedale Diamond 12.3
Wharfedale, like pretty much every other speaker brand out there, has struggled to make a properly musical budget tower. Until now. While the new 12.3 can’t truly be called budget, they do sit at the more affordable end of the market. Most importantly, they have a musical performance that, if anything, impresses us even more than that delivered by the lauded Diamond 12.1s.
Strategically braced
The cabinet is a carefully crafted, straight-edged design that’s strategically braced to provide a solid and lowresonance platform for the drive units to work from. It’s all wrapped in a classy finish that belies the modest price. We even like the tidy feet and smart spikes.
These speakers come in four finishes: black, walnut, white or a classy light oak. The drive units are just as admirable. The 12.3 are a 2.5-way design where the upper 13cm driver covers everything from midrange downwards, leaving the second one to reinforce the lows. Both drivers use a cone material called Klarity, a mix of polypropylene and mica, claimed to be light, rigid and well damped.
Wharfedale uses the same tweeter throughout the Diamond 12 range. It’s a 25mm coated woven-polyester soft dome. A carefully shaped faceplate leaves as much of the dome exposed as possible, and the contouring closest to the dome is there to provide a small degree of horn loading. Combined with a carefully calibrated, relatively sophisticated crossover, the result is a speaker with a sensitivity of 89db/w/m and a nominal impedance that’s quoted as being 8 ohm compatible. The minimum impedance is 5 ohms, which means these floorstanders are unlikely to give any decent pricecompatible amplifier a problem.
At just under 98cm tall, the 12.3s aren’t massive, but still perform best if given a little room to breathe. We find they work well if positioned at least 50cm from the rear wall; we settle on 90cm in our test room. Similarly, keep them at least 70cm away from the side walls if you want to maximise stereo imaging, sonic balance and clarity. A bit of angle towards the listening position helps to firm the stereo imaging, too, but the broad dispersion characteristics mean you don’t have to be millimetre-perfect to get good results.
Speakers at this level have a difficult job to do: they have to be forgiving enough to sound acceptable with budget electronics but still have the transparency to make the most of the best pricecompatible separate components around.
The 12.3s are masters at juggling these contradictory demands. They’re smooth, even-handed and wonderfully refined for the money. Feed them a poor signal and they are skilled at rounding off rough edges and downplaying unwanted aggression without sounding like they’re smothering the life out of the music. But given a good source and suitably capable amplification, they perform superbly. While we use our usual reference Naim ND555/555 PS DR music streamer and Burmester 088/911 Mk3 amplifier for part of the test, the bulk of our listening is done with more price compatible electronics in the form of the Marantz PM6007 amp and Cambridge CXN streamer. Regardless of the combination, these Wharfedales work a treat.
Brimming with detail
Feed them Trance Frendz by Ólafur Arnalds and they deliver a lovely layered sound that’s brimming with detail and dynamic nuance and capture the album’s laid-back rhythms in a pleasingly sure-footed manner.
They resolve a large amount of information but also present it in an organised and controlled way. The Wharfedale’s chief rival is the multiple Award-winning Fyne Audio F302s, which sound more enthusiastic but are notably less refined at high frequencies and lack the Diamonds’ innate sophistication.
As we move from Jay Z’s Blueprint 3 to Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love, we appreciate the 12.3s’ articulate and expressive midrange and the seamless integration between the drive units. We like how Wharfedale has avoided excess; there’s enough bass weight to satisfy but not so much that it spoils the balance of the presentation. The lows are agile, satisfyingly rich and textured with it.
These Diamonds also sound good at lower volume levels that won’t wake the kids or upset the neighbours. Play them louder though, and these speakers don’t complain. They deliver Hans Zimmer’s raucous The Battle from the Gladiator OST with verve, tracking the brutal dynamics well. There’s punch and power, but also a level of subtlety that’s rare to find in a floorstander at this price. You can add an even tonal balance and stable stereo imaging to the list of plus points, too.
The 12.3s are terrifically accomplished for the money and good enough to claim a space in the Diamond hall of fame.