Here at The Cheap Audio Man, we talk about high-value hi-fi, home theater, and headphone equipment.

And today, very exciting, very high value, it's the Wharfdale Denton, the 80th anniversary.

So sit down, grab a cup of coffee, and let's talk about this classic speaker that's as low as it's ever been, today.

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I have always wanted to get one of these speakers in.

The problem is, for me, the Denton was always a bit outside of my price range.

However, I talked to the fine folks over at Wharfdale and they talked to me about, hey, would you be interested in reviewing the Denton?

Actually, I think I reached out to them and said, hey, can I get the Dentons in to listen to them?

There's a few different models still out there.

There's the 85th edition and the 80th edition.

This is the 80th edition, which means it's the more affordable option.

It's even more affordable today because for the first time ever, maybe, I don't know, it's $500. $500 for a pair of the Denton, the 80th edition, which are now available on Wharfdale's website.

Wharfdale USA site.

These come in two colors, walnut and mahogany.

I don't have the mahogany ones here.

I have the walnut.

They're beautiful.

They're beautiful.

They remind me, obviously so, of the Linton.

The reason why is everything from how the grill is beveled right here and kind of sits flush, the front of the speaker sits like this and then it goes in there.

Anyway, it's real, real nice.

Veneer.

Mmm.

Yeah, I know you can't smell it and I can't smell it, but if you could smell it, it would smell real nice, like real wood veneer.

On the back, dual ports and the very traditional Wharfdale bi-wire, bi-amp option with offset binding posts.

I personally don't bi-amp or bi-wire, but if you'd like to, you certainly can with these.

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Specifications.

Okay.

This has a one inch soft dome tweeter and a five inch woven Kevlar woofer.

Will it stop bullets?

I don't know.

You may want to try that out.

Don't try that out.

Don't shoot your speaker with a gun because the woofer is not going to stop it even though it's made out of Kevlar.

Don't do it.

Nominal impedance is six ohms.

Frequency response, 44 Hertz.

That's pretty low.

Negative three DB, 44 Hertz goes up to 24,000 Hertz on the top end.

These come in at 17.4 pounds a piece.

Okay.

I got a joke in here about weight, but let me tell you how big they are.

So they're 7.8 inches wide, 10.8 inches tall and 12.6 inches deep.

Okay.

Back to the joke.

So these weigh 17.4 pounds.

They're small.

This is a small speaker, right?

I just recently had a pair of Towers in.

Guess how much they weighed?

19 pounds.

They had two six and a half inch woofers, one, one inch soft dome tweeter, and they were a Tower and they were braced really, really well.

And they were a pound and a half heavier than these, which tells me if I had to make a guess, I'm no speaker designer or anything.

I would think that the 17.4 pound bookshelf speaker that's this size would be built a little bit better and have less resonance issues than the 19 pound giant Tower speaker.

Let's just take that and chalk it up to, Hey, this thing is braced well, maybe it's built pretty good.

At six Ohms and 86 DB sensitivity.

These may take a bit of a little bit of power.

They say they 20 to a hundred watts is what they can take or what they should take.

I had them on a pretty hefty amp.

I had them on a pair of A1 Emotiva monoblocks.

They did really well.

I also put them on the A07 by IEMA.

I think that's putting out around 50 clean watts.

The Dentons did great on the IEMA as well. 86, a little bit low, six Ohms, kind of middle, middle of the road, not as hard to drive as some Elacs and things like that.

I wouldn't go crazy about how much power you have to put on these.

However, better amp, more power, probably going to play a little bit better.

We're on the woofer here.

You have like this kind of rubbery surround.

I don't particularly know what that's doing.

I know it's there for something because I've seen it on other speakers before, so it's got that going for it.

And then the tweeter doesn't have a huge wave guide, but as we'll talk about in soundstage and imaging, you're not missing anything.

Speaking about soundstage and imaging, let's talk about soundstage and imaging.

So I tried these out in two different locations.

One is my living room, which is huge.

The other was right here in my office where I do most of my like critical listening.

So also near field, near field listening.

What I will say is the cool thing about this being a bit of a smaller speaker is even though they may not measure far away from the back wall, since they're not as deep, I actually get the same effect as if they were pulled out farther from the wall.

So a smaller speaker in a near field situation is oftentimes really good because you can still get a great soundstage.

You can still get great imaging.

And when you push yourself into them so you don't have the equilateral triangle, basically, let's say they're five foot apart and then you're in about three feet, that soundstage can get really, really deep.

And it's very similar to what Ron at New Record Day does with what's called LOTS, loudspeaker optimization, something, something, basically where to put your speakers.

Here's the takeaway.

Pull them out in the room.

In the living room, I had them on my console, but I had them on top of some ISO Acoustics isolation pads.

We're going to come back to that.

Well, we'll just talk about it right now.

These are a shorter speaker.

So most stands are not going to get the tweeter up to ear level.

With ISO Acoustics, gave them about three or four inches.

So it brought that tweeter up closer to ear level for me.

I can also do this.

Now I feel weird.

And you can kind of slouch down on your couch or whatever.

I would get these as close to ear level as you can because while I think they have good vertical roll off, lateral roll off, which means you're still going to hear the top end, even if you get above or below.

I think these really shine when they're close to ear level because they're not fatiguing at all.

So you may have to play around with either the height of your stands or put something underneath it.

And actually the ISO Acoustics things are pretty, pretty awesome.

I haven't done a full review on those stands because I didn't know how it would be.

I didn't know how it would go over because we're getting into controversial snake oil type of a stuff.

But for me, it dramatically increases soundstage and imaging and also just cleans things up.

Really on the bottom end, especially.

So whether you look at the ISO Acoustics or whether you're looking at some other type of isolation material, even if it's just rubber in between your speaker stand and the speaker, I think you're going to hear some benefits.

And it goes back to having a good stand, a good inner stand, filling it with kitty litter, unused kitty litter.

You can fill it with used kitty litter.

I don't know if I'd recommend that though.

Anyway, back to soundstage and imaging.

I was actually running these as a two channel system for home theater.

No center channel, no subwoofer.

You can tell a lot about a speaker when you just use two speakers for your whole home theater without a sub or anything.

Dialogue was great.

But imaging, and again, because they're a smaller speaker, you can get them, you can play around with towing and you can get it perfect for your room or where you're sitting within your room.

The lateral soundstage was much wider than the speakers, was also much taller.

Again, small speakers have a tendency to soundstage and image great in my experience because you have so many options and so much freedom of where you're going to place them.

Hello by Adele, her voice was above the speaker, so slightly above when I had them at ear level.

Chocolate Chip Trip was seamless, right to left, left to right.

And all the MTV Unplugged records, Alice in Chains, Korn, Alanis Morissette, even Pearl Jam, large space, large.

Felt like the crowd was all around you.

It was really intense and fun.

Let's talk about bass.

Now, with bass, you would look at this speaker and think, huh, it's pretty small.

There's no way you're going to get a lot of bass out of here.

But surprisingly enough, I think rated at 44 Hertz, these are, these go down.

I think they have a smooth roll off.

These speakers don't have as much punch as some other speakers have, but generally speaking, those speakers are boosted through port length or enclosure construction.

So what happens is you don't have a smooth roll off.

The cool thing with these speakers is you do have that roll off and there's enough heft there to keep me happy, at least.

Narcissistic Cannibal by Korn, I heard a smidge of it.

Intergalactic by the Beastie Boys, I did hear, mmm.

I got more roll off than I got heft, but the heft that I got there was just good enough for me.

Where the Denton really shines is with bass clarity.

So what, Miles Davis, kind of blue.

The standup bass was fantastic.

The sound after the bass was plucked, kind of the way it would go up and down and not stay in the same exact frequency.

So you know, a little bit of vibration and kind of go up and down a bit.

The Denton was absolutely fantastic with that.

This is very similar to the Linton.

The Linton did bass clarity extremely, or does bass clarity extremely well.

Denton does bass clarity extremely well.

Same family here, I think same driver technology, similar sound.

And that's going to be kind of a reoccurring theme here.

This is kind of like a miniaturized version of the Linton.

It's great.

It's not going to be right for everybody because it is smaller, but sonically it's very similar to the Linton, which is one of my favorite speakers.

Let's talk about mid-range.

Mid-range is an area where this speaker, I think, is going to shine the most.

Vocals, acoustic guitars, male vocals especially, have a presence.

It's not overly done, overly baked, but there is a robustness to male vocals.

Johnny Cash, Hurt.

It seemed like the baritone in his voice hung out for just a second.

It was just thicker, deeper, a little bit more three-dimensional than I've heard on a lot of other speakers.

Even some speakers that I would consider to be rolled off and have a great mid-range.

The Denton is doing something special in here with the mid-range, mostly with male vocals.

Female vocals are good.

They're not quite as detailed as some other speakers that I've heard with maybe an AMT tweeter or something else.

Even with some soft-dome tweeters, especially with some metal-dome tweeters.

Conversely though, I think female vocals are more organic and sound more believable on the Denton than they do on other speakers.

Those other speakers would be ones that have a metal-dome tweeter.

Titanium, aluminum, things like that, AMT.

The Yamaha Concert Series has a soft-dome tweeter, but there's so much boost in it that it seems unnatural too.

This is a speaker, I wouldn't call it rolled off, which means the treble is reduced.

I would say this is a linear, believable frequency response.

But the magic here is in male vocals and acoustic guitars and a bit of the lower register.