Wharfedale PPS1-F Speakers

Innovation in any form is always welcome, especially in some cool electronic appliance. Today we are looking at a speaker system, but when you actually look at it, its something else. Designed exactly like a photoframe, this 2.1 speaker set can really camouflage anywhere. It’s by the popular British audio brand Wharfedale, who are known most for their mid end bookshelf speakers. This model is called PPS1-F speakers.

Design and features
The concept in theory is a 2.1 speaker set, with a separate subwoofer unit that stands tall and heavy, just like a regular sub, but the 2 speakers are totally different. They are Picture frames, measuring 555 x 500 mm, with a thickness of just 27 mm, thus we have a true wall hanging speaker set. The subwoofer has a black matte finish all over with a front firing cum front ported design. Thus all the action is in the front panel, with the 170 mm diameter driver taking up its left half shielded by a speaker grille, while the port and 3 controls are on the right.

The Wharfedale logo is glued on below them. The 8 ohm speaker panels themselves have their pair of drivers hidden behind the frame, and they measure 25 mm each. The rim of the panel is a glossy black, unlike the sub. The subwoofer has a power output of 100 watts, while the power output of the satellite panel is 24 watts RMS. Frequency response total rating of the whole system measures 40 Hz – 20 kHz.

As for attachment of actual photos or pictures to the frame, the frame must be screwed off first before anything. Thus before embarking on the installation one needs to understand that the process is a bit tedious, and it’s not as easy as any real photo frame. But then this is a speaker remember, it’s just doubling as a photoframe. Thus, the material on which the image is applied should be lightweight.

The manual says canvas or painted surfaces are not suitable, so that’s really a lot of our choices down there itself, nor should the print be glazed. Also, there must be white space all round the print. Thus a maximum picture size of 360mm x 420mm is suggested. Good thing is the panels can be placed at different heights to each other and at different distances from the listening seat, though each PPS 1 panel should be placed to the front or side of the listening position.

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Performance

Another thing to lengthen setup is the supplied cables. We have to cut them, strip them etc. on our own. While this is good for getting exact length, and also helps in accuracy in an interior designing environment, anyone looking for a plug and play scene will bite his nails.

A shape as such will induce curiosity about its actual performance quality, thus we decided to first break in, so in went the Sheffield Test and Burn in Disc, and we let the speakers run overnight. Next moving on we checked it out with real music, well recorded stuff on CDs like Sarah McLachlan, Jamiroquai and Miles Davis Second Quintet recordings. These speakers won’t really be used for head-banging party music, so we kept the techno away.

But still since it has a subwoofer, bass reponse was not bad at all. The lows were wholesome and deep, but sounded very separated from the sound that came from the panels. The panels were mid frequencies all the way, and this was expected from flat panel speakers. The bass can be turned up a bit, and it will give the necessary depth required in the otherwise crisp mid frequency intensive sound. The highs on the other hand were quite in control, and had a distinct place of their own in the overall sound output. Not as forward sounding as the mids, and this is good.

Conclusion
The price is Rs. 22,500 inclusive of taxes, which is a price to pay for design and brand name. This speaker falls in the higher segment than regular consumer audio, and the bass response is quite good. Mids overshadow the highs, but not drastically so it works well in the end. Slight separation between the sub and sats is felt though it should have been a little more homogenous, the speaker then would be superb.