Wharfedale

Super Denton Loudspeakers

USD $1,399 /pair

"Wharfedale's Heritage Series has exceeded our expectations, says Wharfedale's Director of Acoustic Design, Peter Comeau. "These models are specifically aimed at those who want the classic looks and golden sound of speakers designed in the nineteen seventies, but brought up to date to suit modern recording techniques and playback equipment."

Having spoken to Wharfedale insiders regularly over the years, I think it's fair to say that the success of the Heritage series has surprised the company bigwigs – it really is a strong seller, with the Linton, in particular, shifting numbers that were simply never envisaged. It started with the Denton 80 and Denton 85 anniversary models over a decade ago, but then the concept grew wings and took off; the range now outsells the company's modern loudspeakers in several market sectors.

Such glittering success has duly given Peter licence to sharpen up the Heritage range still further, so meet the new 'Super' models. "Given the success of the Linton as a 3-way speaker," he says, "we thought we could have fun turning Denton into a 3-way and uprating its performance significantly to offer a more compact sibling to Linton. We also wanted to offer upgraded versions of the Heritage models, just as Wharfedale had done in the past. So, we still have the regular Denton 80 and Denton 85, and now also the upgraded Super Denton – and another Super Heritage speaker just landed…"

All of this is odd, considering I have spent much of my hi-fi writing career being told by senior speaker designers from countless companies that "the market only wants small-footprint floorstanders these days" and "no one will buy a wide-baffle speaker". Furthermore, twenty or so years ago, it looked like the mass market had utterly given up on 3-way designs. So many speakers that came out then seemed to be tower-type speakers with multiple, small mid/bass and bass units, often in a 2- or 2.5-way configuration. Many of these made the music sound like it was being squeezed through a toothpaste tube.

"The advantage of a 3-way speaker", explains Peter, "is that the delicate tones in the upper midrange can be output by a diaphragm that is moving well within its linear region, as it doesn't have to displace large volumes of air in the way that a bass unit does. Also, we can make the diaphragm smaller, so the Directivity Index is better." Translated from boffin-speak, this means that because 3-ways are split into bass, mid and treble drivers, each can be better tailored for the frequency it's designed to reproduce and doesn't over-burden itself in so doing.

3-way loudspeakers were all the rage back in the nineteen seventies – indeed, the only reason for owning a 2-way speaker was because you couldn't afford a 3-way. But then, in the eighties, the fashion changed to small 2-ways in stripped-down Yuppie flats adorned by Filofaxes and (then) super high-tech video recorders. Suddenly, 3-ways looked needlessly large and cumbersome. In the nineties, the cabinets duly got narrower, and we were left with a world of tall, slimline floorstanders that were still primarily 2-ways.

There's a downside to 3-ways, of course, which is that they're more expensive to manufacture. Also, as Peter says, "You would normally have to make the speaker cabinet much bigger to contain the extra midrange unit and its internal enclosure. The clever aspect of Super Denton is that we've used a dome midrange, which is really compact and has its own rear chamber built in, so we can keep the cabinet small."

That's why this is especially interesting from a technical point of view – because it's an old-school, wide baffle 3-way with a dome midrange driver. The latter is another real blast from the past – in the intervening fifty years, it has largely fallen out of fashion, with the notable exception of companies like ATC still using them. Another possible criticism of the Super Denton is that its wide cabinet won't image well. It's certainly true that many such designs from the seventies were dire in this respect, such as Linn's giant Isobarik. But Peter says that this layman's 'rule of thumb' is partial and flawed.

"I do not agree that wide-baffle speakers cannot image. What matters is the Directivity Index (DI), which is a measure of how the speaker performs off-axis over the whole acoustic bandwidth. If the DI is skewed, the stereo image will not be precise; if the DI is smooth, the image will be accurately located. Generally, it is easier to arrange for a smooth DI with narrow baffle speakers, but there's no reason you can't get the same performance with wider baffles; it just takes more expertise. In the Super Denton, the dome midrange does most of the work and, by offsetting the midrange and treble domes towards the edges of the baffle, we ensure that the DI is smooth and the stereo image is stable."

UP CLOSE

"The main aim of the Super Denton was to offer the enjoyable musicality of the Linton Heritage but in a smaller package", says Peter. To that end, the speaker sports a well-finished, smallish cabinet that measures 360x246x275mm and weighs 9.2kg apiece. With an internal volume of 14.7 litres, it's a little deeper than you'd expect for a speaker of this height – and, of course, is considerably wider, too. A larger cabinet volume than average is going to give the designer more options regarding sensitivity and impedance figures and/or bass extension. More about this later.

The driver complement comprises a 25mm soft dome tweeter taken from the Heritage range flagship – the Dovedale – plus a 50mm soft dome midrange driver that's a slightly modified version of the unit used in the EVO4 Series. The 165mm black woven Kevlar bass unit is similar to that used in the Denton 85. Crossover frequencies are said to be 940Hz and 4.6kHz. There's a single pair of speaker binding posts at the back of the cabinet beneath the rear-firing dual port arrangement.

Wharfedale claims a sensitivity figure of 87dB, a nominal impedance of 6 ohms and a minimum of 3.4. Interestingly, this is spookily similar to the 'vital statistics' of mid-seventies Dentons, too – despite the latter being infinite baffle designs back in the day. In practice, pretty much any modern integrated amplifier should be able to drive it to reasonable levels, although it does appreciate really gutsy solid-state amps. Maximum power handling is 120W RMS. Claimed frequency response is impressive at 52Hz - 20kHz (-3dB); Peter Comeau told me, "Obviously, we couldn't emulate the bass extension of the Linton, but even so, the bass power of the Super Denton is surprising and is maintained well down to 40Hz."

This speaker isn't overly fussy about placement but does reward care in set-up all the same. The big issue is the rear reflex ports, which create bass boom if the Super Denton is closer than around 20cm from the boundary wall. I found that this speaker likes to come out into the room a bit and sit on rigid frame stands with a subtle toe-in. Supplied as a mirror image pair, the wee Wharfedales are designed to work best when the midrange domes are facing inwards. I used a range of amplifiers from a Rega Aethos to a Cyrus 40 AMP/40 PSU, with a Chord Electronics DAVE DAC as a source.

THE LISTENING

You usually expect small, affordable standmounters to sound cheap and cheerful. They will be fun, exuberant even, peppy, punchy, and bright, and they will have a chunky bass that belies the size of the cabinet. Curiously, however, the Super Denton is nothing like this. It sounds like a big 3-way speaker that has 'shrunk in the wash'. It's mature, balanced, open, detailed and sophisticated, with a conspicuous absence of bass boom and treble tizz. This speaker isn't here to embellish the sound – it simply wants to reproduce the recording as best it can, given the small size of its cabinet.

It's a very mature performer, then, but don't confuse this with a boring one. The new Wharfedale shows that it is, in fact, possible to make musically engaging speakers that don't rattle your sinuses due to searing tonal brightness or burst your eardrums with violent bass peaks. Cue up a classic rock track like the latest remaster of The Beatles' Come Together, and you're treated to a buttery smooth yet detailed sound which goes further than expected in terms of capturing the flavour of the recording venue used and the tonal timbre of the instruments.

There's little sense of jaggedness in the midband that makes vocals sound shouty or nasal and no sign of low-frequency sweet spots that make the bass guitar boom. At the same time, hi-hat cymbal work is always smooth and linear, with no undue grit or zing. At first, this can sound a tad underwhelming, but the more you listen, the more you focus in on the music and begin to forget about the recording. This is a trick that few standmounters at this price even get close to playing.

Move to some more modern electronica, such as the biting drum'n'bass of Alex Reece's Feel The Sunshine and the Super Denton surprises with a really fast and grippy rendition. It throws out about as much bass as is humanly possible from its modestly sized woofer, but more importantly, this speaker is able to stop and start with alacrity. There's no dragging of its heels as those blistering drum machine snare hits machine-gun their way along, and the cymbal sound is fast yet smooth. This speaker shows another side of itself with programme material such as this – it is couth and balanced yet capable of real impact.

The Super Denton serves up an immersive and three-dimensional soundstage without drawing attention to itself. Cue up the first movement of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony – here courtesy of the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Karajan – and the recorded acoustic is reproduced on a scale you wouldn't expect from a speaker of this size. The Super Denton doesn't have the hear-through clarity of standmounters at twice its price, of course, so there's a slight lack of definition and air in absolute terms. Yet it's still impressive at reproducing the timbre of massed strings, for example – giving a lovely tactile feel to cellos. Again, its intrinsic evenness and authority shine through with music like this, particularly in the midband.

Being a 3-way design, its drive units need to move a little less than a 2-way to create the same sound pressure level – meaning less cone excursion is required. This manifests itself as the Super Denton sounding very relaxed at normal listening levels – it's like a car with a larger engine that doesn't need to rev so much to get the same speed up. This is most noticeable on dynamic peaks of course, especially when listening at high volume levels. It holds Jimi Hendrix's epic cover of All Along The Watchtower together brilliantly, sounding poised and in control – and with notably less compression on the loud parts than you'd expect from a speaker of this size.

This little loudspeaker is still far from perfect, though, as you would expect. Yet its genius – if you can call it that – is that it steps out of the fray of cheap standmounters and all their associated vices. The result is something far more 'grown up' than its price would normally permit. To people like myself, who have lived with wide baffle 3-way speakers for decades – usually much bigger than this one, admittedly – the sound that the Super Denton gives is pleasingly familiar. It's a fine all-rounder that excels in some respects in a way that's rarely found at this price.

THE VERDICT

If you're after a 'wicked boom box' to smash out some 'banging tunes', then Wharfedale's new Super Denton is not for you. The irony is that it can do this rather well, yet its real strength is simply reproducing what's on the recording with as few vices as possible at the price. To some, that might seem bland, but the adults in the room will love what it does relative to its retail cost. So whether you love or hate the retro styling, this is well worth an audition.

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