Wharfedale Linton Heritage Speakers (Pair) Walnut

Product Information

The name Linton will ring like a bell to audiophiles of a certain age – myself included, as my father had a pair of 3XPs in the seventies. It was the poor man’s high-end loudspeaker; a true three-way with a real wood cabinet and a warm, musical sound. The new one is far larger, however, and instead of paper and polymer for its bass and mid drivers, it uses woven Kevlar in 200mm and 135mm sizes respectively. Also, the old soft-dome tweeter is now a 25mm fabric dome with a metal grille over it. Crossover frequencies are 630Hz and 2.4kHz. The original Denton was well known for its warm, rich and natural sounding character and the 85th Anniversary Edition retains that character but imbues it with an open, detailed performance that will entice you to explore your whole music collection. I went on a listening session when LS50 Meta appeared. I wanted to listen to it and next to it in the same salon were Blade II and Lintons. The company became part of the International Audio Group (IAG) under Taiwanese leadership, which today includes Quad, Audiolab, Luxman and Mission as sister brands. The group has state-of-the-art production facilities on the Chinese mainland and employs experienced British and international experts for engineering & construction of loudspeakers and electronic equipment along with sales and marketing specialists.

Put simply, as the baffle size decreases, the point at which the acoustic radiation changes from hemispherical to spherical goes up in frequency. It also becomes sharper and narrower in bandwidth as the sides of the cabinet, and the walls and floor of the room, are further removed from the equation. So, this 6dB step in the power response becomes acoustically more obvious. It's enormously important to understand that there is absolutely no possibility of having any pleasure in life at all without skill. Money doesn't buy pleasure ever."-Alan Watts In the interaction of all functions as Integrated Amplifier, the 6000A gains advantage, the sound is harmonious, tight in the lower midrange and very focused in the high frequency range. Of course, it doesn't achieve the performance of a PS Audio S300, which is twice as expensive and clearly plays in a different league, especially for the bass definition and the immersive sound experience, but the 6000A masters all the varieties assigned to it with an excellent precision and ease, which is rarely to be found in its price range.

Denton 85

For these limited circumstances it has been found that a usefully accurate Predicted In-Room (PIR) amplitude response, also known as a “room curve” is obtained by a weighted average consisting of 12 % listening window, 44 % early reflections and 44 % sound power. At very high frequencies errors can creep in because of excessive absorption, microphone directivity, and room geometry. These discrepancies are not considered to be of great importance.

Dave: For me it is the tonal balance and midrange that work well. I am not a believer of long speaker break-in. Disclaimer: The majority of the pictures were taken @ Chateau de l'Islette in Azay-Les-Rideaux, Indre-et-Loire, and Château de Villandry, in Villandry, Indre-et-Loire, both in the center of France. In mono-listening, the difference in sound was noticeable. The Linton had a slight edge to me due to its warmer sound. Peter Cormeau: For me the attraction of vinyl, the more organic feel of its music reproduction, has never gone away. I’m happy to use both analogue and digital sources for my own enjoyment. What led me to start the Linton Heritage design, over 2 years ago, was a desire to recapture the feeling that I had from the first Wharfedales that I heard, and later built myself, in the 1960s. There is a level of performance available from bigger loudspeakers that has been lost, I feel, as modern preferences have led to ever smaller speakers. The combination Audiolab - Wharfedale persuades us with sound, style and the MSRP of approx. 2500 Euro (AUD 5000, USD 3000 , GBP 2000).The Wharfedale Linton speakers are highly efficient, making them easy to drive. The 90dB sensitivity means that even amps with around 20 watts or more can power the Linton speakers to decent levels. i hope these will fare well without any EQ and subwoofer augmentation since they shall be placed well into the room away from the walls. The purpose of this test is to illustrate how much (if at all) the output changes as a speaker’s components temperature increases (i.e., voice coils, crossover components) instantaneously. Qobuz streaming via Audirvana provided bit-perfect and comfortable solution for enjoyable everyday listening, while for critical listening I may still prefer the combination of CAPS/ROON local or CAPS/Audirvana local in best possible resolution.

Sometimes the screen would go blank, sometimes RPT would show, and on other occasions it would switch from Phono to OP1. The Linton Heritage of course benefits from a profound improvement with accomplished power amplifier, which is not due to the 6000A shortcomings, but to the excellent performance of the speakers. For me personally, however, the 6000A was the biggest surprise in its versatility. Of course, it performs in the boundaries that the product family assigns to it, but it does convince in every detail and in every technical function. As an engineer and speaker freak I decided to do some measurements regarding the tuning of the reflex system: The reference plane in this test is at the tweeter height but middle of the baffle (the speaker has an offset tweeter by approximately 20mm). Upon listening to and measuring the speakers I found that the best overall response for this speaker is when the grilles are on. Therefore, the data for this speaker is based on grille on, though, I do provide some data for grille off at the end of the review. While generally this isn’t standard, I encourage you to consider using the grilles. The performance is truly better this way.The Wharfedale Linton Heritage loudspeakers are visually and acoustically an affordable pleasure and will position themselves - because of their excellent price-performance ratio - in the top field of their segment for the foreseeable future. With effortless weight, spot-on stereo imaging and layer upon layer of marvelous detail, you could listen to these speakers for days and still not get tired. Just remember to change the record once in a while."

For the best sound and enhanced style, the Lintons also come with matching stands. These give the speakers solid and stable support, helping to focus the sound. They also feature a shelf that’s ideally sized for record storage. Something interesting and possibly (or not at all) related to my positive listening experience: this speaker has a larger than typical front baffle width. Which means it provides more directivity at lower frequencies than many bookshelf and tower speakers. This means that the speaker is mostly radiating in the front hemisphere at a lower frequency than its slimmer counterparts. In room with some basic eq on each channel (via RME ADI-2 pro). Can always use it's bass control to lift it a bit.

Wharfedale Linton Heritage loudspeaker

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. Spinning 45rpm remastered vinyl and an old, old song (1969), Lodi, from Creedence Clear