Notes on Harbeth, Vandersteen, Avalon & Spendor

For a long time, I was on the Great Speaker Hunt, and started or added to a number of threads, particularly about the speaker makes referenced above, all of which I lived with. I was struggling with one of the real problems with (some) high end audio (as I see it): Hearing crisp highs with loads of detail can be a real turn on, especially when one is relatively new to high end audio. It certainly worked with me years ago. But I'm an old goat now; I'm 30 years away from music school, I've heard a lot of live music in fine halls, and I've also spent time in several recording studios seeing what really happens in the kitchen. The high end gear I was fairly comfortable with a decade or so ago went out the door in frustration as I experienced more and more listening fatigue, and less and less enjoyment of the music. (This also had something to do with topping out on digital, which took me a while to realize -- I have a couple of pretty fine players -- and EMM CDSA and a GNSC-modified Wadia 860 -- but I'll now take my Linn/Rosewood Koestsu/Einstein phono stage over either most any day, in the anti-fatigue department especially.)

So, understanding my bias (and I should also add that vacuum tubes became a critical component), here's how the Great Speaker Search played out:

The Vandersteen 3A's were almost the first thing out the door. In his review of (I believe) the Vandersteen Quattros, Michael Fremer noted, in better language than I could have thunk up, that the Vandersteen's suffered from "too much information distortion." He nailed it for the Quattros and the 3As in my view -- quite simply, they tended to tell me too much that I didn't want to know about the downside of much of the source material I wanted to hear, and not enough about the music underneath. I've said something like this before in this forum and gotten some pretty negative reactions. Knowing what I know now, I think it is possible that, had I been using all Cary or CJ gear with warm-sounding interconnect with the Vandersteens, I might well feel somewhat differently. However, I also didn't like what their midrange did to string orchestra sound. So I'm not in a hurry to go back and try again...but your results may differ, as they say.

The Harbeth Monitor 30's were my first experiment after the Vandersteens, followed by the newer Compact 7's. A guy named Paul Szabady reviewed several Harbeths on-line for Stereo Times back around 2007. Superb, thoughtful reviews. I've got nothing much to add, except this: Paul seemed to think that the Monitor 30's also suffered from some version of "too much information" distortion (such that, as he noted, vinyl sounded noticeably more friendly on the Monitor 30's than digital). I think with older CJ gear, the Monitor 30's are more forgiving than Paul found. And they have some of the best, most euphonic midrange I've heard, ever. So good that, even though I'm now using Avalons, I still have the Monitor 30's, and am getting ready to set them up in my study. Vocals and strings sounded so fine through those things. But they could become fatiguing with the wrong gear, or source material, feeding them.

The Spendor SP 1/2's were my next experiment. They were really fine. I had some wonderful listening sessions with orchestral music playing louder than it should have been, with a surprisingly big, rich sound. At low volumes they seemed just a bit colorless in the midrange compared to the Harbeths, but less susceptible of fatigue. I didn't use them for very long, and the 2nd hand pair I bought had some unfortunate cosmetic damage. In the end, I'll bet with the right front end, a person could get darn comfortable with a pair of these.

Then came the Avalon Ascendants. I bought them, only to have my (now ex-) wife hate their appearance (something that still baffles me). I put them aside until the separation (yes, I had an idea it might be coming...funny how that works), and pulled them back out when the time came.

At first, I thought they were too hard and too bright. I eventually figured out that they were very, very sensitive to what was feeding them. During this Great Speaker Search, I used at various times BAT, Cary, ARC, BEL, Joule, and probably some other gear I can't recall. I finally got to CJ gear, which I'd used back in the 80's, and what I did was bought some of the same gear I'd had back then, but had it substantially updated by Bill Thalman, who used to be with CJ. Somewhere along the way, too, I found myself listening to more records than CD's.

The Ascendants with a souped up CJ PV-5 and souped up CJ Premier IV were really, really fine. I was quite happy with that set-up. Imaging like the Vandersteens, or better (pretty darn holographic), lots of detail, but lots of music, too; very balanced presentation, good fat soundstage...for me, overall, it was a "this is IT" type experience.

Then, I had a shot at trading up to a pair of Avalon Eidelon Visions. I was scared to death to mess up a good thing, and almost didn't do it, but couldn't pass them up in the end. I'm using some different CJ gear in the front end now: a Premier 14 pre with Mullards, and a Thalman-modified Premier 11 (modified to be more like old-style tube-y, or at least that's how I express it). The overall effect is more of the same compared to the Ascendants, but with better extension, more solid, serious bass, and wonderful separation and detail.

I will add that, during the trade-in wait, I had the Harbeth Monitor 30's up for a week with the CJ gear, and I fell for them again -- just super mid-range, and the CJ gear was a great match (given my preferences).

And I will also add that, much as I enjoy the Avalons, I still have CD's and Lp's that I try to play on them that wear on me. I hate it when that happens (which is part of the reason I'm setting up a separate, less-picky (I hope) system in another room). It just doesn't happen near as much as it used to, and when everything is on, or even close, the effect is really swell.

So, I hope this is of some use to somebody. My preferences are very much my own -- having gotten somewhat involved with the Houston Audio Society over the last few years, I've heard more than ever first hand the differences there are in hi-fi listening preferences. I'm sure some folks would say that my system is a little "polite" for their tastes. But, at least directly to me, most of them say, "that's one of the warmest systems I've heard." And that's how I like to listen.

Good listening.