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. Retro maybe, but more likely a response to good-quality furniture appearance allied to the full-bodied sound of speakers designed from the fifties to eighties.” “As we found when we launched the Denton 80th Anniversary (and then Denton 85), there’s a strong customer base for this style of speaker. Comeau notes that the company’s 85th anniversary has given him the chance to do something more than slightly different. Trouble is, the vagaries of marketing are also critical to how modern loudspeakers are designed. The broader baffle and larger-than-normal bass and midrange units not only elevate sensitivity, but also are aligned to a baffle step that is lower and broader in frequency than modern, slimline systems.” In other words, by not following fashion he can do the right thing as far as the physics of speaker design are concerned. This is simply good engineering practice. Yet designer Peter Comeau tells me: “This is not a throwback to days of old, far from it. This is true up to a point, but plenty of hi-fi companies such as JBL and Technics, for example, are re-examining past ideas too.Īdding to its Heritage collection – which re-engineers former models using contemporary techniques and materials – Wharfedale’s new Linton does just this being a large, wide-baffle standmount speaker it’s very much in the mould of big seventies designs, and totally out of fashion compared with the small footprint ‘tower’ floorstanders of today. Plenty of audiophiles have a fondness for retro design, but many would agree that it’s modern technology and fresh thinking that shapes our world.
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