Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

Probably best-known in recent years for their best-selling "baby" speaker, the Diamond, Wharfedale is one of the UK's oldest manufacturers of loudspeakers. The company was the subject of a management buyout earlier this year, following a rather unsettled period when it changed hands several times. Now with American distribution as of 1989 by Vector Research (footnote 1), the brand is reinventing itself in the US with two new ranges of loudspeakers, the 507.2 being one of the "audiophile" models. Both drive-units are made in-house; the first generation of Wharfedale loudspeakers to feature this 19mm aluminum-dome tweeter—the 506, 508, and 708—appeared in early 1985.

My review samples of Genelec's G Three powered loudspeaker came with a little hand-sized green and tan cardboard card featuring a poem in bold black letters dated 1898:

At the cottage window a little bird sang.
And the light of the window did flicker.
And look. The roof up it sprang and the cottage became a house bigger.
Look. Into a world the cottage grew and the vast and wide too and filled with song was the air and like new was the sun's flare.

Back when Steve Urkel (in the sitcom Family Matters, portrayed by Jaleel White) was showing everybody the best way to dress (and do property damage), my friend Ken Kessler, the high-level audio scribe at Hi-Fi News & Record Review, explained to me the secret of how to write a proper audio review: "Herb, the secret of writing an effective review is not to lose the reader in the middle." I took that to mean, put all the technological meat—and some tawdry stories—in the product description. Then sneak some spicy double entendre into the setup part.

Unfortunately, that strategy hasn't worked for me.