Is there a point of diminished returns with amps and Harbeth 30.1s?

agree 100% w @chayro

can’t pay attention to alan shaw and his blanket ’truisms’ on amps cabling stands etc for his harbeth speakers, as good speakers as they are...

he just wants you to spend as much as you can on the speakers, don’t pay much attention and just make do with the rest...

cabling and amps, stands too, to a somewhat lesser extent, matter...

can’t pay attention to alan shaw and his blanket ’truisms’ on amps cabling stands etc for his harbeth speakers, as good speakers as they are...

Yes, that’s true. The leader has the support of his cohorts.. It’s a tight-knit clan on the Harbeth forum as anyone who doesn’t share the same ideas or philosophies will usually be cast aside like an unwanted child. Many have left the forum after they find the iron-fist style approach of moderation to be a bit intimidating.

I’m not sure if things have changed now as AS has been recommending Hegel amps for his speakers several years ago. I have not been to the HUG for 10 years now and have no desire to do so in the future.

I would not recommend extremely unbalanced allocation of funds for any given type of component because the results will not be optimal.  But, that is not to say that there is a limitation on the ability to hear an  improvement in a source component or amplifiers because of limitations is a speaker as good as the 30.1s; they are plenty good for hearing the qualities of any amplifier.  I've heard impressive demonstrations of $50,000 amplifiers playing very modest speakers; differences between the amps being compared were very easy to hear even if the speakers were "modest."  Sometimes one does not know how good a particular speaker is until it is played with an amp that it is not commonly paired with because they components are supposedly not in the same class.

Alan Shaw has long welcomed any debate on his opinions regarding cables and amps. 

In fact he once even offered a pair of his top of the range M40s to anyone that would be willing to undergo an unsighted amplifier comparison test.

Level matched of course. 

Unsurprisingly, despite the endless online amplifier hullabaloo / advertising / promotions etc there were no takers.

There were no takers.

I would suggest the dear reader should let that sink in to their long term memory for easy recall the next time they come across some casually penned blowhard review extolling the unique quasi mystical properties of another routine amplifier.

Completely agree yet this discussion is not about ‘routine’ amplifiers.