Leben CS 600 and Harbeth vs Audio Note vs ATC vs JM Reynaud

Wow, my SHL5 plus are anything but bright.  Very interesting... I will continue to repeat though, that Harbeths need power to sound their best.

I found the SHL5's (non-plus version) to be a bit sharp / bright as well.  Glad to know I'm not alone in that assessment.

@pdreher  your post intrigued me as the standard SLH5s are said to be a tad less open than the plus versions. But then again sensitivity to brightness and sibilance does seems to vary from listener to listener.

I find that in my case it definitely increases if the overall sound fails to captivate. As soon as the music fails to hold my interest I find myself almost immediately beginning to notice sonic flaws which I was previously hadn't noticed.

The fact of the matter is that it's very rare to find any dome tweeter that remains impeccably clean. I've yet to hear one. Of course implementation and crossover points are vital as we know tweeters begun to break up towards the low end of their operating range.

Sometimes designers will take a tweeter low in order to match it's room dispersion characteristics to that of the woofer. Problem is that this will take you somewhere deeper into the vocal range.

The cleanest and most delightful treble I've heard were the ribbons used on the Kerr Acoustic K320s. I couldn't tell if they were blemish free, that would have needed some sibilance torture tracks played loudly, but I couldn't hear anything obviously wrong.

It would be interesting to see how good ribbons compare with some hi-tech designs such as the B&W diamond domes or even some beryllium designs as used by Focal because to my ears treble can never be clean enough.

Without knowing exactly which of these vendor's products you are considering it is hard to offer useful advise.  I have limited experience with the Leben integrrated amps and Harbeth speakers, but I did own an Audio Note OTO and JM Reynaud Offrande's for years.  Others may disagree, but IMO neither Harbeth or JMR offer tube-friendly speakers.

Admittedly some of the newer JMR speakers (ex: Cantabile Jubilee) list higher efficiency specs but I still would not consider these as the best match for low-ish powered tube gear.

Years ago I had a pair of Reynaud Emeraud’s with a VAC Avatar and the combination was great.  The Avatar has the option to listening at 27 watts triode or 60 in ultra linear.  I remember them playing well with most music with triode but to really get them going they needed more power.  60 was fine.  JMR makes great speakers but the Emeraude was replaced, I think with Vandersteen 5’s.  The Vandersteens had more scale and power but they weren’t as clean and lacked the nuances that the JMR are known for.  FWIW the Avatar was really holographic, more so that the Leben, but the Leben is more musical in other ways.  That said I’d like to have an Avatar in my closet to switch things up.