What Is So Special About Harbeth?

@avanti,

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

This is distortion by definition. The resonating cabinets are producing their own sound like a musical instrument and this is superimposed on the signal. Hmmmm!

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

So on the one hand we have intentional distortion built into the cabinet and on the other hand we have a brilliant crossover design to elliminate distortion.

This thread is really not helping the brand. It seems that if you want to experience distortion, er um sorry, no distortion, whatever, that the only way to really hear this schitzophrenic speaker is with a Hegel amp 🙄

@tomic601,

Properly executed anti tanking parts are not in the signal path…

Could you please elaborate on this. I design speakers and can assure you that everything in a crossover is in the signal path. Everything.

@lemonhaze

curious -- what is your stake in this?

there are people who like harbeths, others that don’t -- clearly you don’t, we get it

sizeable portions of the hi-fi industry wouldn’t exist without the notion of sympathetic distortion that makes listeners feel the music sounds nicer, so what? ... there’d be no market for vacuum tube gear for instance

harbeth is a small company, but been at it for many years, has a loyal following worldwide enjoying their product, refining speaker designs and concepts that arose out of bbc research into acoustics and monitor speaker design in the 1960’s -- they have stayed small, stuck to their knitting, know what their customers want and what their brand means... it’s a tough time for all businesses, i am sure they aren’t immune, given covid, brexit and so on...

but what’s it to you? and what’s your product (as a proudly self claimed speaker designer)? do you have a commercially available product? how is it doing? put cards on table please... i am sure your speakers are absolutely and precisely accurate to the source, free of any distortion, use only the best parts extant, perhaps i can purchase a pair?

there is a long thread on this forum currently about users here with hidden agendas ... or is it that you simply enjoy pissing on others’ happiness?

@jjss49 +1.

Bear in mind too that Harbeth are far from the only company constructing cabinets this way, in the classic BBC tradition.  If this isn't your cup of tea, move on.

Putting it in perspective, Harbeth is a tiny company with 15 employees. Here is their UK business filing (link). Their budget is shockingly small to me (but I work in the tech industry). Hardly what I would call a "powerhouse in marketing".

I think it's the marketing prowess of the distributors more than Harbeth as a company, but effective marketing doesn't require an army of marketing majors. It really only takes one person who understands the market and what drives sales. 

 

 

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

with the exception of ‘incredibly’ preceding inefficient, a pretty damn good exposition..

I have a pair of SCM11’s in my bedroom driven by Exposure Xxiii / 3010S2 monos and am not bothered at all by an overly analytical/clinical sound.. The Exposures make a wonderful pairing.