Harbeth C7 vs Proac D25 Review

Hi folks. As some of you may know I've been on the hunt for an attractive pair of floorstanders to replace my Compact 7's. I've recently had the opportunity to plug a pair of D25's into my system and wanted to share the results. Rest of the gear is a VPI Scout/JMW9 arm and Dynavector 20XH feeding an ARC SP16 into a ARC 100.2. CD player is a Rotel 971. Cables by Ridge Street Audio, Wireworld and Naim on the speakers. The room is 22 X 14 X 9 opening into an 11 X 11 on the short wall where the speakers are located. I've had the Proac's set up for about a week and have listened to a variety of music from rock to chamber to jazz.
First of all, some might question putting the $2650 C7 against the $5500 D25. First, the D25 is in the price range of where I want to be in any upgrade. Second, over the past year or so of my search the C7's have proven themselves easily able to compete with speakers costing two or three times their retail price. Both are two ways in vented boxes so here too the comparison is apt.
First, let me say that the D25 was surprisingly good. I heard them at a dealer some time ago and was disappointed by their sound--though suspected the room was hurting their performance. I was right. I'll just run down a list of comparisons and talk about both in the process.

The D25 is a more revealing speaker. I hear details in my recordings that I've never encountered. For example, in "Nightblindness" off of David Gray's "White Ladder" as the song fades there is an industrial sounding backbeat that I've never heard with the C7's. I could give many more examples. Inner detail and instrumental lines are clearer on the D25's.

The high frequency response of the D25 is among the best I've heard. Natural, vibrant and airy. The Harbeth is slightly rolled off and less airy by comparison. Soundstaging of the D25 is more precise. Instruments are more surgically placed and there is greater depth and width. The Harbeth's provide what I would say a more natural presentation--more like what you would hear live where instruments blend together to make up the entire sonic picture.

The bass of the D25 is surprisingly deep. It is also rather ill defined. I'm no expert but it seems to me this speaker would sound a lot better if the designer rolled the bass off around 35hz. The speaker is rated down to 20hz and in attempting to go so low there is a loss of speed, detail, pace and timing. This is more apparent on some recordings than others. What I hear, no matter how I have positioned them in my listening area, is a bump at the bottom that thickens the sound and muddies what resides above in the frequency spectrum. I'm not saying the bass is whooly and awful--I just think the performance in this area could be better. The Harbeth's don't go as deep and, while not particularly tuneful, do play the bass line better than the D25's.

The D25's are more clinical/analytical sounding than the Harbeth's. While I would not call them dry or hard sounding the D25's do not provide the rich and palapable midrange that the Harbeth's have. This is where the Harbeth's are (maybe) unbeatable. Voices and acoustic instruments simply sound REAL. Not so with the D25--you are still listening to a hifi system--albeit a good one. If you are thinking of the D25 I would definatly run them with tubes all the way around. Be careful with cables as well. Think warm, warm, warm with every ancillary. I've heard speakers that are clearly cooler and more analytical (the Thiels come to mind) but the Proacs do not seduce you the way the Harbeth's will.
In addition, the Proacs are more accurate to the recording. If the recording sucks, so does the sound. The Harbeths, on the other hand, tend to sound good with even bad recordings. They just sound better as the quality of the recording improves. Also, the Harbeth's could really care less what you put in front of them--they sounded good when I had a cheap Japanese receiver and cd player in front of them before I put together a better rig. The Proacs, it seems to me, have a very neutral response and therefore require considerable attention (and money?) to other components in the chain. I'm not saying my gear sucks but perhaps the D25's could get better results with some really serious tube electronics driving them. At times I heard a hardness or glare in the upper midrange that was off putting. The Harbeth's have a mild suckout in this range designed into the speaker and, while not absolutely neutral, I prefer this deemphasis.

At the end of the day while I found the D25's "technically" superior in that they had more boxes checked in the columns, the Harbeth's are my preference. When I listen to the D25's I'm thinking hifi. When I listen to the Harbeth's I'm thinking MUSIC. If they were the same price I might consider the D25's--they really do sound quite good. However, at half the price the Harbeth's retain my personal title as best value in audio today.

Hope this helps somebody out there. Go ahead and fire away.

Oh yeah, one final thing. While at the dealer a while back I also heard the D38. It struck me as MUCH better than the D25 and well worth the extra money. While the room still sucked, the bass of the D38 was much better defined and controlled. It had greater impact but less bloom and bloat. The soundstage was far larger and the D38's created a greater sense of realism in this regard. The rest of my comments about the D25 would apply to the D38. Essentially I found the D38 more convincing than the D25 and closer to that essential musicality that the Harbeth's have in spades.