What Is So Special About Harbeth?

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

There are some that love the sound of these speakers and truly enjoy them and that's what the hobby is all about. If you enjoy the music that comes out of them and it makes you happy......then money well spent. I owned the Harbeth 40.1's and sold them in 5 months. Please see my thread if you want from years ago on why I didn't like these speakers. The responses I got from my post ranged from ; the cables you used  ere wrong, you had the wrong electronics, the room wasn't right for the Harbeth's......etc, etc. My thinking and it is of my opinion and school of thought that if it is a truly good speaker , it will sound good no matter what cables, what electronics or room that they are in, they could and should sound even better if the upstream variables that I have were well thought out and addressed. Mr. Shaw knows what he is doing ; they were just not a speaker for me.      

i too owned early mon 40’s -- in the 2003/4 time frame iirc (these were the original monitors, grey britex cabinets with side handles)... had them for about a year, sold my spendor sp100’s to get them -- a big mistake which i continually regretted till last year, when i finally managed to get another set of 100’s back

i had roger modjeski’s wonderful rm9-2 tube amp and an aragon 8008 ss amp back then... neither did well with the 40’s, the tube amp left the bass overblown and uncontrolled... the aragon took care of that but flattened the imaging and made the treble way too ’hifi’

so i too sold the 40’s after a year or so, went to big proac’s, which i just loved...

the mon 40’s certainly need a lot of amplifier bass damping factor, and also, placement is quite critical for finding the right bass balance in room (well well away from boundaries, tough for such a humongous box)... but then the mids and treble are quite revealing, the solid stateness of the powerhouse aragon called too much attention to itself, and not in a good way

all this was a real lesson in getting the room/speaker placement/amp combo implemented just right... learned the hard way...

I drive my M30.1’s with a Pass INT-25 integrated and supplement the 30.1’s with an SVS Micro 3000 sub. Having heard dozens, more probably hundreds of different systems over the past 30 years or so I’d be hard pressed to think of a combo I like more, for MY musical tastes and space. I lean hard to acoustic music and vocals. I like to hear individual instruments with their timbre and color intact. I like to hear space. I want to remove myself from the "real" world and imagine the performers in my apartment; on many recordings I can do that with these speakers; they’re a great match with the Pass INT-25. there’s a sense of intimacy and delicacy that I just don’t hear with most other speakers. I’m thinking about upgrading to 30.2 XD’s but outside of a pair of those for about $5 or $5.5k I wouldn’t even know what to consider near that price.

All but the largest Harbeths struggle when pushed. Seems their mid-woofers simply aren’t designed for high power handling. Their similar competitors often sound better and can play louder before compression sets in. Similar to Focals, their midrange tone sounds unnatural and slightly smeared to my ears (another listener called it "glassy"), the main reason for which I don’t understand the hype surrounding the brand and its Radial material. They do manage to have excellent driver integration, and as such, decent imaging. If coherency is top priority, they may still warrant an audition. I honestly feel Harbeth is one of the most over-hyped brands on the market concerning overall performance, especially at current retail prices. But Harbeth is becoming the Bose of British speakers -- they’re such a powerhouse in marketing that you can tell folks that there are better alternatives until you’re blue in the face -- doesn’t matter, they’re going to sell droves of them regardless.