Wharfedale Denton 80th Anniversary Speaker Review

[DanielT]

I haven't looked into the Denton 85 yet, but when critical listening is on the agenda, I have Revel and Monitor Audio setups in other rooms. To be frank, in the bedroom, the Denton 80 and 3050LE are way overkill. I would be just as happy using a Marshall Acton III. It would be more convenient too...

Overkill? I suggest BETTER speakers for your bedroom.

You only live once.

 

[Haskil]

It was an audiophile marketing practice that I began seeing about 30 years ago. The internal crossover cannot be defeated. The advantage compared to typical single binding post pairs was that different wattage amplifiers having the same gain factor could be associated with the different driver groups, thus if the woofer/midwoofer’s amplifier clipped it would not subject the tweeter to full scale harmonic distortion.

I observed the same thing as you... and remember interviews with certain manufacturers who, in the early days when this idiophilic fantasy appeared, resisted its use. They ended up giving in to this commercial injunction so that their speaker could be taken into consideration by the “idiot philes”.
We needed amps with the same gain and the same input sensitivity... and in any case a stereo amplifier capable of powering a speaker without being disturbed by the load it represents is always less expensive than two stereo amps or four mono amps which are not capable of it... And especially not doing it with a tube amp because according to tube amplification specialists, a tube amp does not like to even amplify the entire signal at the input of the transformer and only see a part loaded by the speakers at the output...

 

[RickS]

A grill is not going to fix major issues with this speaker. Since the grill only impacts higher frequencies, I ran a non-anechoic test of without and with grill (added to the review):

You now have a new dip at 3 kHz and larger peak at 4.5 kHz (now at 10 dB differential!). The rest is somewhat smoother but that would just make the speaker sound more bright.

Thanks Amir!

This is pretty indicative that the Denton grille does not yield a comprehensive improvement.

 

[beagleman]

A grill is not going to fix major issues with this speaker. Since the grill only impacts higher frequencies, I ran a non-anechoic test of without and with grill (added to the review):

You now have a new dip at 3 kHz and larger peak at 4.5 kHz (now at 10 dB differential!). The rest is somewhat smoother but that would just make the speaker sound more bright.

Amir, appears you confused the with and without grill measurements on your follow up post with on axis FR>

Your original first post of frequency response on axis shows it the other way around, with the "Grill off" looking much worse.......and with the dip at 3khz

Cause the "Green Response" shown above looks fairly decent........

 

[IanRoberts]

I don't know why anyone would go for a pair of these over the diamond 12.1.

 

[tw 2022]

I don't know why anyone would go for a pair of these over the diamond 12.1.

better drivers and the ability to send them to Dennis Murphy for a crossover upgrade.. past that i'd agree with you 100%

 

[DSJR]

Amir, thanks for the measurements of this speaker. Based on the excellent measurements of the Linton and my experience with the Diamond series, I expected better from Wharfedale. However. I must admit that I bought these primarily for their looks and for that, they serve their purpose very well.

For additional context, this is how they measure in-room at MLP with the grills on using REW's RTA method; it seems to closely match the predicted in-room measurements above.
View attachment 346412

And this is how they look in the bedroom (again, I primarily purchased them due to their looks and vintage style). I think they look the part in my bedroom alongside the NAD 33050LE.

View attachment 346413View attachment 346414

In that response plot, tame the bass below 100Hz and use an older design of vinyl pickup cartridge with mid kHz suckout (Sumiko Pearl or Rega Elys 2 [spit]) and off you go

 

[DSJR]

I observed the same thing as you... and remember interviews with certain manufacturers who, in the early days when this idiophilic fantasy appeared, resisted its use. They ended up giving in to this commercial injunction so that their speaker could be taken into consideration by the “idiot philes”.
We needed amps with the same gain and the same input sensitivity... and in any case a stereo amplifier capable of powering a speaker without being disturbed by the load it represents is always less expensive than two stereo amps or four mono amps which are not capable of it... And especially not doing it with a tube amp because according to tube amplification specialists, a tube amp does not like to even amplify the entire signal at the input of the transformer and only see a part loaded by the speakers at the output...

Buy Wiring and especially passive Bi Amping seems to be fading away now, but I remember being sent a link by Q Acoustics raving about bi-wiring and giving responses and diagrams to 'prove' its superiority. A few months later they updated their range (i series?) and the bi-wiring terminals disappeared!!!!!

The Linn Kaber was a godawful thing mostly however it was used back then, but that model seemed to benefit from bi wiring as single wired, there did seem to be some form of electrical interference in the crossover between the bass and 'midrange' drivers. I don't know the topology of the crossovers though, but these were from an era where 'aktiv' was the design goal and the passive crossovers were hobbled/cobbled together to simply make them work as bottom rung of an upgrade ladder

 

[Robbo99999]

It's a pity when speakers get trashed, but main thing is we know to avoid this one! Sometimes I wonder what speaker designers really do when all it takes is a few simple measurements to realise that this one would need to be improved in areas, unless the company in question has their own "secret sauce" of what they think makes a good speaker, but I think we've seen at least one half decent Wharfdale speaker so you'd think there's some good knowledge in the company at some point.

 

[ROOSKIE]

It's a pity when speakers get trashed, but main thing is we know to avoid this one! Sometimes I wonder what speaker designers really do when all it takes is a few simple measurements to realise that this one would need to be improved in areas, unless the company in question has their own "secret sauce" of what they think makes a good speaker, but I think we've seen at least one half decent Wharfdale speaker so you'd think there's some good knowledge in the company at some point.

I'm sure this was driven by marketing and aesthetics as much or more as engineering.

Someone wanted the edge lip on a square box and a recessed vintage grill.
They wanted real wood veneer to be used.
They also wanted it to sell for $500ish and be profitable to manufacturer, distributor and retailer (despite actually using real wood veneer which adds much to the production cost.)
The manufacturer parts cost has to be @$100 or less.
The driver budget was $5 or 6 or 7 bucks using at best a $2-3 tweeter and a $4-5 woofer.(could be $1 drivers here)
The crossover budget was $5 or less.
The cabinet around $50-60 and packaging another $10.

Given those constraints it is okay. Not bad actually.
That edge is really hard to engineer a workaround(This particular grill design may mitigate some edge diffraction issues) and the directivity issue requires a better tweeter with a lower crossover point and/or a small waveguide.

Problem is folks see the $1000'retail' price and love the designer label and perceive this is a well engineered hifi design on sale for $500.
Maybe some think or hope it might even be a retro LS50meta or M105.
But it is actually a $249 Diamond 220 without the waveguide for the tweeter and a big lip for the retro grill & really nice veneer.

 

[mhardy6647]

I measured a speaker on one day and listened to it a couple of days. By then I had forgotten how it measured. First impression was that of brightness and wide spatial qualities. The latter is one benefit of not having a waveguide and having the larger beamwidth of tweeter (with the price being worse off-axis response). The brightness was mostly due to the hump around 5 to 6 kHz. I pulled that down which provided some relief. Sound was still not right so I went down the rabbit hole of creating 6 filters which balanced things out but still, I was not at all a fan of my the overall speaker. My standard reference clips simply didn't sound enjoyable, hence the reason I am not sharing the EQ I developed.

Wanting to make sure it was not my mood on this day, I switched the Wharfedale out and connected my Revel Salon 2. Oh my gosh. The fidelity was so much better that it nearly brought tears to my eyes.

Reading this led me to reflect with some amusement on the myriad posts on other forums all across the audiophilosphere denigrating this site in general, and @amirm in particular with comments along this line: "The problem with ASR is that those guys just look at numbers; they don't even listen to the things they test!".

Not only does @amirm listen, he even controls for the utterly subjective component of mood as best he can! Can't beat that with a stick (as they say).

 

[mck22mck]

I was disappointed with the outcome of this review, as I was interested in the 85 version of this speaker for my daughter's bedroom. Oh, well. I guess there must be a few other "acceptable" wood veneers around this price.

I would point out that while the Denton 80th is still being sold on (US) Amazon, they seem to be deeply discounted, at least compared to the 85s, and come with the warning that only a few are left. The Denton 85 is for sale there at the MSRP I've seen elsewhere, and only the Denton 85 version sold through Amazon Prime. But since the 85s are now about 6 years old, maybe a 90th anniversary version is on the way.

The Amazon product photos seem to show the "very thick frame with drivers and baffle recessed around half an inch" on the Denton 80 that Amir mentions, but the frame seems much smaller and more shallow on the Denton 85 photos. So, perhaps the diffraction from the 80's frame is doing some mischief that might be ameliorated in the 85 version. Given that the Denton 85 version is so old, and so few reviewers able to provide objective measurements, we will probably never know.

 

[ROOSKIE]

I was disappointed with the outcome of this review, as I was interested in the 85 version of this speaker for my daughter's bedroom. Oh, well. I guess there must be a few other "acceptable" wood veneers around this price.

I would point out that while the Denton 80th is still being sold on (US) Amazon, they seem to be deeply discounted, at least compared to the 85s, and come with the warning that only a few are left. The Denton 85 is for sale there at the MSRP I've seen elsewhere, and only the Denton 85 version sold through Amazon Prime. But since the 85s are now about 6 years old, maybe a 90th anniversary version is on the way.

The Amazon product photos seem to show the "very thick frame with drivers and baffle recessed around half an inch" on the Denton 80 that Amir mentions, but the frame seems much smaller and more shallow on the Denton 85 photos. So, perhaps the diffraction from the 80's frame is doing some mischief that might be ameliorated in the 85 version. Given that the Denton 85 version is so old, and so few reviewers able to provide objective measurements, we will probably never know.

I'd guess plenty more are coming.
Amazon 85 stock might run out temporarily but Crutchfield @least has more coming in April and are taking backorder of all colors. So is Music Direct(they also distribute the brand)They would not do this if it was discontinued.
The 85 I think has similar frame depth but the cabinet is much bigger overall so might look like less relatively.
While I wouldn't buy for my own use,
If the look is right, I would suspect the 80 or 85 will be more that fine in a child's room unless they are the very few minor aged people who are truly into hifi.
Other real wood veneer options that sell new under $1k are just hard to find.

 

[warpdrive]

Disappointed that the speaker wasn't measured with the grills on, which is the intended design according the Peter Comeau. From the one on-axis measurement that Amir showed, it doesn't look bad at all. It still may be bright but it should sound much smoother with much less diffraction going on.

Erin did it right. The Linton looked much poorer with the grills off, and so he presented the full spinorama of the grill-on configuration. I always feel he's much more thorough in testing out the different combinations of said product before passing judgement on it (also trying out the different user selectable EQ settings to see which one is the most accurate)

This speaker has been cleared out near the $500 mark forever with the 85th model which is the sibling model of the Linton

 

[Philipp]

I always feel he's much more thorough in testing

I always feel people that do not even contribute some dollars for these testings they like to comment on should be more humble in passing judgement on the effort Amir is bringing into his work.

 

[Robbo99999]

I'm sure this was driven by marketing and aesthetics as much or more as engineering.

Someone wanted the edge lip on a square box and a recessed vintage grill.
They wanted real wood veneer to be used.
They also wanted it to sell for $500ish and be profitable to manufacturer, distributor and retailer (despite actually using real wood veneer which adds much to the production cost.)
The manufacturer parts cost has to be @$100 or less.
The driver budget was $5 or 6 or 7 bucks using at best a $2-3 tweeter and a $4-5 woofer.(could be $1 drivers here)
The crossover budget was $5 or less.
The cabinet around $50-60 and packaging another $10.

Given those constraints it is okay. Not bad actually.
That edge is really hard to engineer a workaround(This particular grill design may mitigate some edge diffraction issues) and the directivity issue requires a better tweeter with a lower crossover point and/or a small waveguide.

Problem is folks see the $1000'retail' price and love the designer label and perceive this is a well engineered hifi design on sale for $500.
Maybe some think or hope it might even be a retro LS50meta or M105.
But it is actually a $249 Diamond 220 without the waveguide for the tweeter and a big lip for the retro grill & really nice veneer.

How accurate that all is in terms of the development of this speaker I don't know, but for sure they missed out a good bit of sensible engineering in the process, ha!

 

[Thomas_A]

A grill is not going to fix major issues with this speaker. Since the grill only impacts higher frequencies, I ran a non-anechoic test of without and with grill (added to the review):

You now have a new dip at 3 kHz and larger peak at 4.5 kHz (now at 10 dB differential!). The rest is somewhat smoother but that would just make the speaker sound more bright.

Not easy to eye-ball but isn’t the green frequency response +/- 2 dB between 300 Hz- 16 kHz?

 

[warpdrive]

Not easy to eye-ball but isn’t the green frequency response +/- 2 dB between 300 Hz- 16 kHz?

Pretty much so.

 

[Mikig]

I think that the market for this type of audio components is different from those who expect "critical listening" measurements and sound performance for each component.

These speakers look good in a beautiful study with wooden paneling or in a lovely living room, next to a modern vintage style amplifier, or a 70s receiver and a wonderful turntable. Obviously not to say so with the grilles, because the "naked" speaker makes too much "clutter"...

They are nice objects with a shape/price ratio, and why not, with a pleasant sound; I don't perceive them as "music room" machines...

 

[ROOSKIE]

I think that the market for this type of audio components is different from those who expect "critical listening" measurements and sound performance for each component.

These speakers look good in a beautiful study with wooden paneling or in a lovely living room, next to a modern vintage style amplifier, or a 70s receiver and a wonderful turntable. Obviously not to say so with the grilles, because the "naked" speaker makes too much "clutter"...

They are nice objects with a shape/price ratio, and why not, with a pleasant sound; I don't perceive them as "music room" machines...

I basically agree.
I've already said that I didn't care for them and definitely don't think they are worth the money if you value price to performance.
Many better options exist.
Given that if you need a decent speaker under $1k USD with an excellent real wood veneer vintage finish what else is available in the market besides this and the 85? I guess the L52 but that is fun vs classy looks and the real walnut actually looks pretty plasticity on them(but still nice imho).
I actually can't think of other options.
Just a lot of obvious vinyl and gloss finishes.
If you don't require the vintage vibe, Wharfedale EVO 4.1, AXIOM & KLH have some real wood veneer choices, I have seen Revel M105s under$1k a pair B-Stock and open box, they only come in high gloss though. Not much else affordable around with real wood veneer finish. The Quad S2 is often $999, they measured pretty well @ Stereophile.
Maybe Klipsch the Sevens or Nines if you factor in savings on the amp.