Wharfedale Linton Heritage Speakers (Pair) Walnut

Product Information

I could not agree with Dave’s assessment here, the Lintons played it loud and clear and I was surprised that with considerable high volumes my room did not start to vibrate around the top windows. Which is s an special effect I usually experience with Mr.Blake in my system using a pair of subwoofers. With the Lintons I did not feel the need to connect them, as the low end came deep and clean down to the 35hz Mr. Comeau has projected for them. AS: Do you feel that these speakers offer an excellent audiophile sound reproduction within its price range ?

Which neatly brings me to the drive units! The new Linton has three of them – again in good 1970s style. The idea always was to have one driver – the midrange unit – optimised for critical vocals. Here it is a I 35mm woven Kevlar cone, for low colouration, working from 630Hz to 2.4kHz Wharfedale say. Above is a 25mm (I in) textile dome tweeter and below a 200mm Kevlar cone bass unit – identical bass/mid cone materials being important for subjective coherence. The bass unit is reflex loaded by two rear ports. Denton 85th Anniversary is a two-way speaker in the classic bookshelf tradition, beautifully hand veneered in Mahogany by Wharfedale cabinet makers with an inset front baffle and traditional Tungsten cloth grille. Dave: The PS Audio S300 was bought because I could tell the bass was tubby and the amps I was using couldn't drive the Linton's sufficiently. This is also a weakness of the speakers to me, also . So I’m going to tell you to buy new speakers, right? Nope. You have the original Kappas. Those were better. You have better drivers than I did- you’ve got EMITs- Infiinity speak for their diaphragm tweeter drivers. Those are quite special. If something goes wrong, you can still have them rebuilt. The parts are inexpensive and easily sourced. Same with woofer surrounds. The midrange is no longer available, but they rarely fail. gated comparison. Note Linton on lower stand so gating is 3.3ms vs 5ms for D2. Linton quite flat, slight rolloff, not as bad as Stereophile. D2 gentle lift and tweeter resonance, similar to Stereophile.AS: Peter, you've got a life spanning career cruising through nearly every aspect of the Hi-Fi industry. Could you indicate for our readers which were the marquee experiences during your career? What I want to underline is my desire for the timeless & beautiful design of the 6000CDT. I have no idea why, but it flashed some 60s James Bond scenes in my mind, although I would contextualize it rather with Bauhaus design inspiration. No reason to get excited, but that's life. In this respect, I would like to apologize in advance for the fact that I just tried to approximate the first 2 questions. I think it's worth trying, even if we can only see an adjacent tendency, if one at all. For some it will be worthless, others may be rewarded with a notion of an idea. AS: What were your main design goals with the 6000 series and how would you describe the main differences between the 8300 and 6000 series of Audiolab?

In theory, with complete 360-degree anechoic data on a loudspeaker and sufficient acoustical and geometrical data on the listening room and its layout it would be possible to estimate with good precision what would be measured by an omnidirectional microphone located in the listening area of that room. By making some simplifying assumptions about the listening space, the data set described above permits a usefully accurate preview of how a given loudspeaker might perform in a typical domestic listening room. Obviously, there are no guarantees, because individual rooms can be acoustically aberrant. Sometimes rooms are excessively reflective (“live”) as happens in certain hot, humid climates, with certain styles of interior décor and in under-furnished rooms. Sometimes rooms are excessively “dead” as in other styles of décor and in some custom home theaters where acoustical treatment has been used excessively. This form of post processing is offered only as an estimate of what might happen in a domestic living space with carpet on the floor and a “normal” amount of seating, drapes and cabinetry. This summer I could no longer resist the impression that the return of vinyl as a signal source - be it as a recollection of childhood & youth memories or be it as an exciting new sensory experience - has started to claim its place in the computer-audiophile ecosystem. Not quite central, more in a sense of a lightweight counterbalance that allows us somehow to better adjust our digital pleasures. Distortion at 1m @96dBA. Quite good and similar to German measurement. I have a distortion measurement of D2 but at lower spl, it is better @0.5% max mostly. The new Wharfedale Linton reimagines the past, rather than recreating it. It delivers so much of what was great about old-school wide-baffle loudspeakers – the ease, effortless musicality and room-filling physicality – yet consigns the age-old problems of vagueness, dynamic compression, and poor transient response to the dustbin of history. It's a special speaker in its way, but what I most like about it is that it offers all this for such an attractive price." Porcelain Bus - Rusty Rails - Talking to God LP/CD/CD-Rip - Citadel CGAS 804 1988 - CGAS804DC - no streaming available

My questions are how close a listening distance could I use the Linton's at, could they be used in a midfield manner? I can move my desk around. The speakers sound best when slightly toed-in towards the listener, making sure that the Wharfedale badge is on the outside edge of each unit. That ensures that the off-centre tweeters are positioned on the inside edge, although as we play with the positioning, the difference between that and the other way around feels minimal. Capitalising on this, the new Lintons are wonderfully finished in hand matched walnut or mahogany wood veneer that has a deep and lustrous finish. As our pics show they are veneered at rear, but not on the front baffle, being purposed for use with grilles on. Paradoxically, The Listening Window is a spatial average of the nine amplitude responses in the ±10º vertical and ±30º horizontal angular range. This encompasses those listeners who sit within a typical home theater audience, as well as those who disregard the normal rules when listening alone. In general if you have space you don't want to constrain yourself into a desktop setup, you will avoid acoustic interferences of the desk. From the photo you sent, you have room to put a sofa in the middle of the room (don't you want to have a relaxing option? ) and put the desk behind the sofa, and then the speakers a bit far away. In this way you can set a loudspeaker position that is good for both listening places at once.

This, of course, brings us to the most important question of all: namely, do the Linton 85s deliver the promised element of “natural sound quality”? Stay at tweeter level. If you go even 10° above or below the tweeter level, the timbre of the speaker is noticeably different and worse. I've consciously kept me out of the play-fi streamer discourse with that review, let's put it this way: Unusually, they are designed specifically for use with the grilles on. Not only does doing so help to maintain that low visual profile, the grilles actually improve the sound thanks to their shape ameliorating interference from reflections from the edges of the cabinet.In a way that work is still ongoing in that I’m still discovering and learning new techniques. I’m constantly looking for new ideas and reworking old ones in an effort to make better sounding speakers. The ESS Sabre 9018 reference DAC chip in the 6000A is an old acquaintance of the Audiolab engineers, they've already operated it with success in several standalone DACs and the 8300CDT. Their actual implementation offers three DAC filters: FAST, SLOW & PHASE, selectable via the remote control menu function. I’ve identified the phase filter as best sounding for my ears. The inputs for the conversion are limited to COAX and Toslink up to 24bit and 192kHz and in line with the needs of the 6000 CDT player. By design an USB input option is excluded. Measurements are provided in a format in accordance with the Standard Method of Measurement for In-Home Loudspeakers (ANSI/CTA-2034-A R-2020). For more information, please see this link. Jan Ertner: In terms of the actual CD drive and its ability to read discs, the signal integrity and the low jitter performance of the SPDIF output, the 6000CDT can very much be thought of as a 8300CD without the DAC. the performance benefit of a 3-way speaker and better, deeper bass with the 8in woofer with larger volume cabinet.