Tower Speaker Reviews

Physically and acoustically, the Sub12 subwoofer is a beautiful piece of work. Housed in that gorgeous bird's-eye maple ported box is a single 12-inch driver that faces the floor. A standard-looking built-in amplifier on the rear fortunately has an IEC receptacle for a removable power cord—tweakers can experiment with better cords.

Along with a collection of standard connections and controls, Wharfedale's subwoofer includes a phase switch with settings of 0°, 90°, and 180°. The phase control is important: Occasionally, amps reverse polarity, and if this isn't accounted for, the woofer and speakers fight each other, which can result in cancellation and a null in the response around the crossover frequency. Wharfedale's phase control makes correcting this as easy as listening to music with good mid- and deep bass and then adjusting the subwoofer's phase switch for the smoothest bass.

Hear Here
Proximity to a nearby wall made the Pacifics' midbass too pronounced, so I placed the L/R main speakers as far from the side walls of my small studio as I could and toed them in. After I rearranged the alternating ASC sound panels at the sides of my room for optimum performance, the front image was nearly seamless from my main listening seat.

Before getting down to serious listening, I let the system play for a few days to break it in. I didn't experience the same severe change in sound as with the Audio Pro Black Diamonds; the Wharfe-

dales sounded velvet-smooth and coherent from the start. That character stayed the same for the entire period, give or take an amplifier-induced change or two.

Through Onkyo's Integra Research RDC-7 surround preamp and RDA-7 power amp, the Pacific Pi's sounded so smooth as to be reticent—and sweet enough to induce diabetes. I had trouble adjusting to a sound so different from the APs', especially as the Black Diamonds had rocked my world so deftly only a few months before. I persevered through a few weeks' worth of music and movies, and while I enjoyed the Wharfedales, they simply weren't engaging. They certainly had a more pronounced midbass response than the Audio Pros, but lacked the Black Diamonds' air and life.

I decided to hear how the Pacifics sounded with a different amplifier, in this case the Theta Digital Dreadnaught. The character of the system changed dramatically, from sweet and demure to dazzling and assured, but not aggressively or aggravatingly so. I went from merely enjoying the Pacifics to wild air-guitar dancing around the room during the crescendo of Pink Floyd's "Money," from the venerable demo album Dark Side of the Moon (Mobile Fidelity UDCD 517). The difference was startling. But don't conclude from this that the Theta is substantially better than the Integra Research—with the Audio Pros, the reverse was true. The smoothness of the RDA-7 was necessary to tame the AP Black Diamonds, but was too reticent for the polite British Wharfedales.

But it's unlikely anyone would use either of these pricey amps with the Wharfedales. My old B&K 6000 amplifier did a wonderful job of driving the Pacifics, and would be a more likely mate for this inexpensive system. Both the B&K 6000 and the Integra DTR-9.1 receiver, which I also tried, were natural matches for the Pacifics. With either of them, the Wharfedales exhibited a smoothness that didn't overemphasize the upper-midrange and highest frequencies, and this made them more forgiving of the upstream electronics than the Audio Pros. It also caused them to be slightly less revealing, but not suffocating. It seems that the floating tweeter pod was doing its job, giving this system an ability to precisely place instruments, sound effects, and voices in the soundstage.

On Rickie Lee Jones' self-titled debut album (Warner Bros. 3296-2), "Easy Money" begins with a bass line that runs the entire neck of the instrument. Then Jones' seductive vocal cords enter just before the guitar enters, slightly to her left. As the drummer and xylophonist joined in, I realized that I had imagined watching the whole performance. These speakers made an accurate presentation.

I ran through a series of movies, including the gritty Traffic and Fight Club. The Wharfedale/B&K combo did a fine job of creating a sonic match for the video image. Again, the blend was good, with nothing distracting from the perception of the film. Dialogue was rendered well from both sides of the room, a benefit of having both woofer drivers active and mounted below the tweeter in the Pi-Center, instead of the usual lateral arrangement with the tweeter in the middle.

The Pacific Pi system did not need to be heavily energized in order to please—it sounded great at low levels. The Pacifics did nothing seriously wrong, save for a slight lack of articulation of bass detail. One minor criticism is that the weren't able to get down'n'dirty with aggressive rock'n'roll—they didn't have that ability to reach out and grab me, and suffered from a slight compression of dynamics at maximum volume. I'd call them polite—Pink Floyd's "Us and Them" could've used a bit more bite, perhaps more snap—but the blend and texture of vocals was rendered silky-smooth. The cymbals had full tone and shimmer but were missing the edgy clarity of the Audio Pros. But the Pacifics' control and composure permitted long sessions of high-volume listening. Some listeners might eagerly trade the lack of sizzle for the lowering of listener fatigue.

Harmony
I learned a powerful lesson from the Wharfedale Pacifics and the Audio Pro Black Diamonds: very different conclusions about their performance can be drawn, depending on what gear feeds them. This might explain why different reviewers come to such wildly different conclusions when evaluating certain products in combination with certain other products. This is why we publish a "Review System" sidebar with every review, so the reader can draw conclusions within the context of an entire system.

After listening to the Wharfedale Pacific speaker system through the Integra Research RDA-7 amplifier, which had so aptly lit up the Audio Pro Black Diamonds so many months before, I was fully ready to give these speakers a lukewarm if still positive rating. But with the Theta Dreadnaught and the lesser amps in my studio, their character improved enough to thrill me. Once you've encountered such synergy—with the speakers placed just so, so they can do their job really well—life can be good. Kudos, Wharfedale, for making a well-built, inexpensive product that further encourages this crazy addiction of ours.