Appearance and sound.

None identified

Firstly, I am not an audophile so I hope that you accept that this review will not be technical in nature, lengthy, or able to provide comparisions with other comparable products.

Having said that, as nobody else has posted a review, and this is a product I recommend and which has some features that may appeal to other prospective purchasers I thought I would post a reivew which might help somebody else.

I recently moved to Melbourne and one of the things I wanted to do was set up a decent stereo system which is something I had not previously had.

For reliability, features, upgradability, and value for money I chose a Yamaha receiver (RX-V657) and Yamaha 5 disc cd player (CDC-685).

Whilst looking for speakers I was not able to find any which had an appearance that inspired me. They all seemed a bit boxy, lacked style, and felt like the finish was perhaps a little cheap.

Long story short, I visited A1 Audio, Ferntree Gully Road, Melbourne, listened to the Whatmough Opus 30's and felt they offered me what I wanted.

Seriously listening to a good pair of speakers for the first time was a revelation. The best way of summarising it is that the individual components of the music (guitars, voice, drums, etc) felt clearer and seperated out from each other and I really noticed elements of the music I had not heard before.

I chose to buy the speakers, cd player and amplifier from Hitek Audio as I wanted to buy all three items from the same store and A1 Audio don't stock Yamaha and the salesman said he wouldn't recommend matching Yamaha amplifiers with Whatmough speakers because the Yamaha amplifiers were bright and this would show up through the Whatmough speakers which are neutral.

Back to audioreview.com where I discovered the concensus was that whilst the Yamaha amplifiers used to be bright, nowadays all the products at this price point will be likely to produce similar neutral results whether it be Yamaha, Marantz, Pioneer, Denon, etc.

At present I have the speakers set up in a far from ideal position (and they will stay their until a house move later in the year) so I am not able comment authoritatively on their performance. However, despite that I can say that they do sound pretty darn good and I am very pleased with their performance.

When opening the packaging I was very pleased with the protection offered and someone had put a lot of thought into making sure the packaging did a good job of protecting the speakers.

The speakers come with a manual which, although it is not exhaustive, did give some useful information on setting up the speakers.

Whatmough get a thumbs up from me for the packaging and manual.

I appreciate that appearance is not the most important factor when choosing a speaker, however, it is important. The Opus 30's look great. They have a bit of an art deco look about them and I think will fit with most types of decor without standing out. Not something you can say about big square black speaker boxes. The styling is straightforward but looks so much better than a number of the competitors at similar price points. The quality of the finish of the speakers looks better as far as I can tell.

In summary, I like the appearance and sound quality of these speakers and would recommend adding them to your list of products to test if they fit your budget. Especially if, like me, you feel that a speaker can look good as well as sounding good.

Customer Service

Good

Similar Products Used:

None

Price paid in Australian dollars - $1,500.00.