Harbeth 7es-3 Sound

I listen almost exclusively to rock and I absolutely love my Compact 7ES-3's! I occasionally listen to jazz and mellow acoustic stuff, too, and I have to say that the Harbeths handle it ALL very well. The only thing I am tempted to try is a sub to reach a little deeper on the low end. But, what is there is very accurate and suprisingly deep. I'm afraid adding a sub will be an endless game of tweaking for proper integration and I am enjoying the simplicity and fine sound of having the speakers alone. Granted, I do have a small room and don't listen at crushing volumes. The Harbeths are plenty punchy, even for Metallica (believe it or not). Electric guitars sound phenomenal. Imaging is great and as someone else said, driver integration is superb. These are very, very well designed speakers and the unique cabinet construction certainly contributes to the whole sonic picture. It is obvious that every minute detail of these speakers has been well thought out for functionality. They may not be the best looking, but they do look nice in a "retro" sort of way. They don't do all (or any, really) of the audiophile tricks, but present music in a fully enjoyable manner. Of course, speaker preference is one of the most personal issues in hifi. YMMV...

hi,

Well in a word they disappear. The musicality, transients, clarity, faithfulness to the recorded medium ( IE, the recording engineers interpertation of the sound) are all there in spades. I do use it for all geners of music and all are presented by the speakers in a extreamily pleasent and nonfatiguing fasihon.

For me these are stop here speakers ... no need to look farther. Audition them if you can, If you can't just buy them ... you will lose very little as they are in great demand on the used market and do not come up with any frequency for sale used. Those of us who have them just keep them.

good listening

Larry

hi,

a review here

http://www.stereotimes.com/speak103107.shtml

Larry

I have to say that the Harbeths handle it ALL very well.

I agree. It is indeed an outstanding speaker.

My point that they don't go very loud and that the warm bass (which is so nice at lower levels) can be overwhelming at higher levels is in the category of "nit picking".

These speakers have the characterstic Harbeth warm "audiophile" British sound and, in particular, I think the midrange excels in this one - compared to other speakers and other Harbeths (driver integration perhaps - who knows?).

I just listened to 3 models in the Harbeth line of speakers at a local dealer today. They were the SHL-5, Compact 7ES-3 and the M30. Out of the three speakers, the M30 was shut-in and laidback compared to the other two, and that didn't appeal to me. The SHL-5 and the Compact 7ES-3 on the other hand, were spectacular speakers. The sound they produced was unbelievably natural with great scale and dynamics. It is uncanny that the sound coming out from these speakers can be so real and unforced it's just like listening to the real thing.

Surprisingly the Compact 7ES-3 only goes down to 46Hz on paper but the overall sound of it is much more musical and coherent from top to bottom than my PMC speakers that go down to 35Hz. I was told that the midrange magic of Harbeth speakers is due to the design philosophy of all Harbeth speakers as more attention has been put towards this area. Now I realize why my PMC speakers, although rated to go down to 35Hz with a puny 4" woofer can sometimes sound a little forced when pumping out huge chunks of bass.

I didn't listen to the M40.1 since the gigantic speakers were way out of my budget but was told they share a resemblance to the M30 being in the Monitor family, so I guess the sound won't appeal to me either.

I'm now contemplating between the SHL-5 and Compact 7ES-3. The latter comes with the selected tiger ebony finish at a premium which is much pleasant-looking(to me) whereas the SHL-5 only comes with the plain cherry. Either way, I don't think I"ll be disappointed.