Wharfdale Delta 30 Speakers

This entry level Wharfedale Delta 30 came my way this week. A nice little 6 1/2" woofer with a textile dome tweeter.

This speaker is a pretty good offering sound wise although the lime green motif is not my favorite. these speakers are very neutral and a little shallow in the bass department. Women vocals are smooth and the sound is very British, very good in the mid range. Imaging was good for their size.

I am sure these competed well against the B&W DM100i, the Mission 700 Leading Edge, EPI A70 or the Acoustic Research AR 18B featured on this blog before. My favorite out of the bunch is the Acoustic Research AR 18B.

Now that I have the Rotel RX-830 back from repair these speakers would match up well with a British designed amp for a starter system.

Acoustic Research AR 18B Speakers

My second pair of Acoustic Research speakers to grace this blog the AR 18B speakers. My last pair was a pair of AR-15's that needed extensive restoration.

The AR 18B is a early 80's refinement of the AR18 and AR 18S, this pair uses well matched woofer tweeter combo where a single 5uf cap is used for the roll off for the tweeter at 4000hz. The woofer is designed to roll off naturally.

This pair needed a re foam given that they are 30 years old and I figured a new Solen 5uf cap was pretty easy to replace and upgrade.

Straight forward these speakers sound much better through the Noresco 2570 than they do with the tube amp. There is ample bass from the 8" woofer and very smooth across the lower mid range. The upper mid range is a little less forward, perhaps laid back. The high notes are typical of a cone style tweeter that tend to roll off reducing the crispness that a dome tweeter produces. Cymbals sound a little blurred when A/B comparisons with the EPI A70 speakers. The efficiency of the AR 18B's is reported to be 86db at 1 watt which could benefit from a mid range power amp of 25-50 watts per channel.

Over all these are a nice compact bookshelf speaker that seems to have a small cult following on the interweb machine. Some even some go on to say that these have been used in studio's in lieu of the Yamaha NS-10's.

March 23 update:

I had a good long session with these speakers through a Single Ended tube amp, and these speakers really do sound fantastic, the front to back imaging is spot on and they cover the mid range perfectly. This is a great little speaker for tight space and is one I would seek out on a regular basis.