i would agree with other posters that older revisions of harbeths had more meaningful tonality changes - for 40.1 to 40.2 - for c7-ii to c7-iii - for super 5 to plus version - all dialed back the mid bass boominess that could overwhelm rooms and other frequencies in the range
if you had a room and a system dialed in to make the prior versions sound right, inserting the newer versions tended to lean out the sound and accentuated other frequencies, up the range especially - for a perception of greater ’transparency’ - what makes harbeths special imho is their fullness of tone married to sufficient detail/insight into the music, so it makes sense long time harbeth lovers often feel negativity towards changes in more revised models
this being said, in more recent years, with anniversary models, 40.2 to 40.3, xd versions, the change in tonal character is quite minimal... as i have said in other threads, alan shaw/harbeth seems to have adopted the ’bcg consulting’ school of product revisions... mostly for marketing schtick with price increases, get unsuspecting buyers to trade up, empty their wallets to have the ’best and latest’ for fear of missing out ... these are very marginal differences in actual performance - thus, much $ paid for little substantive value increase