However, whilst treble balance is mild to self-effacing there were occasions the Evos still jumped at me, notably with Willy DeVille’s Spanish Harlem where “It…s” had force in “it starts a fire there”. The dome pulls out upper mid diction but you don’t get high-end spit from the AMT tweeter. Here I understood why domes are used in studio monitors. However, the large format of the EVO4.2 gives it a little more oomph on the bottom end than a mini-monitor, which I like. It also plays with a larger scale. To me, it’s the best of both worlds. That’s your EVO 4 series as a whole, really. A six-speaker series that uses technologies live and direct from the Elysian series of Wharfedale speakers. Moving further upscale into the treble, cymbal hits and bell taps provided the delicacy you would hope for with reverb tails here and there to please but the bass focus added a sense of weight to each cymbal proving a certainty to each tap.

This dome midrange unit has a wide frequency response ranging from 800Hz to 5kHz. This response along with the powerful motor system helps it integrate with the AMT tweeter as well as the twin woven Kevlar bass drivers that sit below it on the front panel. The crossover point between the midrange and bass drivers is 1.2 kHz. The chassis itself, made from a multi-density wood sandwich, has been damped. The sandwich construction helps to reduce panel resonance while preventing sound leakage. There is also impressively little sense of constraint or colouration from the cabinets. Provided that a modicum of care has been taken when it comes to placing and positioning in the listening room, it manages to disappear from my perception and is impressively difficult to pinpoint inside a big and very consistent soundstage. It benefits from being used with decent partnering equipment, but this is more a reflection of its ability to show the benefits of whatever its attached to is capable of – thanks to its admirable transparency – rather than being a difficult design to drive. The new EVO4 represents the dawn of a new standard in hi-fi, from Wharfedale – the most famous name in British loudspeakers. Looking at the front, up top you’ll see an AMT tweeter, spanning 55 x 80mm. This Air Motion Transformer was created for the Elysian range and features a pleated diaphragm, driven by rows of magnets which force the pleats to contract and expand to the music. The waveform is created as the air is squeezed between them.

Features/Build

Blues, Jazz, Acoustic, Vocals, Dub Reggae, Instruments and low-mid tempo music types are presented fantastically. An unusual drive unit line up comprising folded ribbon Air Motion Transformer treble unit at top, fabric dome midrange at centre, and bass unit with central parasitic dome to cover lower midband at bottom. Way down into the bass regions, you’ll find a Kevlar-based unit, spanning 150mm. That material you can see in the centre (image above) is a woven aramid fibre. I started by listening to some music streamed from TIDAL, and the first thing that impressed me was the EVO4.2’s excellent focus and separation. Listening to “Joy and Pain” by MAZE, I was amazed at how the speakers just disappeared, and Frankie Beverly’s voice appeared so naturally between the speakers.

Brushed metal spikes sit neatly within the plinths of the Evo 4.4s and Evo 4.2s, and all the speakers feature two sets of terminals for bi-wiring, with brushed metal straps for non-bi-wired set-ups. If you’re thinking that any speaker that stands 106cm tall and has twin 15cm bass drivers should deliver plenty in the way of bass, you’d be right.I found that a slight toe-in gave me the best balance of image focus and soundstage. Most speakers I point almost directly at the listening position, but with the Wharfedales, I found them to play more open that way.

Drum and bass, no speaker is going to reproduce that shy of a very large floor stander. Listen to DJ shadow three ralphs and tell me where the 10hz tone is through a pair of bookshelves. It also provided a midrange composure that prevented any form of smearing, increasing focus and increasing tonal balance. King’s crescendos provided precision instead of what it normally wanted to do and that’s to blur out on the top end. Guitar strums provided detail and insight but also great control while bongo taps offered weight to each trike but also air and space during minor reverb.Prices valid in stores (all including VAT) until close of business on 28th November 2023. (Some of these web prices are cheaper than in-store, so please mention that you've seen these offers online.) I did notice a slight bite in the midrange on rare occasions. An aggressive vocal snap would produce a slight midrange bark to accompany emphasis in delivery but that seemed to be a by-product of the accompanying precision from the speakers as a whole. Not a big deal and it didn’t overly concern me but it’s something to note during a demo. These floorstanders prove that Wharfedale has the ability to mix it with the very best at more premium prices. The Evo 4.4 are entertaining and detailed with enough in the way of refinement to make them an excellent long-term choice. If you’re looking for floorstanders at this level, put these towers high on your shortlist. You won’t regret it.