Why do Harbeth speakers have such a cult following

I'm not a Harbeth owner, but I think yer right.

I owned a pair of Harbeth 40.1's about a year and a half ago.....I purchased them demo from a Harbeth dealer and had briefly listened to them before I bought. The dealer who I had purchased them from said that they may be / are a little too big for your room. ( 14x 16x 7 )I bought them anyway ...hey these were the 40.1's !!!!I listened to them for about 6 months and sold them for just about what I had bought them for. Three things happened here; the dealer was right as they did overload the room, they were very good on acoustic music and vocals....not on any electric blues or jazz and as you will see from my previous post on these speakers - they just did not get up and boogie !!!! I would not say dull - they did not involve me - but it was large in part due to the room and the music that I play 80% of the time. So, if you do have a larger room, have nice electronics and like to play acoustic music or vocal oriented music - these might be it ! Also, when Mr. Shaw noted that speaker wire does not make a difference on the performance of these speakers.....I did my own little experiement - and guess what - they did !

I was really captivated by the sound of my HL5's at first, but over time there was a sameness or homogenized aspect to their sound. One genre sounded like the next. Very polite, not much personality.

I don't share Alan Shaw's perspective on speaker cable and amplification. With the right amplification I've heard the compact 7's perform much better than I ever expected. I walked into my dealer the other day and he was playing Rachmaninov at extremely loud levels with an Octave tube amp using a Luxman integrated as a pre and I was trying to figure out why the only speakers I could see we're compact 7's. I had never heard a Harbeth do anything close to this before. It makes me wonder why so many people use low power amps with most Harbeths. Even if you listen at low volumes I find they work best with gobs of power. That might be why some people don't buy into them (not all). My take is they do indeed require a lot of current to sound their best.

Donjr, I wish you could hear what the 30.1's sound like in my room. Dynamic and alive with superbly realistic tonal and imaging properties. I simply can't understand why people are saying they don't soundstage and sound homogenized - these things image and soundstage like crazy, wall to wall with dimensional, focused, full bodied images. Brass instruments and piano sound amazing. Detail is superb.
All this with a low cost ARC 50 watt tube amp. Go figure.