Wlm Diva

[Guest JohnA]

I posted this on another forum but figure i may aswell post it here for anyonme interested

I was lucky enough to have a pair of these dropped off to my place a while ago

Specifications of the speaker

2 way-coax principle 10" with super tweeter

Frequency response 33Hz-25kHz

Sensitivity 97dB - 1W/1m

Recommended amp power 5 - 250W

Wiring Method single wireing WBT

Dimensions 1100mm hight with spikes, 265mm wide, 300mm deep

Weight per unit 26kg

The cabinet is finished very nicely with wood veneer and no imperfections that i can see

They are made in Austria

http://www.wlm-loudspeakers.com/DIVA_TINEO_2kl.jpg

The Diva is a 2 way speaker system consisting of mid/low driver and the tweeter mounted on the same axle

The bess reflex port is located under the speaker, an WLM recommend there is a gap of between 30-40mm from the bottom of the speaker box to your floor.

The provided spikes are fairly long but its still a stuggle to get the gap if you have very thick pile carpet.

I had to place them on some wooden platforms to get the hight required.

These speakers also have a tweeter level control, from 0dB to -6dB

Another adjustment that can be made is to the port for bass extension

This is acheived in 3 steps

1: The speakers are supplied with the standard bass reflex tubes consisting of an inner and outer tube.

Both are screwd to the box. The combined port has a length of 160mm. This is the standard setting

2: To raise the bass perfomance you remove the inner tube (160mm) from the main tube (80mm)

This is recommended for best bass performance

3: Complete removal of the tubes.

for more information on these and other speakers in the WLM range see their website

http://www.wlm-loudspeakers.com/indexengl.html

Other relvent equipmet for this audition are:

Source unit: Consonance droplet cd player

Elektra pre-amplifier

Elektra reference power amplifier

room size 6.5mtr x 4.3 mtrs

Part 2

Setting up

First step was distance from back and side walls. I found that the original spots were fairly good and with a little more playing around come up with:

1.7mtr from back wall to driver

1 mtr from side wall to centre of driver

2.5mtrs between centres of both drivers

2.6mtrs from each driver to seating position.

Next step was toe in. Started by aiming them straight at the listening position, but found they were slightly bright and lost a bit of width in the soundstage.

Slowly kept angling them away until I was happy with the width and centre image, also making sure there were no apparent gaps in the soundstage.

The end result is around 7 degrees of toe in.

Next step was to adjust the tweeter level, played a large variety of music and found that there was no real need to reduce the tweeter level, unless you got carried away and started really pushing the levels to the extremes.

Final step adjusting the ports.

Removing the first port and just leaving the smaller one in place resulting is slightly more bass, but I felt a little bloated in the speakers lower end of the frequency range.

Removing both was just no good at all in my room.

So I ended up with the way they were delivered, both port lengths in place.

This gave me a nice tight and controlled bass.

A sub would round this package off nicely blending it at around 35-40Hz

Remember however that every room will react differently so if you ever do get a chance to audition these, definitely have a play with the ports.

It is a bit of a procedure doing this however. You need to lay the speaker on its side, undo the screws holding the port/s in place, remove the longer port and the screw in the shorter port again.

To remove the shorter port you have to do it again, then to put them both back in, do it again, so it is time consuming.

A rear or forward port would have made life easier, but I suppose the designers had their reasoning for placing the ports on the bottom of the speaker enclosure

Part 3: listening

There is usualy one cd i play to evaluate, as is a cd i know very well and have used it many times to evaluate things

Its the Alpine F1 test disk which has some great songs on it

Tracks 2-5 are grat for imaging, depth and overall soundstage

With imaging these speakers go well beyond their bounderies, there is a part were a tree comes crashing down, from the left o the right.

this tree was clearly heard from further out of the left spakers placement, and s it fell went accross the soundstage to the right and came crashing down just past the boudry of the right speaker.

Another part there is a lady walking into a cave, here is were you get a great sense of depth, as she went intot he cave and said "look, this goes all the way back in here" it was like she had gone beyond the wall behind the speakers.

In other part you have 3 people having a converstion at the same time, a male with a deep voice dead centre, a female to the left and a male with a softer voice to the right.

I played it 3 times trying to listen to one persons converstion only.

I managed to hear the male in the middle perfectly

the femal tot he left was also fully heard, but i realy had to concentrate to pick up everything she said

the male on the right unfortunately i lost at times and could not pick up everything he was saying. I ried it a ew times with the same result

Playing music

the bass was very tight and fast with both ports in place. I would have been happy with a little more but overall very good.

With one of the ports out, i found it a little boomy (but this could also be due to my room) i do have some bass issues in my room and has been a pain to find the correct spot for my subwoofer.

Its something you would need to experiment with in your own room

Midrange attack was well balanced,vocals were very clear, but the top end at times could get a little harsh, esspecialy at louder levels ( this could be controlled via the tweeter level control on the rear)

Unfortunately i don't know what frequancies it controls, maybe Warwick or critter could have more info on this)

At my normal listening level however this was not a problem and had always left the level at 0dB. (normal listening levels 75-80dB)

The speakers have great dynamics and can get very loud very easily. Even with the little 45watt melody i could easily reach levels of over 100dB without trying too hard.

I did find these speakers matched better with the melody valve amp then they did with my elektra gear.

Overall a very nice speaker and considering its the entry unit i am keen to hear what the higher end models have to offer.

At $6500 its got alot of competition out there, but for anyone looking at that price range i would highly reccomend you give them an audition