Which Harbeths?

Ditch those Harbeths! Try different Totems, Grahams, ATC

ATC along with Proac are at the top of my to try next list. Thinking about maybe the ATC scm11 instead of the 19 because I’ve read it’s a bit warmer. Although I don’t necessarily want to give up clarity for warmth. I really want warmth and clarity, and I don’t mean bright when I say clarity. When I say clarity I’m talking about a clean, smooth, and lacking distortion or any sign of crossover between the drivers.

 This is the place I find the Harbeths a little lacking perhaps. It seams almost that the crossover is one that slightly smears things in an attempt for smoothness. Which I would say it succeeds, it is very very smooth, but it doesn’t sound clean to me. I know many will say what I’m hearing is the difference between my bright Totems and the non bright Harbeths.  I feel confident that isn’t the case though. My C46 preamp has a eight band equalizer that allows me to play with frequency response considerably. I have turned down all treble on the Totems and I still get a cleaner clearer sound through them. As well, I try the opposite and turn up the treble on the Harbeths and again the Totems sound cleaner. I truly believe that Harbeth has a bit of veiling sound going on. This may or may not be due to the crossover, I’m simply speculating it may. 

op

some further points to you

1. what you are hearing is real, but i think perhaps for a different reason than you are surmising... apparent midrange clarity is sometimes reduced when a speaker has a warmer more forward midbass response - your little rainmakers have a much leaner midbass than the c7, thus the impression of a less smeared midrange... it is also no surprise at all that the rainmakers have excellent midrange, equal to the harbeths - they are a good speaker from a good company, carefully voiced, and with its excellent 5 in driver it is ideal for midrange reproduction at reasonable volumes, this is true and the towering strength of many a smaller well made standmount.... now, what you give up you already know, the little guys can’t hold it together as well when playing louder and the music is less rich and complete top to bottom -- so in effect, what you give up when you go from a lesser monitor to a better, more full range speaker is not an equal reduction of quality in all piece-part aspects of the sound, but the overall integrity of the presentation and significant loss of some aspects at the expense of others

2. if you like your totems alot (seems like you do) - couple other ideas are keep em and add a subwoofer (or two, even better)... subs added to an excellent satellite pair can do wonders, and i mean wonders for the overall presentation, ... or...

3. as a corollary to 2, why don’t you just move up the totem line - mani 2s, forests, hawks?  seems like there is a nice synergy in place with the slightly warmly voiced mac amp and the slightly uptilted totems... the harbeths (and c7's in particular) are typically best with an amp that has a little more zing and speed

good luck, hope you’re having fun through the process

The C7s were the first Harbeth speakers I listened to about 4-5 years ago. I didn't care much for them at the time, and a recent audition validated my earlier assessment. I'm not saying they're not good, but definitely not my cup of tea. I found them a bit sluggish, closed off, and too warm for my taste. After this experience, I had written off Harbeth altogether. 

Luckily, I had an opportunity to buy a used pair of P3esr's (but only with 50 hours or less) about 3 years ago. At the time I had KEF LS50s in my home office system. At first, I didn't really understand what the fuss was about. I missed the treble energy and the 'detailed' presentation (relatively speaking of course) of the KEFs. But I persisted, and spent 2-3 weeks listening to the P3ESRs. And then a funny thing happened when I put the KEFs back in rotation. I was missing the balanced, tonally correct sound of the P3s. The detailed and high energy presentation of KEFs was suddenly not my preference. The vocals did not have the emotion and realism provided in spades by the P3s. The Harbeths crept up on me in a very sneaky way. The KEFs were sold the following week.

I since moved up to M30.1s which was another step up in every way. When it comes to Harbeth, my opinion is that it is definitely an acquired taste. It's like that old album that you didn't like at all when you first listened to it. But it gradually grew on you upon repeated listenings, until it became your favorite album of all time. If I were the OP, I wouldn't let C7's be the sole data point in evaluating the Harbeth line up. It's very different than the P3s or 30.1s, at least based on my experience. I would at least give 30.x a try before I give up.

Just my 2 cents.

Just to add on to the above excellent post by Arafiq. I understand the OP is disappointed with the hype surrounding the Harbeth and is not willing to try other amps. To reiterate, the Harbeth really come to their own with select amps as they sound horrible with the wrong amps. The SHL5 sounded like mud with the Audio Research LS-16mk2 / Plinius SA100 mk3 amp which I owned. Better results with Rega Elicit, Nait XS and couple more amps but still underwhelming and far from great. The LFD Zero LEIII transformed the speakers as the Harbeth sprung to life when driven by this little marvel. I eventually got something else as the LFD didn’t come with a remote and the build quality did not meet my expectations.

I owned the Mcintosh MC275 mk4 before and it sounded a little like mud to me with the overly warm syrupy sound. Although it may not be the model that the OP currently owns, I suspect it may be the bottleneck and culprit to the poor or dismal result. It is unfortunate that a different amp (or other Harbeth models) is not in consideration. For this reason it may not be appropriate to brush aside the Harbeth and regard it as an underwhelming or underperforming speaker if it’s not properly set up since it is not showing its true colors.

A point to note is the Harbeth does not provide the short term thrills in comparison to other more forward and brighter sounding speakers. The midrange and treble of the Harbeth are very natural and to me is superior to the Totem model 1 which I tried. I’m not sure how different is the Rainmaker though. When moving from the Harbeth, see if you would miss the more natural/neutral sound presentation of the Harbeth.