Wharfedale Titan 315A Review

The Titan range of speakers from Wharfedale have been the backbone for mobile djs, events promoters and club owners for quite some time now. More often than not good sound from PA speakers results in a heavy cabinet, whereas lighter and more durable cab models often don’t the mark as far as sound and volume is concerned. With the Titan range, a balance has been struck producing loud cabs which will last years on the road and won’t break your back (or bank) in the process. The Titan 315A, their top of the range 15” active model has recently taken a gob-smacking price drop – at £399 a pair (reduced from £639, RRP £799) while stock lasts we’ve been testing out the speaker in-store to see what you get for your money.

Wharfedale Titan 315a speaker

First Impressions:

Housing a 15” woofer and 1” Titanium tweeter the 315A is the biggest in the range. On onboxing this wasn’t over present in our minds though – the cab is nicely rounded off in an almost oval shape. A polypropylene cabinet houses the speaker and tweeter and whilst being lightweight the rubberised handles and finish of the cabinet felt like it's ready for action. On placing it on the floor we noticed it also works as a wedge on it's side so you can use it as a floor monitor as well if you need to. We set up the speaker with our Pioneer set-up in-store...

Setup:

Just to clear things up if you're a newbie as far as PA speakers are concerned (or speakers in general), passive speakers need an amplifier to power the speaker, whereas active do not. This means when setting up, you simply connect a power cable and XLR (or jack) to the back of the unit (and to your mixer) and you're ready. You'll be controlling the sound from your mixer predominantly, but the speaker does also have a 2 band EQ on the back which is handy for giving the bass or treble a slight lift without producing a harsh boost like some loudness controls on alternative models. This makes life fairly painless for mobile DJs setting up. wharfedale-titan-315a-rear

The Sound Test:

House tends to be the staple diet at DJ Tech Direct, so we thought we'd play a few of what we know best. It's got quite a punchy sound, bass is the magic ingredient for getting the crowd moving and important to us so it was nice to hear the woofer delivering the low end needed without having to connect a subwoofer too. We played with the EQ a bit tweaking the highs, but to be honest we found it worked great just having the EQ flat for what we were using. You can also use the speaker for a direct mic connection for presentations, corporate events, which is probably where you'll find more use for the EQ. wharfedale titan 315a close-up

Wharfedale Titan Sub A15

Let's face it, you can never have too much bass. This being our ethos we thought we'd try out the setup with a subwoofer. This suitable for those bigger gigs and for those with more space. The acompanying subwoofer has a built in crossover which splits the frequencies between the two speakers and as you'd expect adds another dimension of bass – That being said, we still think the 315As have plenty of bass on their own.
Conclusion
We had great fun trying out the Titan 315A speakers. Being £399 a pair while we have them it really is a no brainer deal if you're looking for a PA setup, especially as the speaker can deal with the full range of sound where dance music is concerned. We've still got them on demo (both with the subwoofer and without) at our Birmingham store so if you want to try them out for yourself, we'd thoroughly recommend it!