Why are so many people trying to sell Harbeths?

"you sit there and sit there waiting for the next song. 2 hours go past, your late, but you want to stay. Magic."

That's the acid test for a music lover that things are going right and no reason to muck with it further.

OHM Walsh and Harbeth are quite different. I would really love to compare fully refurbed OHM L, C2 or H to comparable Harbeth. Any of those, when availble would come in for half the price of the smallest Harbeth from what I see.

I still run my original OHM Ls from 1978 along with newer OHM Walsh, Dynaudio, and Triangle speakers, all off the same amp via in-wall wiring to various rooms. I refurbed the Ls a few years back on my own, replacing original 8" woofers with closest matching high quality Morel drivers I could find. Those alone almost cost as much as the Ls originally. I also added OHM sub bass circuit JS uses these days in all his models. That and all other parts are availble as parts in the OHM store. Low and high tweets are still original, as is crossover The Ls are big hitting speakers now that can compete with the big boys. There is just a slight upper midrange rise that is noticeable on some vocals in particular, but otherwise the sound would cost a lot more to purchase today. A full refurb done by a pro like John Strohbeen would surely smooth out the few rough edges.

I refurbed the Ls prior to buying the newer OHM Walshes. I almost decided to go with OHM Hs (my favorite all around speaker from Tech Hifi days that were too big and expensive for my college kid budget back then) and punt on the Walshes based on teh performance, but decided I would probably miss the unique OHM Walsh presentation long term, so that is where I am today with OHM F5S3, OHM 100S3, OHM L, Dynaudio COntour 1.3mkII and Triangle Titus all sharing duty in different rooms.

One last note is that these older highly regarded speaker designs all take a leap forward these days when run off modern good quality source and amplification gear, which helps put all speakers in a different league than those that were around in the largely japanese dominated receiver and integrated amplifier days of years ago when SS amplifier technology was still fairly new and often underpowered for the task at hand. Modern innovations like Class D amps help put that limitation in an amps ability to optimally drive a speaker to rest for good.

Extravaganza,
How did you arrive at the opinion that listening distance "must be short, about 1.5m or shorter...?

I was cleaning room and music was on,and stuck my head between speakers somewhere in the middle,the efect was-music were coming from one point ahead of me occanally stereo efects moving from left to the right side and the same time heard dynamics and fast and agile presentation.From that time I repositioned speakers and listening distance .It became shorter.Now it reminds me associations with nearfield or midfield studio monitors.You can try if you have harbeths, may be it just my ears or room interaction.Because with dynaudio contour s1.4 I have sit back at 1meter longer distance

usually if many available many had been made. everything
else don't matter.

Could be that many of their speakers have been and are over rated. Sam Tellig and John Atkinson of Stereophile seem to be in love with the company's product. The other reason is that the Harbeth sound appeals to a certain audience, and listener.

Sam Tellig would not be caught dead playing rock music or even jazz. he was strictly, and officially a classical music lover and elitist snob, and also automatically anoint the speaker with special status.

There is a continuing assumption in audio that great speakers "should" sound good on any type of music. I am not sure that is totally true in reality, though it is a noble and worthy goal to pursue if you are building these things.

I have to somewhat agree with the member about "Harbeths on sale". Interestingly, there was for a while a run on KEF LS-50 placed on the selling block. Maybe, reviewers over enthused about them. Or, maybe they are too analytical, and also don't have much bass. Nevertheless, I counted one day last month, approx. eight LS-50's on sale on audiogon.

What bothers me about companies like Harbeth is how they can justify retailing a speaker like the 30.1 for $12,000 plus. However, in the over enthused and less critical reviews world of hi-end audio, price too often predetermines the expectation of great value and high end performance.