Article: Review | Wharfedale Linton Heritage 85th & Audiolab 6000A / 6000CDT

[DuckToller]

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I had a Cyrus 1 for over 20 years. It was one of the best the Brits have ever made. Great sound and virtually indestructible.

[DuckToller]

7 hours ago, bobflood said:

I had a Cyrus 1 for over 20 years. It was one of the best the Brits have ever made. Great sound and virtually indestructible.

 

I've acquired an used Cyrus 3i  from 1998 with PSX-R  as a  back up with Phono Pre-Amp last summer after the Rega had been re-activated.
Worked well with Wharfedale!!! Love the Rega/Cyrus/B&W 805s combination.Makes me just 20 years younger, in my ears 😉

 

[kravi4ka]

Thanks for the wonderful review! And when I say thank you it is more than that, I am actually also relieved that words now mean something, you can understand what the reviewer is saying and feel what he is feeling, you get the perspective where things fit, it feels like a friend is telling me about the equipment and not the Stereophile "I am good with words but you will not know if the damn thing sounds good or not" type of writing. 

 

Audiophilestyle becomes the site that is home to the natural, human reviews of equipment and civilised talk about audio and music, thank you Chris!

[DuckToller]

1 hour ago, kravi4ka said:

Thanks for the wonderful review! And when I say thank you it is more than that, I am actually also relieved that words now mean something, you can understand what the reviewer is saying and feel what he is feeling, you get the perspective where things fit, it feels like a friend is telling me about the equipment and not the Stereophile "I am good with words but you will not know if the damn thing sounds good or not" type of writing. 

@kravi4ka
Thank you very much for the kind words, that's the currency we work for!
Glad you liked it!!!
Tom
 

[The Computer Audiophile]

On 1/17/2020 at 1:02 PM, kravi4ka said:

Audiophilestyle becomes the site that is home to the natural, human reviews of equipment and civilised talk about audio and music, thank you Chris!

Thanks for the kind words and please thank Tom / @DuckToller. He puts a ton off work into what he does for Audiophile Style. 

[Geoff13]

Hello,

 

indeed a very well written review but i don't understand why you attack Paul Rigby. A veteran in the business and a fair and sometimes even ruthless reviewer.

 

best regards

Geoff

[DuckToller]

1 hour ago, Geoff13 said:

Hello,

 

indeed a very well written review but i don't understand why you attack Paul Rigby. A veteran in the business and a fair and sometimes even ruthless reviewer.

 

best regards

Geoff

Thank you Geoff, for your comment.
However, I did not intend to "attack" Paul Rigby at all by writing that I found his review fun and entertaining, while balancing it a bit by stating in a mild manner my personal opinion how it felt for me (a tiny bit over the top). Though, from your pov it obviously did not touch that impression in the way it was intended. It might relate to a different understanding of language from my side that I didn't see that coming.

Best, Tom 

[Danny Kaey]

This has to be the most complete system review I have read in a while... amazing work! 😊

[JohnDe]

Thank you for a great descriptive review.

By chance I purchased this system, with the Streaming 6000A, and P3. The song quality is exceptional, for the price range. However, we have had issues with the streaming but our supplier sorted this out for us.

I think that we may have found a flaw in the system. A recent dinner vinyl party night with friends the 6000A started to cut out after a few hours of playing at a moderately loud level of -10. Most of those 2 hours was at -18, when we tried to increase the level the system cut out. I touched the top, thinking that it may be an overheating issue but found it only slightly warm.

As the night went on and the records flowed the issue became annoyingly worse. I kept checking the temperature and found that it was becoming very warm to touch. The night was cool, the system is in an open shelf.

Sometimes the screen would go blank, sometimes RPT would show, and on other occasions it would switch from Phono to OP1.

The audio system supplier first said that we were drawing too much power and the amp was protecting itself, which I thought doubtful because the amp volume would cut out at -9 at best, and that volume was only seconds.

That night I tried the system at various volume levels, -20, -15, -10, -8, -2, +2, +5, +8. I have never played the system at these levels, too loud, the system did not cut out. It played, though there was some distortion at the higher levels.

 

My conclusion, the 6000A with the inbuilt streamer is unable to reduce internal heat fast enough during long long hours of playing.

On a side note, the youngest of us is 52, we all brought vinyl and started with background music during our dinner, moving to a pool party while the music went up a notch, and finishing the night with a full on dance session and music up another notch. Approximately 8 hours running time. My audio supplier suggests 3 hours is too long :-( and that we try the stand-alone 6000A with a separate Audiolab streamer.

[DuckToller]

@JohnDe

Thank you for the flowers and reporting your experience.
I don't envy you for the amplifier complications, but in 2020 the evening you've described sounds like a very precious moment in time.

My P3 has already 25 years on the plate, I hope you'll get that with your new one as well ;-)
I've consciously kept me out of the play-fi streamer discourse with that review, let's put it this way:
I
n my view it is preferable to have a Pre/DAC//Streamer combo where it's easy to still use the first two technologies, if the streaming side needs a re-vamp and may be circumvented. Amplification and DAC are somehow matured tech and features are the drivers for new models, technolgy not so much. Thus, streaming platforms may still have some room for improvement in signal reception, transport and storage technology, while there is quite a good competition on the softwarew side.

For the record.: the slightly older sibling 8300A may have the additional power you prefer to have and prices of the 2018 introduced units went south (in Europe) after the 6000series arrived.

Having Dinner, Music, Pool and Dancing with good friends bringing records to your home sounds like a fantastic recipe for happiness. I wish you a fully functionally amp for XMAS & the next happening !!!

Stay safe and sound, Tom