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Wharfedale Evo 4.2 - 3-way standmount, AMT tweeter

I had similar results with my 15” HPD Tannoys. I found them a bit lean sounding in my room in their original sealed Lockwood cabinets as I like a fat, bass heavyish sound. Fitting the drivers into Arden sized ported cabinets was great but just too much speaker for the room. Cracking open the sealed enclosure slightly around the crossover panel gave the Goldilocks “just right” balance.
The issue is my room rather than the speakers but I found just opening the enclosure enough to take the back pressure off the cone seemed to work wonders. I’m guessing you’ve ended up with a similar result taking the plinths off the Wharfedales.
 
Ok this is turning into bit of a rollercoaster. Seems I was a bit premature about thinking I'd cured the problem by removing the plinths - the next recording I played had lots of orchestral double bass and bass drum, and when they came in it was like someone had thrown a big soggy wet blanket over half the orchestra - very unpleasant.

Last chance salon now... looking into that big bottom port, I can see the back of the bass driver. I've stuffed two fistfuls of synthetic pillow stuffing through the port into the cavity there. I'm not compressing that material, its not blocking the port as such, its just additional stuffing inside the speakers. And definitely seems to be an improvement now..... famous last words. Else they are going back in the box.
 
say it as it is said:
I removed the spikes on my Tannoy DC6T and cleaned things up a bit not fully I have the god awful combination suspended wooden flooring with laminate floor covering and plasterboard dot n dab walls.
I replaced the spikes sorbothane pads Atacama ones from fleabay were cheap enough,
effect was more bass quite a bit in fact now can be a touch bloated on some tracks , others sound way better, still a work in progress.
Still trying to get finished sound not tried the large slab idea what you recommend for this as they have to be aesthetically pleasing to keep others in the house happy as well

on hold until my amps are back from service as just sold the nait5i beginning to regret that already
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They were just 18 inch square paving slabs you can see them here, fortunately they are virtually the same colour as the carpet, just slightly darker, i live on my own anyway so no "her in doors" to worry about!

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I have opened up the Evo 4.2 to see what's inside..... lots and lots of fibre stuffing. I know from experience of building a Wilmslow Audio Mercury kit some years ago that too much stuffing can deaden the sound of a ported speaker so I took about one-third of it out. And hey presto, a big improvement, much more alive and brighter. Still needs some sitting over the port opening to stop the bass swampiness though. So its getting better but....

...I put my 40-year old KEF 103.2s back into place just to get a reference point of comparison...OMG they are so superior to the Wharfedales, its not even funny. They are staying in place now. I think the hi-fi industry is broken.
 
Yep I had Opals.... Wonderful speakers, until one of them stopped working.... And no one could fix it. They were best active speakers I've heard. Not sure if Event are still in business or have UK representation.
 
alanbeeb said:
...I put my 40-year old KEF 103.2s back into place just to get a reference point of comparison...OMG they are so superior to the Wharfedales, its not even funny. They are staying in place now. I think the hi-fi industry is broken.
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And how much would a new 103.2 cost these days if still made????
The Evo series are made for a price point
 
According to the Bank of England Inflation calculator, £200 in 1980 is £860 now. So not a huge leap from £600 for the Evos. Which sound broken by comparison.
I am going to take this up with Wharfedale. I think there must be something wrong with the manufacturing as I can't believe they were designed to sound like this.
 
davidsrsb said:
HiFi has gone up in price by far more than inflation
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It depends what you identify as hifi. Audio hardware with a high technical performance has both gone down in price and up in technical performance in real terms as reflected by typical products in the professional, pro-sumer and consumer sectors. If you are interested in high fidelity sound in the home things are far better today than they were in 1980.

The audiophile sector of 2020 is quite different from the home audio sector of 1980 although the latter was rapidly starting to distance from the other audio sectors and evolve into what we have today. Audiophile hardware today is much more of a marketing lead luxury product largely divorced from technical function. For example, the price : performance ratio of active speakers vs passive speakers switched in favour of active speakers decades ago and has only increased since. Yet only modest numbers of home audiophiles have switched because technical performance for the money is lightly weighted by most.

As audiophile hardware has become more of a luxury product the price asked has become increasingly tied to the strength of the brand and less to the technical performance offered. The size of the enthusiast market has massively shrunk mainly due to loss of interest by the general public whereas the size of the ultra expensive market has grown greatly both in size and price level mainly due to the increase in the numbers of very wealthy people and the level of their wealth rather than any increase in interest of hifi by the wealthy. In fact most of the ultra expensive products seem to be closer to consumer products than enthusiasts products and I rather suspect given a similar level of attention.
 
davidsrsb said:
HiFi has gone up in price by far more than inflation
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That is definitely true. To be fair to your point I should admit that a speaker like the Kef 103.2 might sell for over £2k now. Kef's standmount in the current reference line retails at over £6k! Which is ridiculous IMO.

But the fact is, it not just that the Kefs are better than the Evo, I now think there is something wrong with the Evo.
 
alanbeeb said:
According to the Bank of England Inflation calculator, £200 in 1980 is £860 now.
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This review says the 103.2 were $900 new. I don't know what the exchange rate was in '81 but I'm pretty sure that would make them a bit more than £200.
 
alanbeeb said:
But the fact is, it not just that the Kefs are better than the Evo, I now think there is something wrong with the Evo.
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Do you have a microphone and REW? A quick test might spot something. The first thing cut by the bean counters at low price points is QAQC
 
davidsrsb said:
Do you have a microphone and REW? A quick test might spot something. The first thing cut by the bean counters at low price points is QAQC
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I don't have REW but I do have a mike and the measurement software that came with the Event Opals many years ago, should be able to get that working. If I can find the USB dongle for the microphone.

calorgas said:
This review says the 103.2 were $900 new. I don't know what the exchange rate was in '81 but I'm pretty sure that would make them a bit more than £200.
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Think we'd need to find the UK retail price of the Kefs to have a fair comparison.... the exchange rate in early 80s was up and down but I think averaged at around £1 gbp to $1.8 usd, but sometime was well above $2, sometime down to $1.5. But with import costs and distributors cut, £300 gbp could conceivably become $900 usd.
 
alanbeeb said:
But the fact is, it not just that the Kefs are better than the Evo, I now think there is something wrong with the Evo.
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The sample sent for review by HiFi World was fine. Without measurements it will be difficult to identify and check what might be defective with your sample. It is certainly a possibility with a mass produced product intended to compete on a low price that has had similar issues in the past. To make a persuasive case you are likely to need more persuasive evidence than it sounds wrong to me.

alanbeeb said:
I don't have REW but I do have a mike and the measurement software that came with the Event Opals many years ago, should be able to get that working.
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That might do it and REW is free to download and use if you cannot find the dongle.
 
Ok got hold of REW. Oh hang on, the step-by-step guide is only 110 pages long. Hmmm. Not sure that's going to happen.

Well I got it working after a fashion but I suspect I need to somehow calibrate the microphone (which came with the Opals). The fact that the graph slopes downward so much towards the treble tells me I'm doing something wrong I think! But also, there isn't really that much difference in the SPL response of each speaker, from looking at these graphs. But in person, listening to them, they are utterly chalk & cheese. This was generated with a sweep from 20Hz to 20kHz, microphone at listening position, using the right hand speaker, 1/6th smoothing applied to the graphs. I should probably do the left hand one as well in the same position just in case its maybe one of the Evos has a fault. But for now I'd like to listen to some music. Watching the bass cones flap at the start of the sweep was a bit scary.

The Evos are in green, the Kefs in orange.

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I'm skeptical when I see ribbon/AMT in mid priced speakers. I love the smooth sound and the extension in the top Adam models but I know the AMT needs a mid dome, no woofer can match it's speed. That's why I'm interested in the Evo line, I'm going to audition the 4.2 & 4.4 when they'll arrive here and compare them with the Lintons if it's possible.

Here's a nice presentation, I like the cabinets. Surprised it's wood veneer and not vinyl in this price range.

 
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