Are Harbeth S HL5's As Good As Reviewers Claim?

I bought my SHL-5 in Nov '08. Similiar to Tom Hankins, I changed from Thiel CS6s to the lower priced Harbeths. I also use a REL Strata III subwoofer with excellent coherency and transperency. Their natural sound is very addicting. I listen to all types of music and they never fail to captivate me. Long listening sessions produce absolutely no listening fatigue. I've owned quite a few excellent speakers including Apogee Centaur Majors, Vandersteen 2Ce, PSB Stratus Gold i and the Thiels. All of them were very good, but none of them sound as natural as the Harbeths. FWIW, system consists of the McIntosh MC275 v5 tube amp, CAT SL1 Ultimate preamp, Benchmark DAC1 PRE, Rega Saturn (used as a transport), Linn LP12, and a Magnum Dynalab MD106T triode tuner. I'm listening to music a whole lot more these days. I guess that alone tells you something.

I completely second the idea that these speakers invite you to listen to a lot of music. Some hard-core audiophiles seem to be looking for the ultimate level of detail, for example whether a guitar player has large or small fingers, and perhaps some pleasure can be derived from that. But this approach forgets that when you sit in a real auditorium you do not reach those levels of details. Some speakers seem to me the equivalent of microscopes. Can you watch reality with a microscope all the time? I guess you get tired pretty quickly. In the case of audio, if you have a cd or a record that is not very accurate, if you hear it with an audio microscope all of these imperfections get amplified...and make the experience very fatiguing. I think Harbeth are natural. They reproduce music in a way that is similar to what you experience in an auditorium. As I said in my prior post, I think they could be a tad better in processing spatial information...but overall great speaker.

I've been using harbeths for 3-4 years now & really like them a lot.
No urge to upgrade to other speakers.
My current harbeths are the SHL5s. Had the P3s, C7s, M30s before and they are all great.

If you hear em and like em, then they're as good as the reviewers say they are. If they're not your cup of tea, then it doesn't really matter what the reviewers say, does it? or the people that have them....

Maybe, maybe not Chashas1. Not everyone has easy access to hear gear that may interest them and are willing to purchase them unheard, hence garning opinions of others.