Thank you!! My new speakers were delivered and setup around 1:30 PM and it's been on stop listening to music ever since. My wife and I started out with Melody Gardot, then Tears for Fears, Steely Dan, Talking Heads... and the list goes on. I was shocked at the beauty of the Tiger Ebony. My dealer lent me some HL5 stands because the ones ordered from Resonant Woods in New Hampshire aren't ready yet.
I wish you luck in your endeavor and I don't think either would be a bad choice. It would be a hard decision for me as well and might even come down to price. I listen to similar music as you do so you should stick with your tube plan or class A for solid state. Class a/b is okay but not ideal in my experience.
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Here's my experience with Harbeth and VAC: - Harbeth M-40.1's with Renaissance 30/30 MKIII had the best midrange I have ever experienced, but the bass was a bit loose and wooly. Female vocals and jazz are outstanding with this amp, but classical with complex passages could have benefited from more power.
- Harbeth M-40.1's with Renaissance 70/70 Signature had a nice warm relatively balanced sound... highly detailed, but very smooth and easy to listen too. Great with female vocals, jazz, acoustic and classical, but not so much with rock.
- Harbeth M-40.1's with Phi 200 (current setup) is more neutral than the Renaissance amps, lacking some of the magical midrange from the Ren's 300B's, but the bass is very solid/robust and the highs are notably more extended than the older Renaissance series amps. I get the best sound using the 2-4 ohm tap. Sounds good with all kinds of music, including rock and classical with complex passages.
- Harbeth SHL5's with Renaissance 70/70 Signature was a good combo... good dynamics, not overly warm and quite transparent. This was the only amp I tried on the SHL5's. I found I missed the bass that the 40.1's provided, so I sold them and purchased my second pair of 40.1's. I found the SHL5's to be too strident/detailed for my taste.
In all scenario's referenced above, I was using an Aesthetix Calypso preamp in either the original or Signature edition. |
I've owned a VAC Sigma 160i with Harbeth Super HL5+ for about a year now. The VAC has more than enough power a match made in heaven.
If you have any specific questions let me know. |
Vac 160i SE here with Harbeth 40.2 and took me awhile but am very pleased now. It took tube rolling, power conditioning upgrade, tweak room acoustics (rugs corner bass panels) and lot of experimenting with speaker positioning to get it dialed in to sound awesome. It is in living room so there was some limitations in room but always sounded good just needed experimentation to get bass deep and tight.
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They had a fairly large room set up at the NY Audio show with the Harbeth 40.1 and VAC large monoblocks - not sure which model, and a very sophisticated turntable as the source. To my great surprise the overall presentation was not very exciting to my ears, particularly the bass/midbass regions. I don't know if it was the music content or the sound was "too" neutral as compared to some other systems I heard before and after, or I simply expected too much, but I left the room underimpressed. |
