Intro
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Two-way monitors come in all shapes and sizes, but you can count the ones with coaxial drivers on one hand. The Wharfedale Denton 1S is one of them—and affordable, too. Too good to be true? Let’s check it out!
Wharfedale has been around for over 90 years and can look back on a rich and illustrious history. Founder Gilbert Briggs started making speakers in 1932, back then at his kitchen table. That table was not far from the River Wharfe, and so a name for the company was quickly chosen.
To some people, Wharfedale might still have a somewhat old-fashioned image, but that’s completely unfounded. Yes, you can order just about any model in wood veneer—it is, after all, a British company—but there are now just as many modern designs available.
The product range is extensive. Very extensive. And if we take a quick look around, we see several Denton models on the website. The Denton 1S, however, cannot be compared to its namesakes. It’s a bit of an outlier in the Heritage series—mainly because of the coaxial driver, of course.
Brilliant
That driver consists of a specially developed polypropylene with a large 25mm silk dome tweeter in the center. The design was overseen by none other than Peter Comeau, who paid special attention to the crossover. In theory, this speaker should sound very phase-coherent, but more on that later.
On the back is a “Brilliance” switch that gives the high frequencies a slight boost. This is handy if you need to place the speaker close to a wall. There’s also a little hole for wall mounting. So, in principle, you can set it up any way you like.
The Wharfedale Denton 1S is an 8-ohm speaker that dips to 4.5 ohms. With a sensitivity of 88 dB, this is not a difficult speaker to drive. The frequency range is between 50 Hz and 20 kHz, and the dimensions are 330 x 236 x 229 mm (H x W x D).
The Denton 1S (I keep wanting to type S1) comes in three colors: the matte black version shown here, matte white, and a very trendy blue. The design is very well done, and with or without the front panels, they look contemporary.