Wharfedale Evo 4.4 £1199

The Evo 4.4, the biggest, most expensive offerings in Wharfedale’s Evo range, pick up this Award for the third year in a row. They are packed full of so much technology that we had to double check the price tag to make sure it was for a pair of speakers, rather than just one.

There’s the Air Motion Transformer tweeter for starters. It’s a type of design more usually seen at far higher prices, working by having a light, pleated diaphragm driven across its surface by a row of carefully placed magnets. The pleats contract or expand according to the music signal, squeezing the air between them in the process to create the sound wave.

The AMT unit hands over to another unusual drive unit: a dome midrange.

Few speakers use them because of the cost and difficulty of development. The one used in the 4.4 has a 50mm soft dome coated with a damping compound to control resonances, with a specially shaped chamber behind the dome that scatters and absorbs the diaphragm’s rearward sound.

This dome midrange unit has a wide frequency response ranging from 800Hz to 5khz, which, along with the powerful motor system, helps it integrate with the AMT tweeter as well as the twin woven Kevlar bass drivers that sit below it in the nicely made cabinet.

The output of the last two drivers is helped by a downward-facing port arrangement where the low-frequency sound fires out through a gap between the base of the speaker cabinet and the floor plinth.

The result is a natural and easy-going presentation that, with some energetic partnering kit, has the ability to both soothe and excite. Its timing and organisation is precise, with the facility to really drive home a beat when you give it some power, and its control of dynamics is second to none at this price.