Wharfedale Dovedale matched speaker pair with stands

A classic speaker reinvented Impeccable speaker design: large hand-veneered cabinets and luxurious sound. This pair of Dovedale speakers from the well-established British company Wharfedale is a re-invention of their acclaimed 1959 Dovedale W2 model. The main architect of this revision is renowned speaker designer Peter Comeau, whose longstanding goal is to re-create the emotion and excitement of the live performance. These massive stand-mount beauties sport the same elegant, veneered look as the originals, but with bigger enclosures and a much-fussed-over updated driver and crossover design. High-performance drivers The Dovedale's three-way design benefits from the nimble, musical response of the lightweight, ultra-rigid Kevlar cones in its 10" woofer and 5" midrange drivers. They're both heavily damped with acoustic insulation to prevent unwanted cabinet resonance. A separate internal housing helps further isolate the midrange driver from bass vibrations. Its 1" soft-dome tweeter uses the same ceramic magnet as the rest of Wharfedale's Heritage Series. The tweeter's performance is optimized by the addition of a rear chamber that contains its sound to keep it from projecting backwards and reflecting off the wall behind it. Finding balance in asymmetry Comeau and his team developed the crossovers for seamless frequency handoff between the drivers the same way they approached all stages of the Dovedale's development: through extensive listening tests. You'll note that the drivers are arranged asymmetrically on the spacious front baffles for acoustic balance - for optimum performance you should place them with the tweeter and midrange closest to the inner edges. Hand-veneered cabinet The Dovedales' beautifully hand-veneered, walnut-finish cabinets feature an inset front baffle and traditional cloth grille. Wharfedale constructed the burly enclosures using a combination of different woods to diffuse panel resonances. An inner layer of high-density particle board is f