The new EVO4 represents the dawn of a new standard in hi-fi, from Wharfedale – the most famous name in British loudspeakers. Records the default button state of the corresponding category & the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie.

The Evo 4.2’s bass/ midrange unit must reach up to 1.4kHz to meet the dome and it has a central parasitic dome – the chrome plated item at centre of bass unit cone– to help do this. Featuring a Kevlar woofer cone, the EVO 4.2 delivers class-leading bass precision. With its high rigidity and low distortion movement, the EVO 4.2 follows bass lines intensely, producing a foot-tapping beat. Downwards firing bass ports integrate better with your room and also make the speakers easier to position as they can be placed closer to a rear wall.The other thing to think about with this speaker is the soundstage. It’s not super wide. I found the presentation mostly between the speakers, which to me was not an issue since the imaging and depth had such good separation.

AMTs typically offer excellent high-frequency performance, but don’t traditionally work down to the same crossover point that a conventional dome tweeter is comfortable at, meaning the handling of midbass frequencies can be less than ideal. In the Evo4.2, the dome midrange handles frequencies between 1.4kHz and 3.9kHz and keeps all the drivers within their operational comfort zones. The trade off comes in the form of a more complex crossover and notional reduction in efficiency. Switching to John Batiste and Cory Wong's extensive improvisation Meditation, where the space around the notes is almost as vital as the notes themselves, the Evos again do a wonderful job illuminating the long ambient reverb tails of guitar and piano as they wrap around each other. Sound best in medium sized rooms. In a small room they don’t have the space to create the soundscape that makes for a magical experience. I feel like the EVO 4.2 dissected music for effectively breaking it down for the listener to be able to hear more deeply into the music. In contrast the Linton speakers disabled the analytical side of my audiophile brain which helped me relax into the music as a musical whole and this definitely stirs some deeper emotions and is a very foot tapping experience. 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.Have you ever walked into a room and immediately sensed a feeling? Whether that might be an air of tension or one of joy? The room has an underlying tone. Whatever is going on in the room appears to rest upon that feeling? 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.

Wharfedale’s Evo4.2 is not the complete all-rounder, but I am not sure that’s what the company intends. What this gentle giant can do is deliver certain types of music in a manner that is largely beyond most rivals at the price and if you are happy with its style and can work with its demands it will delight, making it definitely worthy of a thorough audition at the price. JP Disclaimer: The EVO4.2 was sent to us by the U.S. Distributor in exchange for an honest review. It will be returned once the review is complete. EVO4's AMT high-frequency unit produces sound in a completely different way than conventional dome testers. The ribbon technology uses a large, pleated, lightweight diaphragm, driven by a series of magnets. This is an extremely efficient and accurate method to create high-frequency sound, so that the EVO4 series has an open and smooth sounding top, without being too bright and hard. It won’t come as a surprise that relatively big speakers produce a large-scale sound with plenty of authority. We listen to Dvorak’s New World Symphony and are impressed by the Wharfedale’s dynamic reach and ability to cope with a mass of instrumentation with composure. They go loud with an ease that suggests plenty of headroom and remain organised when the recording gets demanding.

Air Motion Transformer tweeters are used across all the models in the Evo series (Image credit: Future) I did decide to buy a pair of EVO 4.2 to have as a review tool for comparison purposes, their sound presentation is more familiar to me and is more inline with the sound I enjoy from HiFi, however if these were to be my main and only speakers and the budget permitted I would have likely bought the EVO 4.4 because their extra bass driver and inevitable increased bass output compared to the 4.2 would better suit my overall listening preferences. 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. The tonal balance was also excellent. No matter how loud the volume, the treble never became hard, and the bass remained controlled. Plus, the mids, normally the strength of a Wharfedale speaker, were extraordinarily refined.