Wharfedale Linton Heritage Speakers (Pair) Walnut

Product Information

Rounding things off comes the tweeter which is – natch! – not a metal dome. It is a standard I in (25mm) textile dome that covers high frequencies smoothly – without sharpness or ringiness. SOUND QUALITY

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

Sound Power represents all of the sounds arriving at the listening position after any number of reflections from any direction. It is the weighted rms average of all 70 measurements, with individual measurements weighted according to the portion of the spherical surface that they represent. The room response must be averaged to recognize trends in the summation of direct and reflected signals at the microphone. The resulting curves must not be taken as a 1:1 representation of what is heard as loudness at different frequencies. The room response gives a picture of the steady state SPL, where sound generation and sound dissipation in the room have reached their equilibrium." -Linkwitz 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? A transport only design does offer the potential of less interference between CD circuitry and DAC, however there is a lot of space inside the Audiolab case work and keeping sensitive circuitry isolated is less of a problem. The main reason we made a stand-alone transport was based on wanting to have the DAC in the AMP, ultimately allowing for greater system flexibility.“ FR shows both speakers to have similar bass extension. The KEFs are brighter above 8khz. Kudos to KEF for achieving the same bass extension with a 5.5" woofer as the much larger Linton, though I guess this comes with a slight sensitivity penalty.

Below is a shot inside the enclosure, through the woofer hole and up toward the midrange enclosure. Yes, the midrange does have a separate enclosure which is a nice change. It does look like sonotube (you construction folks or DIY subwoofer fans will know exactly what I’m talking about). Also note the screen material on the ports to keep the enclosure liner to keep from getting clogged in a port. With retro good looks and a natural, relaxed sound to match, these Wharfedales are different, but undeniably superb.” ’What Hi-Fi?’ – 5 Star review.Sound Power Directivity Index (SPDI): In this standard the SPDI is defined as the difference between the listening window curve and the sound power curve.

I also took my chances with some sort of short interviews with the engineering brains behind the speakers, Peter Cormeau, and the Audiolab equipment, Jan Ertner, which are echoed by a personal communication I had with Dave, an Audiophile Style user from Iowa, who owns these transducers and talked to me about his own experience with them. 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. Underneath the traditional exterior, however, the Denton 85th Anniversary is bang up to date and utilises a mixture of traditional and advanced technology. The bass unit features Wharfedale’s innovative woven Kevlar cone mounted on a rigid die-cast chassis, this combination delivers a rich, detailed bass/midrange output with superb dynamic performance. High frequencies are handled by a woven textile soft-dome treble unit with high flux ferrite magnet, engineered for smooth, detailed HF extension. Seamless musical output After some experimentation, I ended up with the Lintons' cabinet fronts about 43" from the wall behind them. I liked having the Lintons toed in so that the tweeters' lines of sight crossed just in front of my nose. In this position, the Dead's "Ripple" still had a touch more bass swell than I prefer, but the sound was sweet, deep, elegantly detailed, and harmonically extended overall. For friends of the silver disc, however, the CDT may be a reasonably priced way to play their existing digital music, bought or burned, in excellent quality. It could also be a perfect solution for those who have never owned a CD transport before, especially as you can discover a lot of CD's nowadays in the 2nd Hand Music Stores where you usually buy your vinyl.I believe that a thin speaker always sounds thinner throughout the midrange when directly compared to a speaker with more generous baffle width. Of course, as designers of modern, slim speakers, we compromise by adjusting for the baffle step in the crossover, but in doing so, we also compromise sensitivity. What starts out as a 90dB at 1W drive-unit often ends up as an 85dB system once we have adjusted for the power loss due to the baffle step." Wharfedale specifies the new Linton's sensitivity at 90dB/2V/1m and recommends using amplifiers rated 25–200Wpc. That led me to start to figure out the relationships between the mechanics of speaker design, how to interpret the measurements I was making and using those experiences to make loudspeakers which were more musically adept. I developed an iteration between measurement and listening that allowed me to fine-tune my designs and, later, added software tools into the process to speed up development.

The 6000A differs with its digital enhancements like Bluetooth and the ESS9018 DAC as well from its big brother 8300A, which in return may persuade us with a higher power output, balanced inputs, connections for a 2nd speaker pair and a second pre-output for subwoofer. Jan Ertner: We could have added even more features but it would have meant either a more expensive product or a reduction in performance. The 6000A strikes a good balance. The build in DAC is of a very high quality and we would rather our customers added a streaming solution of their choice than compromising on what we see as the key components. Your speakers are true classics- the last ones before Art Nudell sold Infinity to Harman International. Harman has since been sold to Samsung. Sad. I have fond memories of your speakers as they were current when I first got into stereo sales. We were dealers and they were quite popular. They were one of my favorites. Of course, I've read a lot about the Audiolab 6000 series and the return of the 6000A during my preparations and found it a blessing that other reviewers didn't evaluate these devices negligently but for a good reason very positively: The Audiolab 6000A’s quality in relation to its price is simply excellent. 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.

Parting / Random Thoughts​

Looking at Linton, it becomes immediately clear that there's no expiration date on vintage style. The same can be said about superior sound, which you'll also find Linton offers with abundance. 100% Music Direct Guaranteed. Provided that you spend time properly toeing-in the speaker to the best angle for your listening position – and it can be quite a fine balance – you’ll doubtless be impressed by the stereo imaging. It doesn’t quite have the pinpoint precision of some rivals with coaxial tweeter/midrange drivers, but it’s still pretty good and gives the lie to the claim that wide baffle speakers don’t image well. Every recording I play sounds surprisingly large and expansive. Haitink’s superb reading of Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No.2 sounds wonderfully atmospheric with a great sense of the recorded acoustic, for example. Depth perspective is a real standout strength for this speaker, too. For the record.: the slightly older sibling 8300A may have the additional power you prefer to have and prices of the 2018 introduced units went south (in Europe) after the 6000series arrived. 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.