Wharfedale's new Heritage Centre speaker will turn your Lintons into a retro home cinema system

Wharfedale's Heritage range is – as the name suggests – a celebration of the brand's history. And now there's a centre channel to go with the pairs of stereo speakers.

The Heritage Centre will transform your Linton or Denton speakers from a stereo setup to a 3.1 or 5.1 home cinema system. It's purpose-built to work with the existing Heritage models, and designed to look right at home doing so.

Like the Linton, Super Linton, Super Denton and Dovedale, the Heritage Centre is a three-way design: the midrange driver works alongside twin bass drivers and a treble unit. Its drivers are derived from those inside the Super Denton.

The midrange driver’s 50mm fabric dome claims to enhance vocal projection and dialogue clarity, which is exactly what you want from a centre channel. It also claims wide dispersion, with seamless transitioning across the frequency range.

Inside the treble unit are a ceramic magnet motor system with a 25mm fabric dome of its own, and a damped rear chamber that absorbs output from the diaphragm, reducing the resonant frequency. This should eliminate harshness.

Overall, the Centre promises “the same full-bodied sonic scale, richly expressive midrange and sweetly articulated high frequencies” as the rest of the Heritage Series. These models have reviewed well: the Denton scored four stars from us back in 2012, while the Linton notched up the full five stars.

A lot of thought went into the Centre's design, too. Like every other Heritage model, it was overseen by Peter Comeau, Wharfedale’s Director of Acoustic Design. It's built to contain all four drivers with enough space inside to sonically match the other Heritage speakers for consistency in performance. Its combination of woods was incorporated in order to scatter panel resonances. And the internal bracing – combined with the damping material – keeps cabinet resonances below the level of the audio signal to eliminate interference.

It also has the same walnut, mahogany and black-oak veneers as the Linton and Denton speakers, to look of a piece with them.

The Wharfedale Heritage Centre will be available in late May for £649 (around $880 / AU$1200).

MORE:

These are the best speakers we have tested

Our reviewers rate the best stereo amps

Our picks of the best bookshelf speakers