Ok... I bought the Wharfedales, how could I not, they were so damn cheap? I have them hooked up and am listening to them now. Admittedly, I don't have them placed ideally yet.... I need to rearrange my room a bit and get longer cables to be able to put them in a better spot in the room where I'm using them and then I'll have them on some stands that the guy I bought them from threw in with the deal. Also, the guy that I bought them from said that he hand't put much milage on these and having read about them a bit I understand that they can take a while to break in to sound their very best.
All that being said though, first impressions: I don't like them as much as the Elac Debut 6.2 speakers that I'm running on the other (larger) room. The both same the same quality of being really dynamic and having a kind of sense of depth about them, but in terms of the imaging, the Elacs seem to sound very spacious all over the room, where the Wharfedales seem to be much fussier about where you are in the room in relationship to them. You loose the sense to stereo depth very quickly when you move off-center. More importantly than that though is the fundamental sound of them, which seems more tilted to the highs and those highs are more aggressive/harsh to my ears. There's a smoothness and a sense of hearing more of the complex overtones (more realism, somehow) that the Elacs have, which the Wharfedales lack.
Who knows though, with more ideal placement (or least what I'm thinking will be more ideal) and more time (maybe much more time) for them to break in, I might really love these speakers. If they can sound as good as the Elacs sound to me, I'll be very happy. At some point, I might have to do an A/B comparison of both of the speakers in my living room (where I think that the acoustics are probably the best), then I'll better understand the differences between the two.
Incidentally, the recordings that I've been using to test the gear are The Flaming Lips album The Soft Bulletin and something by a Austrian percussionist named Reinhard Flatischler called Layers of Time. The Flaming Lips LP is as dynamic as any recording that I've heard, going from the most relaxed pastoral vibes to the most crushingly intense in different movements of the same song. I feel that it's a real audiophile kind of album in a way that lots of albums from the 70s were (Dark Side of the Moon) and that seems far rarer on recent recordings, though the record is admittedly not all that recent being 20 years old at this point (though it doesn't seem like music has changed very much though in that period of time). The Reinhard Flatischler album is totally different being an all acoustic affair. It's not really as percussive as one might think, favoring the textural side of percussion in a way that's very beautiful and less often heard. It's really fantastically recorded and has a kind of depth that few other recordings that I've heard have. It doesn't hurt that the band on in is comprised of several of the greatest percussionists in the world including Zakir Hussain and Airto (and several others)...
What do you think, am I likely to love these Wharfedales a lot more given some very careful room placement and more hours to break in, or maybe these are just not for me...? I guess that if I end up not really getting on with these things then I can sell them for the same $100 that I bought them for (they're really in prefect shape).
