cant install a sub woofer as neighbours walls are too thin.
The Lintons aren't really bass shy. I too live in a flat and this is how i deal with it:
I don't play loud after 9pm, midday or holidays. That is only fair.
If a particularly sensitive neighbor is annoyed, i apologize and promise to turn it down, but never do. This will repeat a few times, but eventually people notice that it makes no difference to complain.
Where i live there's very little chance to try any hifi system, let alone the lintons, so need your precious feedback.
Well, in my opinion tests in show rooms aren't worth much anyway. Sure, you can look at the speaker to see if it is a good quality build, but the sound is vastly different at home. If you can, i recommend to order a few speakers and compare them at home, then send back the ones you don't like. That might cost you a bit of shipping, but it helps to pick a winner.
Another tactic is to buy used, as you can mostly sell later for the same price you paid. I do this a lot, i had probably 10 different speakers this year.
I am concerned that being this an audiophile site most attention is directed to the "cleanest", most perfect sound, while I put equal emphasis on "fun"
I believe that one enables the other. You can't get the full emotional impact of music if your speakers omit details or add distortion or resonances. The Linton 85th are not some intellectual one trick pony without bass, they can truly let it rip, if the source demands it.
This one builds up, almost brutally. If you can, get "The Very Best Of Erich Kunzel And The Cincinnati Pops" on CD, there are some awesome songs on this. It's mixed in surround too, so if you have a Hafler matrix or Dolby Sourround or ProLogic decoder, extra fun can be had:
And to give you a tune that is pure fun, here is one of the coolest bass lines in all of dub history:
How do these tunes sound on your lintons compared to your headphones?
Some new things come to the foreground, others hide. All in all i prefer the sound of speakers. None of your tunes, or any tune for that matter, is particularly bad or good for speakers, i think.