What Is So Special About Harbeth?

However, they haven't given the same attention to reproducing electronic sounds and dynamics such as in rock music.

and it shows. While I can admire many things about Harbeth speakers I could never own a pair. I prefer ATC’s blend of compromises at the relevant price points and feel they cover more bases in terms of musical genre. In particular, I believe Harbeth trail ATC in PRAT, which Alan Shaw openly declines to recognise as a valid musical/design concept.

Quite simply if you care about the sound of music and can hear the differences between speakers at their best you will pick the ones that sound best to you.  

In my case after listening to hundreds of speakers at home, friend's places, dealers and audio shows my Harbeth model sounds the best to my ears regardless of price.  I would love to spend less but unfortunately the sound I like comes at a price and below that price the results diminish greatly to my ears.  

my Harbeth model sounds the best to my ears regardless of price. 

you are a very lucky man if that be the case

Guess I did not directly answer the question- really it is how they sound that makes them special but how they get there is the answer.

They use a lossy tuned cabinet resonance design that gives them a controlled richness.

The proprietary midrange driver material is important to the tonal accuracy.

The overall voicing is extremely important. Harbeth "voices" their speakers via the crossover components to give them a sound they want- through lots of iterative testing. What you hear is not the result of designing crossovers with simulation software and calling it a day. The crossovers are designed to make the speaker sound accurate and pleasing to the ear, not a computer program.

The crossover design also incorporates circuits to assist the drivers in sounding as good as they can by eliminating distortion, frequency peaks and making them easier to drive.

Lots of art expertise and back and forth testing goes into Harbeth speakers.

They walk that fine line between detail and forgiveness like no other speaker on the market.  

alan shaw often doesn’t do himself (nor his speaker owners) favors in how he issues goofy (usually self serving) blanket statements about amps, cables, stands and how they add/detract from the speakers’ performance... he thinks he is being ’strategic’ in wanting the focus and consumer spending power focused on the buying the best harbeth speaker, focus less on ancillaries... experienced users see through this...

i do agree that prat and speed are not harbeth’s shining strengths, though the upper models do that pretty darn well, if properly driven

atc’s are another matter, while also being an excellent british make, they present a totally different set of attributes, i still have two pair, they are leaner cleaner, utterly unforgiving and demanding of pristine source material and upstream gear... incredibly inefficient and revealing as in for true in-studio monitoring use level of clarity... they play what you feed them with all blemishes warts wrinkles right up front... some may want that type of presentation in their homes, many don’t