I just purchased a pair of Wharfedale Valdus 500SE speakers, hooked them up this morning and they sound awesome! I paid $30 for the pair and I am thrilled that they look and sound great! Perhaps I just got lucky. All I know is that for my intended use of the speakers they will out-perform the speakers that I had. I am a 40 + year old woman who LOVES alternative, house, rock Dub-step etc....music and these Wharfedale speakers perform nicely. I don't care about the schematics or comparisons as long as they suit my needs, I will be happy!

I DONT RECOMMEND DOING THIS AT ALL
I picked up 2 pair of vladus 500's from an auction about 4 months ago in prep for a Haunted house,and paid about $150 New Zealand. and I found out why when I pulled them out of storage to check them over. I wired them up to a small (I think 85Watts per channel) 2 channel amp, to see if they would even go and to my surprise they did. But they didnt seem very loud, It wasnt until I looked at the cones and saw that the foams had rotted away. Being in Halloween mode and not having time (or wanting to spend money on them) , (some of you may want to stop reading from this point) I pulled out the Hot Glue gun and put as tidy a bead I could of Hot Glue around the 10 of the 12 drivers and let it cool. Low and behold it worked I cranked up the volume slowly all the way to max and they have so far hung together, and they have been thrashed for the last week and a half with no signs of them giving up yet.
For a set of speakers that were manufactured in about 1995 to be hot glued back together and have them preform better than most new speakers is a testament to how well they were engineered in the first place. Pity I dont have the time to fix them properly But I will be getting a new set of VARDUS400B,s as soon as the situation presents

I bought the speakers 2nd hand after reading their past reviews from this website. Its now cosidered as pre-hestoric technology but hey, they sounds brand new. To me, how your speaker sounds really depends on their partners - source, pre/pro, amps, cables, etc. All these will have a huge impact on the sounds the speakers produce. Specifically for valdus 500, u need to drive them really hard to get optimum results - which basically means powerful amps, at least 150wpc. I used a rotel (bridge mode) with 200wpc and these speakers delivers everything they got. Solid & punchy bass, sweet mids and clear highs. The more you crank the volume the better it gets and it can handle almost any type of music. It is suitable for hometheather too but u need a subwoofer to compliment with that.

What I like the most about these speakers are the natural sound they produce & of course the powerful punch they deliver are so unbelievably realistic - especially if u focus on the bass drum. In fact wharfedale speakers are famous in producing natural sounds - valdus 500 is one of them. I consider myself as a musician and are used to the sounds of real musical instruments. I would say that these speakers are capable of generating 80% accuracy on the realistic sounds of the instruments - which is a good score in my opinion.

However, I would say that these speakers are not meant for audiophile listeners because the level of accuracy does not meet audiophile standards. I'm gonna be keeping this pair for a while before my budget would allow me to acquire a pair of B&W nautilus speakers.

highs and mid range

little to much plastic

i managed to purchase these as well as a pair of yamaha sn 100's for 450.00. i am a advid klipsch fan i have a matched pair of heresy's for the rear a klipsch center channel and a 12 inch klipsch kicker. and i run a denon avr 2802 receiver 90 x7 watts.the guy needed the money and i needed new fronts i figured 4 speakers for 450.00 i cant go wrong .well these speakers are doing just fine they seem to get along well with all my klipsch i little weak on the bass but hey thats what my 12 inch kicker is for. the highs and mids are pretty good. i little to much plastic for me but ill get used to it as long as they stay sounding good

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sorry always was a klipsch man

Sounds great

Maybe some quality control issues in the Wharfedale factory.

I'm no HiFi expert, but they certainly sound terrific. Very loud. Lots of bass. I had only had them for a few months when one of the tweeters stopped working, and my amp only puts out 70W RMS per channel so I couldn't see how I would have damaged them. I hadn't dropped or bumped it either. I assumed I'd need a new tweeter, but it turned out the wire to the tweeter had become loose!

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nil

They look pretty, until all the horrible plastic vineer starts falling off because the glue is useless and not applied properly.

Bad construction, bad design. Horrible DSE type drivers that you don't want to put more than about 20 watts through. don't matter what it says on the back (these are rated at 250W or somthing stupid that is absolutely untrue). The amp that killed mine had only 50 watts peak output and it was only up half way. figure that out. They are just poxy, overpriced by about $600, and sad, sad speakers.

I don't understand why people are writing such rave reviews of these speakers. It would seem to suggest that they know nothing of quality. these speakers are terrible. If you don't believe me open the things up and have a look inside. The construction of the woofers can only be described as poxy. They have tiny little magnets, poor frame construction, no depth... eeew is a good way to describe them. The tweeters are poxy and small the magnet is about the size of a NZ 50 cent piece. I had these up at what I consider a normal listening level (which none of my other gear has ever complained about) and the circuit protection kicked in... oops, too late. Cooked the tweeters instantly. the cabinets are made from cheap kopine which is rattly and boxy. The plactic stuff that is all over these rattles, the port isn't even fixed to the cabinet, just pull it and it'll fall out. Notr what you are wanting when there's quite a bit of air going through it Everything about these is poor and certainly not worth $1000 of anybodys money. Someone is making a killing on these and I can guarantee that it's not the sweatshop workers who put them together. Look around before you buy. For NZ$1000, or evewn $300/$400 (if you go second hand) you'll get a lot more speaker for your buck

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Infinity RS6000 Celestion Ditton 15 Celestion Ditton 44 Technics SB1510 Energy Bookshelf monitors Coral Tannoy Red 15" Tannoy HPD 12" Monitor Audio Kef 104 Mission 720 AR3a AR2a And heaps of other speakers, none as bad as these wharfedales though.

Precise mid-range. Excellent bass response. Able to reproduce excellent sound quality through all formats of music and video.

Disappointed that there are no floor spikes and these are not bi-amp capable; however, I have the power to drive them.

I just stole these Valdus 500 SE's from EBay. These speakers rock the music with rich bass and distinct mid-range. Those naysayers whom have said that the mid is poor are not driving these speakers properly. I am an avid listener of Jazz as well as Hard Core Rock and the 500 SE's handle the extremes with precision. Additionally, they are very capable of handling the workload of home theatre. I f you are in the market for a new pair of speakers, at a bargain cost, search for the Valdus 500 SE's, you will not be disappointed.

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Speakers powered with a DBX 4-channel amp with DBX receiver and accompanied by additional Boston Acoustic bookshelfs to round out the experience.

Very punchy. Loud. Bass

Lacks quality if prodomontly being used for films

Very good for music. Loud with resonable quality. Lacks quality though if you want to use them prodomontly for films. Setup: Marantz sr6200 (amp) Wharfedale Valdus 500 (fronts) Mordaunt-short bipolars (reas)

LOUD, handle good amounts of power, LOUD, extended frequency response, LOUD

Very poor imaging, requires extended break-in period, terribly over-priced when new

LOUD! That would be the one word review for these speakers. Designed (presumably) to follow in the footsteps for the legendary "E" series, the Valdus range in general, and the 500 in particular were designed for maximum SPL at minimal cost. To that end they were a success, albeit an overpriced one in the beginning. I bought the Valdus 500's and the superior Valdus 400's (in my opinion) at the same time about 6 years ago. The lower end models (100, 200, and 300) were advertised as replacement speakers for entry-level shelf systems, with the 400 and 500 positioned as home DJ equipment. As noted in other reviews, the Valdus 500 requires an extended break-in period to sound their best. I orginally ran the 500s with a Pioneer Elite series receiver of the same vintage. I would not describe these as highly accurate or would describe their imaging as good (I would say it is hardly marginal). But that was not what they were built for. No, infact they share more in common with Pro P.A. speakers than they do with your average home stereo speaker. They handle good amounts of power, but I have a hard time listening to them for an extended period of time. They are on the other hand top-notch "party" speakers. Looking back, I think I would have been better off buying the MFM 7's I was also looking at (I eventually did buy the MFM 7, but not until 3 years after the fact). For those looking for maximum frequency response and SLP, these are for you. If your looking for accuracy, imaging, and a more refined sound, I would go with the Valdus 400 SE (special edition), Emerald 97, or Sapphire 89s. In 1997 I believed very much that these were overpriced. In retrospect, I would have paid up to $400 for them, not a penny more.

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Wharfedale Valdus 400 (a far superior system), Just about any Cerwin-Vega, or *gasp* Jensen loudspeaker.

Loud, efficient with decent low end. Good-looking speakers at an unbeatable price.

Long break-in period, so make sure you give them some time.

These speakers take awhile to come into their own, as others have posted, but after break-in they are very satisfying. My pair is mostly used for listening to hardcore metal music and watching movies, for which they seem very well-suited; very dynamic, forward sound with alot of bass. However, I do listen to some less abrasive music sometimes and this where I have been most surprised. Everything sounds very clear, spacious, and separated. I don't notice anything missing such as the midrange others have talked of, but maybe I've not heard any really good speakers before. I don't think you can really fault speakers that only cost 200 bucks, though (that price included the shipping, too). They sound even better when the grills are removed. My 500's are being driven by a Harman Kardon AVR 125. I also have a Valdus center channel and will be getting Valdus surrounds in the future. Anyway, if you like your music very loud and very hard I think these speakers will serve you well. You will still need a sub, though. There is alot of bass, but it is not deep enough for movies or rap music.