On previous recordings, the Lintons demonstrated a slight bass overhang, which added a halo of tubelike resonance that made some recordings sound more atmospheric than they are. I imagined this effect would blur room tone and smear their voices. I was wrong. On "Buddy and María Elena," voice intelligibility was exceptional. Room atmosphere was decidedly well-recovered.
With the Line Magnetic amplifier
Every review has a defining moment. With the Lintons, it came while listening to Igor Stravinsky conducting the Columbia Chamber Ensemble in a performance of his 1919 suite, L'Histoire du soldat (LP, Columbia MS 7903), an easy-to-find, budget-priced LP with demonstration-quality sonics and mind-blowing ferocity. It is a monumental combination of sophisticated music, spectacular performance, and stunning sonics. The 25Wpc, 845 tube-powered, single-ended Line Magnetic LM-518IA amplifier worked surprisingly well with the Wharfedales. The amp provided more than enough power (and damping factor) to reproduce the bass, bassoon, and percussion on this recording in a clear and dynamic manner.
With most loudspeakers and most tube amplifiers, I prefer the sound when the latter drives the former via its 4 ohm output taps. In this case, at the designer's request, I auditioned the nominally 6 ohm Lintons using the Line Magnetic's 4 ohm and 8 ohm taps. According to Peter Comeau, "As the Linton is 6 ohm over the majority of the frequency spectrum above 300Hz, it may just play better with the 8 ohm tap than the 4 ohm. This isn't an exact science, though, so do keep an open ear as to which you prefer!"
As you might expect, the bass, bassoon, and kettledrum had more impact when the Lintons were driven from the LM-518's 4 ohm taps. But when I switched to the 8 ohm taps, I realized that those instruments were too tight-sounding on the 4 ohm taps. Driven from the 8 ohm taps, the Lintons relaxed and flowed forward more easily. Their sound from the 8-ohm taps was sweeter, bigger, more expansive, more detailed, and more harmonically complete.
Those of you who venerate beryllium-dome tweeters may find the Lintons' high frequencies too discreet. But I thought the Lintons' tweeters delivered unobtrusive, well-described highs. They did extremely well at depicting the lifelike tone and tactility of Robert Marsteller's trombone. They made Roy D'Antonio's clarinet sound woody and physically tangible.
With this simple recording, this speaker, and this amplifier—plus the Etsuro Urushi Cobalt Blue moving-coil cartridge—the Lintons disclosed their complete palette of audio wonders. With the Line Magnetic LM-518IA amp, the Lintons sounded so completely open and relaxed that they made the KEF LS50s sound unnaturally uptight.
And, to my happy surprise, the Lintons' bass and midrange cones gave no audible clue they were made of woven Kevlar.
With the Pass Labs XA25
It is reasonable to assume that any audiophile interested in a speaker like the Lintons would also want to invest in a compatible amplifier that would showcase their full potential. Well . . . I didn't try every amplifier in the world, but I would bet my Bed Stuy bunker that the $4900, 25Wpc Pass Labs XA25 exposes the major portion of their full potential.
Alexander Melnikov and Olga Pashchenko's recording of Debussy's Preludes du 2e Livre and La Mer (96/24 FLAC, Harmonia Mundi/Qobuz) has been my favorite album during the last year. I have played it countless times on scores of systems. The combination of the Pass Lab XA25 and Wharfedale's Lintons showed me the most solid-feeling pianos of all of them. More important, it showed me the infinitely nuanced inventions behind the keyboard artistry of Alexander Melnikov, a piano collector who specializes in playing instruments similar to those used to compose whatever works he is performing. For these Debussy preludes, he plays an 1885 Érard piano that delivers brittle attacks, rich middle registers, and bursts of woody tone that explode in the air around the body of the instrument (footnote 2).
The XA25-Linton combo brought the Érard's keyboard and soundboard into my room. The short decays of long-string notes were rousing and vivid. Short-string notes offered long decays. Melnikov's left hand was all impact and tone. Steel-string soundboard textures were explicit.
The Pass Labs XA25 played the Lintons with more subtlety, finesse, and understated authority than any other amp in my collection.
With the Rogue Stereo 100
There was nothing understated about the powerful, sure-grip authority the $3495 Rogue Audio Stereo 100 (via its 4–6 ohm tap) exerted on the Linton three-ways. In Ultralinear mode, which I used almost exclusively in this pairing, it had a muscular, persuasive way of biting through the Lintons' default bloom and delivering Thor's-hammer percussion, coupled to a strong sense of spatial presence and very tight bass. The Stereo 100 made L'Histoire du soldat more physically tangible and emotionally evocative (and artistically effective) than the Line Magnetic LM-518 did: It put major excitement into Stravinsky's fantastic suite. Compared to KEF LS50
At $1299.98/pair (plus stands), KEF's popular and universally acclaimed LS50 is in direct competition with the Wharfedale Lintons. I find this fascinating because two British-designed loudspeakers could hardly sound more different. Understanding the differences is the key to choosing the right one. The LS50s play tight, super-coherent, and subjectively fast with a wide range of amplifier types. The LS50's bass is always taut and tuneful. But the overall sound leans to the left brain. In comparison, the Lintons sound less focused but much bigger and fuller and right-brain rich, with soul and good timbre. The KEFs play the sounds well, while the Wharfedales play the songs well.
Compared to Magnepan .7
The Linton's second chief competitor is the $1395/pair Magnepan .7 quasi-ribbon panel speaker. The Lintons and the .7s generate similarly spacious, relaxed, elegantly detailed sound. Both require careful room placement and precise toe-in to achieve the best detail and imaging. If you have heard the Magnepan .7s and they sounded soft or less than exquisitely detailed—if you have heard them display insufficient leading-edge bite—then they were too close to room boundaries, improperly amplified, or not toed in correctly. The same is true for the Lintons. Both speakers offered the crispest, cleanest details with the Rogue Audio Stereo 100 amplifier set for Ultralinear operation. Both speakers sounded blurred with the Rogue in triode mode.
With the right amp and careful setup, both speakers deliver truly exceptional flow, but the Lintons used this excellent flow to direct my attention toward melodies, beats, and subtle shifts in rhythm. The Wharfedales injected musical awareness directly into my consciousness, while the Magnepans encouraged me to sit back, relax, and let them impress me with their beauty, scale, and depth of soundfield. As I said earlier, the Lintons' chief goodness was in how they took my mind off the sound and put it on the performance. The Maggies do this also, just not as much.
While playing early-music wizard Jordi Savall's 2013 concert recording Granada (96/24 FLAC AliVox/Tidal), both speakers displayed natural instrumental tone and recovered most of the vast resonant atmosphere of Spain's Moorish treasure, Granada's Alhambra Palace.
Granada brings art, song, religion, architecture, and the clash of Christian and Muslim cultures together in an extremely poignant way. From the opening invocation "qamti be-Ishon Layla" (Song of Songs) to the closing Andalusian lament "Maqam hijaz" (Ibn Zaydún) sung by Lior Elmaleh, the Lintons, more than the Magnepans, generated a tight, focused energy in the upper bass and lower midrange that placed instruments and voices more solidly in the cavernous Alhambra. The Magnepan .7s reproduced a greater volume of palace air; the Wharfedales helped me feel the Alhambra's stone walls and marble floors.
Summary
The Wharfedale Lintons merge a refined, elegantly detailed, full-range sound with a magnetic personality that made me want to play records—made me want to listen longer, and to understand more of what I was listening to. These conspicuous talents, plus the fact that the Lintons look Jaguar-like expensive and cost less than they should, make the newest Wharfedales highly recommendable.
Footnote 2: See classicstoday.com/review/melnikov-plays-debussy.
Every review has a defining moment. With the Lintons, it came while listening to Igor Stravinsky conducting the Columbia Chamber Ensemble in a performance of his 1919 suite, L'Histoire du soldat (LP, Columbia MS 7903), an easy-to-find, budget-priced LP with demonstration-quality sonics and mind-blowing ferocity. It is a monumental combination of sophisticated music, spectacular performance, and stunning sonics. The 25Wpc, 845 tube-powered, single-ended Line Magnetic LM-518IA amplifier worked surprisingly well with the Wharfedales. The amp provided more than enough power (and damping factor) to reproduce the bass, bassoon, and percussion on this recording in a clear and dynamic manner.
As you might expect, the bass, bassoon, and kettledrum had more impact when the Lintons were driven from the LM-518's 4 ohm taps. But when I switched to the 8 ohm taps, I realized that those instruments were too tight-sounding on the 4 ohm taps. Driven from the 8 ohm taps, the Lintons relaxed and flowed forward more easily. Their sound from the 8-ohm taps was sweeter, bigger, more expansive, more detailed, and more harmonically complete.
Those of you who venerate beryllium-dome tweeters may find the Lintons' high frequencies too discreet. But I thought the Lintons' tweeters delivered unobtrusive, well-described highs. They did extremely well at depicting the lifelike tone and tactility of Robert Marsteller's trombone. They made Roy D'Antonio's clarinet sound woody and physically tangible.
It is reasonable to assume that any audiophile interested in a speaker like the Lintons would also want to invest in a compatible amplifier that would showcase their full potential. Well . . . I didn't try every amplifier in the world, but I would bet my Bed Stuy bunker that the $4900, 25Wpc Pass Labs XA25 exposes the major portion of their full potential.
With the Rogue Stereo 100There was nothing understated about the powerful, sure-grip authority the $3495 Rogue Audio Stereo 100 (via its 4–6 ohm tap) exerted on the Linton three-ways. In Ultralinear mode, which I used almost exclusively in this pairing, it had a muscular, persuasive way of biting through the Lintons' default bloom and delivering Thor's-hammer percussion, coupled to a strong sense of spatial presence and very tight bass. The Stereo 100 made L'Histoire du soldat more physically tangible and emotionally evocative (and artistically effective) than the Line Magnetic LM-518 did: It put major excitement into Stravinsky's fantastic suite. Compared to KEF LS50
At $1299.98/pair (plus stands), KEF's popular and universally acclaimed LS50 is in direct competition with the Wharfedale Lintons. I find this fascinating because two British-designed loudspeakers could hardly sound more different. Understanding the differences is the key to choosing the right one. The LS50s play tight, super-coherent, and subjectively fast with a wide range of amplifier types. The LS50's bass is always taut and tuneful. But the overall sound leans to the left brain. In comparison, the Lintons sound less focused but much bigger and fuller and right-brain rich, with soul and good timbre. The KEFs play the sounds well, while the Wharfedales play the songs well.
The Linton's second chief competitor is the $1395/pair Magnepan .7 quasi-ribbon panel speaker. The Lintons and the .7s generate similarly spacious, relaxed, elegantly detailed sound. Both require careful room placement and precise toe-in to achieve the best detail and imaging. If you have heard the Magnepan .7s and they sounded soft or less than exquisitely detailed—if you have heard them display insufficient leading-edge bite—then they were too close to room boundaries, improperly amplified, or not toed in correctly. The same is true for the Lintons. Both speakers offered the crispest, cleanest details with the Rogue Audio Stereo 100 amplifier set for Ultralinear operation. Both speakers sounded blurred with the Rogue in triode mode.
Footnote 2: See classicstoday.com/review/melnikov-plays-debussy.
