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.

Celestion Ditton 110 speakers

This little pair of English speakers came home yesterday, a pair of Celestion Ditton 110 speakers.

A very nice sounding well balanced and neutral pair of bookshelf speakers, typical British sound that is very polite, with nice imaging.

One dome was slightly dents in and a quick shot with the vacuum cleaner popped the dome back out to the best it will get.

These speakers are not as exciting or in your face like Mission speakers that reside with me but more along the lines of the few pairs of B&W speakers that I have had.

Current Collection

Left to right
 NAD Model 30
Mission 700 Leading Edge
Mission 770 Freedom IV
Camber 2.5
B&W D5
Dual CL390
B&W DM100
Visonik Euro 7's
Angstrom Radix 300

All great speakers......Wow!! What a pleasure.

Rotel RX-830 Receiver

This little gem was found today with a blown fuse on the speaker fuse panel.

Rotel made a few receivers and this one is basically a well revered RA-820BX amp with a tuner.

In the Early 80's the Rotel RA-820BX and RA-840BX received many accolades in the budget audiophile category, I know as I still have a RA-840BX amp.

A little clean up and a spray of DeOxit in the pots and switched has it singing. I will session this amp out with both the Mission 700 Leading Edge and the B&W DM100.

Conservatively rated at 20 Watts per channel, Rotel built these to triple their output into 2 ohms. Rotel is an English Japanese company with English design from B&W that manufactured their products in Taiwan.

Update: This little receiver matches really well with the Mission 700 Leading Edge speakers, Why?

The Mission's are forward in their mid range where as the Rotel is a little recessed in that area. The Rotel has a solid bottom end and nice controlled high end, which lends to the characteristics of the Mission speakers.

More so than the B&W DM100's and the B&W D5's.

Together the Rotel and Mission speakers brings about the best in musical attack, clarity and excitement that an inexpensive system should.

B&W DM100i Speakers

Another pair of speakers that made it my way was this pair of B&W DM100i speakers. Like the Mission 700 Leading Edge speakers, These are about the same size with a 6 1/2 inch woofer and a 25mm dome tweeter. The crossover is much more sophisticated that the Mission as is the build quality. The bass goes a bit lower and the mid range is recessed from the Mission's and the highs are clearer.

To say these speakers fall into the British polite category, well these do. They can play for hours without listener fatigue. I will try them against the B&W D5's to see how much technology had changed over 20 years.

This is a nice polite, well behaved speaker suitable for smaller, near field listening. The sound is well balanced and the imaging is spot on. These remind me of Paradigm 3se Mini's but without as much bass due to the acoustic suspension design.