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Kef r3 vs Wharfdale Linton 85 (My comparison)

Zvu

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First set of measurements - I measured both my R3 and the Linton at approx. 1m, at similar SPL. No correction has been applied, these are the raw responses of the speakers. I am a bit surprised by this, the Linton (Green) shows a significant drop at 4khz of about 5db. The R3 (Orange) is fairly flat throughout the midrange. Both measurements taken with pink periodic noise.

View attachment 250032


More to come...

Can you upload .mdat file for this measurement. I want to see what gated looks like. I have strong reason to believe you have a malfunctioning loudspeaker - tweeter to be exact. I have listened and measured Lintons, and there are lots of measurements on the web. This one doesn't look like anything i've seen so far.
 
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Kachda

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Can you upload .mdat file for this measurement. I want to see what gated looks like. I have strong reason to believe you have a malfunctioning loudspeaker - tweeter to be exact. I have listened and measured Lintons, and there are lots of measurements on the web. This one doesn't look like anything i've seen so far.
It’s possible that happened because i did near field measurement using the mid as the acoustic center. I’m doing a far field measurement now and not seeing the same issue. Will update the post with far field and also attach .mdat file then
 

Zvu

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1m distance will suffice. It is close enough to exclude reflections using gate (at least over 500Hz) and far enough that it enables good transducer integration so we don't get funky measurement results.

This is mine pair of Lintons: each loudspeaker measured at 1m distance, gate length is about 4ms.

Linton 1.jpg

Measurement done as a sanity check when i brought them home, just to ensure they are in good working order.

EDIT: For some reason .mdat file you've uploaded in your first post is locked and i can not enter the gate settings for any measurement.
 
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Kachda

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1m distance will suffice. It is close enough to exclude reflections using gate (at least over 500Hz) and far enough that it enables good transducer integration so we don't get funky measurement results.

This is mine pair of Lintons: each loudspeaker measured at 1m distance, gate length is about 4ms.

View attachment 250064

Measurement done as a sanity check when i brought them home, just to ensure they are in good working order.

EDIT: For some reason .mdat file you've uploaded in your first post is locked and i can not enter the gate settings for any measurement.
Hmm. Not sure why the file is locked. I just saved the mdat from rew as normal. Just check if the file is read only for some reason.

With respect to 4k dip, I’ll try again after a few days with the other speaker and also using a different axis. Too late today and my neighbors will kill me if I run pink nose at 75db
 
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dougi

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I know it's hard to judge true speaker nature based od youtube video, but I found it strange how much "off" Lintons sounded compared to other speaker in this short comparison:

Have they tweaked the design of the Linton's at all? In the picture the tweeter has no metal grill in front. Mine certainly do and all other pictures of them show a protective metal grill, but not this one.
 

regan

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have listened and measured Lintons
And what's your personal take on them?
Also how would you compare them to the R3s (if you listened to them) and which ones do you prefer?
 

Zvu

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And what's your personal take on them?
Also how would you compare them to the R3s (if you listened to them) and which ones do you prefer ?

I wrote something about it here. I still stand by that. I've listened R3 and soundwise they did not differ in any meaningful way from my R300. I also had LS50 for a long time and even listened LS50meta next to Lintons. Longer side by side comparisons are rarely possible but are the best way of assessing what best suits our needs in my opinion. What @Kachda is doing is great. I listened LS50 without a sub and i really missed that "authority" in sound, that a larger transducer has. They sounded detailed enough but i've noticed that i started to listen the music less and less. Didn't want more cables and more boxes in my small living space. Visually Lintons dominate the living room now (they are bulky), but physically take less space than three boxes. Kef R300 sounded better in that regard and i didn't need a sub but something was off about the tonality of lower midrange which i couldn't seem to fix with eq. Other than that, Lintons give me zero fatigue and i can listen them all day - which sometimes is the case, music is almost always on, i just touch the volume knob from time to time. Kids don't even notice speakers since they are really not visually interesting to them and i always keep the grilles on.

I can not stress enough how critical is positioning with these regardless of room size. Under damped bass alignment, as John Atkinson wrote, can be a bit problematic for room placement. If you intend to put them close to the wall behind (or if your couch is next to a wall), you will end up with too strong bass and that will mess up the midrange impression. That's one of the reasons i mounted wheels instead of spikes on speaker stands. During the day they are close to wall so they don't get in a way. When kids go to bed, i position them at best sounding spots, away from the walls.

Lintons are irreplaceable for me. They became a gravity point around which my whole system spins and will spin for some time.

Now, everything written above is as subjective as it can get. I'm sure there are some people that will not like the sound of them and that's fine too. Lintons are not panacea but are so well balanced that they will tick quite a few price/performance/aesthetics boxes for lots of people. Being the best selling Wharfedale loudspeaker is a testimony to that.
 
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ahofer

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I wrote something about it here. I still stand by that. I've listened R3 and soundwise they did not differ in any meaningful way from my R300. I also had LS50 for a long time and even listened LS50meta next to Lintons. Longer side by side comparisons are rarely possible but are the best way of assessing what best suits our needs in my opinion. What @Kachda is doing is great. I listened LS50 without a sub and i really missed that "authority" in sound, that a larger transducer has. They sounded detailed enough but i've noticed that i started to listen the music less and less. Didn't want more cables and more boxes in my small living space. Visually Lintons dominate the living room now (they are bulky), but physically take less space than three boxes. Kef R300 sounded better in that regard and i didn't need a sub but something was off about the tonality of lower midrange which i couldn't seem to fix with eq. Other than that, Lintons give me zero fatigue and i can listen them all day - which sometimes is the case, music is almost always on, i just touch the volume knob from time to time. Kids don't even notice speakers since they are really not visually interesting to them and i always keep the grilles on.

I can not stress enough how critical is positioning with these. Under damped bass alignment, as John Atkinson wrote, can be a bit problematic for room placement. If you intend to put them close to the wall behind (or if your couch is next to a wall), you will end up with too strong bass and that will mess up the midrange impression. That's one of the reasons i mounted wheels instead of spikes on speaker stands. During the day they are close to wall so they don't get in a way. When kids go to bed, i position them at best sounding spots, away from the walls.

Lintons are irreplaceable for me. They became a gravity point around which my whole system spins and will spin for some time.

Now, everything written above is as subjective as it can be. I'm sure there are some people that will not like the sound of them and that's fine to. Lintons are not panacea but are so well balanced that they will tick quite a few boxes for lots of people. Being the best selling Wharfedale is a testimony to that.
Erin’s spins seem consistent with your impressions.
 

Mal

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KEF R3 now being sold at bargain price in UK by various retailers - £999 against £1500 on KEF UK site. Still a bit steep, and a bit big, for me. I wish they had a passive LSX at £500 or less...
 

regan

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I can not stress enough how critical is positioning with these regardless of room size
Could this be solved with eq dirac or something?
 

ahofer

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I wrote something about it here. I still stand by that. I've listened R3 and soundwise they did not differ in any meaningful way from my R300. I also had LS50 for a long time and even listened LS50meta next to Lintons. Longer side by side comparisons are rarely possible but are the best way of assessing what best suits our needs in my opinion. What @Kachda is doing is great. I listened LS50 without a sub and i really missed that "authority" in sound, that a larger transducer has. They sounded detailed enough but i've noticed that i started to listen the music less and less. Didn't want more cables and more boxes in my small living space. Visually Lintons dominate the living room now (they are bulky), but physically take less space than three boxes. Kef R300 sounded better in that regard and i didn't need a sub but something was off about the tonality of lower midrange which i couldn't seem to fix with eq. Other than that, Lintons give me zero fatigue and i can listen them all day - which sometimes is the case, music is almost always on, i just touch the volume knob from time to time. Kids don't even notice speakers since they are really not visually interesting to them and i always keep the grilles on.

I can not stress enough how critical is positioning with these regardless of room size. Under damped bass alignment, as John Atkinson wrote, can be a bit problematic for room placement. If you intend to put them close to the wall behind (or if your couch is next to a wall), you will end up with too strong bass and that will mess up the midrange impression. That's one of the reasons i mounted wheels instead of spikes on speaker stands. During the day they are close to wall so they don't get in a way. When kids go to bed, i position them at best sounding spots, away from the walls.

Lintons are irreplaceable for me. They became a gravity point around which my whole system spins and will spin for some time.

Now, everything written above is as subjective as it can get. I'm sure there are some people that will not like the sound of them and that's fine too. Lintons are not panacea but are so well balanced that they will tick quite a few price/performance/aesthetics boxes for lots of people. Being the best selling Wharfedale loudspeaker is a testimony to that.
I think these may be like Harbeth. Nice wide-baffle midrange but some directivity errors that make them a sweet spot speaker. Which is Ok.

I now have Harbeths (Shl5+) and Revels (228be), and I’d say the Harbeths are competitive when you are set up in the right place. Revels are very flexible, position-wise, and do somewhat better on bass and big orchestral music.

But the guy I bought the Revels from replaced them with Lintons. He had kind of a small listening room.
 

BrokenEnglishGuy

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Hi

I have owned the R300 and the R7, have never listened or owner the R3.

In my country the lintons are a good selling speaker, that being said is also the best re-sell speaker, people tend to sell his linton's very fast in the second-hand market.


I have take this measurements from my R7, i bought them because the my R300 had not much output and the UNIQ sounds harsh, i have to EQ the UNIQ.
Measure the MF and HF is a bit problematic in my experience, let me explain why.

This is the measurements from my R7, this was at listening position but was for measure the BASS, i notice that if i move very little the mic the slope 1khz-10khz can change a lot
Maybe just measure a little off the mic with lintons, but in reality it sounds normal.
For example this looks very flat, isn't?
index.php

But I also got this slope for no reason when i measure again
index.php



I was searching in my measurements done using the UMIK 1 and I also got a weird dip for no reason, this was uncorrected: ( Correction was always up 1khz~, previously).
I have a lots of measurements and the MF and HF can differ a lot in my data. All measurements was done at listening position, single point.

0uzGP7w.png



My guess it's just a error measurement, the linton is fine.
 

Zvu

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Could this be solved with eq dirac or something?

Of course it could. I wrote that because i've seen people having bad experience with Lintons as a byproduct of a lousy setup.

I think these may be like Harbeth. Nice wide-baffle midrange but some directivity errors that make them a sweet spot speaker. Which is Ok.

I now have Harbeths (Shl5+) and Revels (228be), and I’d say the Harbeths are competitive when you are set up in the right place. Revels are very flexible, position-wise, and do somewhat better on bass and big orchestral music.

But the guy I bought the Revels from replaced them with Lintons. He had kind of a small listening room.

I can assure you Lintons are quite different beasts than Harbeth SHL5+.

- They are a three way loudspeaker with 8" woofer and a proper 5" midrange while Harbeth SHL5+ are more of a two way with 8" woofer and 1" tweeter crossed at 3.2kHz. I see a supertweeter there and they call it a three way because of it, but it is not really. Given how high woofer/tweeter crossover frequency is, i expect quite large directivity errors. While directivity of Lintons isn't perfect, it will not suffer as Harbeth because of an extra driver of smaller diameter in that passband.
- Harbeth use cabinet resonance/s as part of their house sound by utilizing cabinets with thin walls. Lintons on the other hand are quite well braced, they use thick sandwich walls and bracing to tackle those resonances.

Closer relative to Harbeth SHL5+ conceptually would be Mission 770 in my opinion but with sturdier cabinet.
 
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Slyman

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Anyone of you Linton 85 owners that have experience with them and older hi-fi speakers? I own a mission 753 in my living room (45hz -3db) and a older b&w sub i think about replacing with a pair of Lintons 85 both because of ease (not good at integrating sub and speakers) and because wife wants something more stylish.

How would you say the lintons are compared to older hi-fi speakers? Is it an worthwhile upgrade?

Mainly asking cause i just bought the kali lp6 which sounds awesome and kinda makes the living room sound weak.
 

ahofer

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Harbeth use cabinet resonance/s as part of their house sound by utilizing cabinets with thin walls.
That is not an accurate characterization.
Conversely, in a thin-wall cabinet, the lossy joints (i.e. removable baffle/back and the generally 9-12mm thin panels used throughout the box) each act as an acoustic hairline crack. They inhibit the build-up of resonance. Simple as that really!

Now, let's not kid ourself that it is possible to kill cabinet resonance stone dead. It isn't. Not with any approach to cabinet design because the sound pressure inside the cabinet is huge. What the thin-wall approach does is to move unwanted resonances downwards in amplitude and frequency so that they are adequately buried below the music and then pushed down in pitch. Note that I said adequately. Providing that the resonance, be it from the cone, cabinet or even recording - whatever the source - is x dBs below the fundamental, the BBC proved that it was completely inaudible. Once inaudible to trained listeners on all types of music/speech, that is the end of the matter. Inaudible to the trained listener is as good as the solution needs to be. It is neither necessary nor cost effective (nor good engineering) to continue pushing for a degree of theoretical excellence that nobody can appreciate but everyone must pay for.
 

ROOSKIE

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I'm also interested. I've been mental cross-shopping these and the JBL 4309 for a while. The KEF is arguably the winner on paper but I lust for something with more vintage looks.
The Linton's have much more bass output and deeper extension as you likely know. The bass extension/output is very decent for a 2.0 set-up.

I vastly prefer the sound of the 4309 though and since I do listen fairly loudly regularly I get the best results with them when paired with subwoofers and high passed taking the low bass out of the 4309's. So I'd plan for 2.1/2.2/2.3 or something. To be clear I prefer the 4309's to both the R3 and the Linton. Plus in addition to preferring the sound of the 4309 another benefit is that if can high pass them and do so around 90hrz, they can play absurdly loud without a whisper of distortion or impending limitation. (The R3 actually could do SPL pretty well in a similar configuration) Linton's start to sound stressed in the top, like turn it down.

Of these 3 the Linton's would be last for me. I don't really like them. The KEF R3 is nice and tidy and articulate if not a touch bit boring, I describe them as listening to music on excellent speakers but ultimately I prefer speakers that make me forget I am listening to speakers. Something that seems almost live(alive). I did not find the R3 does that.

Back to the Lintons, they give me a strange listening fatigue and after a short bit I just lose interest in listening, which is the opposite of those who like them. I do like the bass response and the looks of mine which are black, just not the right sound for me though.
The listening fatigue is strange, I actually get a bit tense listening them and immediately relax when I stop. There is this strange underlying quality to them for me. I have my theory but it would take awhile and this might not be the place.

I would say even if they did not have the above, I am just not super into them. This may offend - they sound to me like totally okay $300-400 bookshelves strapped into a pretty good for a $250 price, 8" woofer/subwoofer. All for $1500.

Despite this opinion, I can still see why some folks are into them.

I think my version of Linton experience many here are having is the BMR. Just ridiculously right sounding to me and special/unique. Can't stop listening after starting and the whole thing gets addicting and wonderful.
 
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Zvu

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That is not an accurate characterization.

That is the impression i made based on few cabinet resonance measurements available from Stereophile.

Where did that quote came from ? I'd like to read the full text.
 

muad

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The Linton's have much more bass output and deeper extension as you likely know. The bass extension/output is very decent for a 2.0 set-up.

I vastly prefer the sound of the 4309 though and since I do listen fairly loudly regularly I get the best results with them when paired with subwoofers and high passed taking the low bass out of the 4309's. So I'd plan for 2.1/2.2/2.3 or something. To be clear I prefer the 4309's to both the R3 and the Linton. Plus in addition to preferring the sound of the 4309 another benefit is that if can high pass them and do so around 90hrz, they can play absurdly loud without a whisper of distortion or impending limitation. (The R3 actually could do SPL pretty well in a similar configuration) Linton's start to sound stressed in the top, like turn it down.

Of these 3 the Linton's would be last for me. I don't really like them. The KEF R3 is nice and tidy and articulate if not a touch bit boring, I describe them as listening to music on excellent speakers but ultimately I prefer speakers that make me forget I am listening to speakers. Something that seems almost live(alive). I did not find the R3 does that.

Back to the Lintons, they give me a strange listening fatigue and after a short bit I just lose interest in listening, which is the opposite of those who like them. I do like the bass response and the looks of mine which are black, just not the right sound for me though.
The listening fatigue is strange, I actually get a bit tense listening them and immediately relax when I stop. There is this strange underlying quality to them for me. I have my theory but it would take awhile and this might not be the place.

I would say even if they did not have the above, I am just not super into them. This may offend - they sound to me like totally okay $300-400 bookshelves strapped into a pretty good for a $250 price, 8" woofer/subwoofer. All for $1500.

Despite this opinion, I can still see why some folks are into them.

I think my version of Linton experience many here are having is the BMR. Just ridiculously right sounding to me and special/unique. Can't stop listening after starting and the whole thing gets addicting and wonderful.
Have you tried tightening the driver screws? There's a massive fan thread over at Hoffman forums... Loose screws seems to be a known issue.
 
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