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

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.

But that's just it, it's an opinion. In my own lil listening group, we all hear things sometimes the same, sometimes not. It depends on what a person is listening for or preference. One thing I've discovered, someone can go on about a particular piece of gear, and then you go over, and the system is so poorly set up or things mismatched. Who would trust such an opinion then? I bet if you could hear even half of the systems of people who post their opinions on here you'd bust a gut laughing in disbelief!
That's why I made my comment. Opinions are fine, but know their source. and trust your own ears.