Wharfedale is a Chinese audio equipment manufacturer best known for loudspeakers. It is currently part of the International Audio Group. Wharfedale also used to brand televisions,

DVD player A DVD player is a device that plays DVDs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. Some DVD players will also play audio CDs. DVD players are connected to a television to ...

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of s ...

es and Hi-Fi players. Since 2008, they have only manufactured and sold audio equipment.

History

Wharfedale Wireless Works was founded in 1932 by Gilbert Briggs, and became one of Britain's leading manufacturers of

audiophile An audiophile is a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction. An audiophile seeks to reproduce the sound of a piece of recorded music or a live musical performance, typically inside closed headphones, In-ear monitors, open ...

equipment, particularly loudspeakers. In addition to winning awards by groups such as the Bradford Radio Society, in mass public testing at

Carnegie Hall Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th and 57th Streets. Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built ...

Wharfedale speakers proved indistinguishable from live music. Innovations introduced by Wharfedale under Briggs included such basics as the two-way

loudspeaker A loudspeaker (commonly referred to as a speaker or speaker driver) is an electroacoustic transducer that converts an electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound. A ''speaker system'', also often simply referred to as a "speaker" or ...

and the ceramic magnet. In the 1950s and 1960s, Wharfedale became famous for its technique of eliminating cabinet

resonance Resonance describes the phenomenon of increased amplitude that occurs when the frequency of an applied periodic force (or a Fourier component of it) is equal or close to a natural frequency of the system on which it acts. When an oscil ...

s by using a double cabinet, with the space between the inner and outer shells filled with

sand Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class ...

. Purchasers of the loudspeaker systems would receive the appropriate quantity of sand which had been shipped from Wharfedale in England.
(

Wharfedale Wharfedale ( ) is the valley of the upper parts of the River Wharfe and one of the Yorkshire Dales. It is situated within the districts of Craven and Harrogate in North Yorkshire, and the cities of Leeds and Bradford in West Yorkshire. It ...

in Yorkshire is the site of numerous sand quarries). Briggs sold the company to the

Rank Organisation The Rank Organisation was a British entertainment conglomerate founded by industrialist J. Arthur Rank in April 1937. It quickly became the largest and most vertically integrated film company in the United Kingdom, owning production, distribut ...

in 1958, and it has been through several owners since then.

Licensing of Wharfedale name

Beginning in 2008, the brand name was licensed to Argos for the manufacture of electronics products without loudspeakers for the UK market only. Wharfedale-branded speakers are still made by the original firm.

Manufacturing

The original manufacturing site was located in Idle, a district of Bradford, West Yorkshire. The current manufacturing site is in Ji'an in China.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.wharfedale.co.uk Loudspeaker manufacturers Audio equipment manufacturers of the United Kingdom Manufacturing companies based in Bradford Electronics companies established in 1932 British brands 1932 establishments in England