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

[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.