Differences between Harbeth, Spendor, Graham, etc. ?

I have simultaneously owned the Spendor SP2/3R2 and the Harbeth M30.2 Anniversary for about a year. My amplifier at the time was the Audio Analogue Maestro Anniversary integrated. My take (both speakers used without grills as I found the grills to obscure some detail):

- Spendor: bigger sounding with deeper bass (as expected, given the box and midbass driver size difference), silkier and comparatively more restrained highs that I found to be somewhat better integrated with the mids, and very colorful, natural, organic, textured, lovely mids but with what seems to be a bit of a (rather wide and shallow) hole in the lower mids / upper bass. Robert Greene also mentions a more restrained 200Hz area in his review of the Spendor SP1/2R2. Bass is of the round variety, better suited for reproducing the reverberant body of a double bass than the sharply delineated start / stop of the bass in something like Kraftwerk. They need to be placed well away from the walls and the bass could also be a bit weak compared to the midrange in this case. I'm using them now with an Accuphase amplifier with its loudness button engaged and I'm getting wonderful midbass to midrange body and even quite enough low bass. The midrange is the star of the show, anyway. All in all, wonderful for acoustic music.

- Harbeth: a very refined tweeter, a bit more detailed than the Spendors', but cymbals have less body and midrange centered instruments have a bit of an overemphasis on overtones, I think, making for a less rich gamut of colors. It's a less saturated midrange, like looking at a picture that is a bit more black - white - silverly, comparatively speaking. Robert Plant's voice is too recessed on Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" for example, making the whole piece less musically convincing - I suppose the "BBC dip" is more pronounced in the Harbeths' case?! Texture is a bit more emphasized, which is really nice for strings, especially in the upper bass which is a bit stronger than the rest of the frequencies, making the bass and mids better integrated than in the Spendors' case - especially nice when listening to cello music. Midrange and bass seem drier, though, and harder in a way, as if the midbass driver is made from a harder material than the better self-damping polypropylene of the Spendors (which I suppose it is). Also, the sound is smaller and the bass rolls off quite high, around 60-70 Hz I think, if listened t away from the walls. A more "sober" sound than the more extrovert, joyful Spendors. I sold them and kept the Spendors.

@donquichotte

Thanks so much for taking the time to write such a detailed, clear comparison.

BTW, I wasn’t aware of the BBC dip. What is that -- equal parts stout, kippers and Stilton? :o)

@stuartk 

You're welcome! The extensive research conducted by the BBC engineers in the 70"s, iirc, concluded, among other things, that a perfectly flat frequency response isn't actually very desirable,, i.e. it sound bad. They stated that a good sounding speaker should have a dip somewhere around 2kHz (1.5 - 3kHz?) and this knowledge was incorporated in the design of the BBC monitors of that era - the ancestors of the modern Harbeth, Spendor Classic, Graham, Stirling etc. speakers.

and Falcon.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time on the Falcon and Roger home pages. 

I was trying to find information about their speakers. I emailed them. 3 or 4 times, no response. I gave up, finally, there is no pricelist for their speakers, other than one off prices for a specific model. 

I find it irresponsible to publish contact information and ignore all requests. It reeks of terrible management. (It doesn't mean they can't have wonderful speakers,) 

Harbeth has an OK homepage, with the attitude of "we don't need a great web site, everyone knows our speakers are great.

Spendor has a 21 century web site and maybe a bit duller product line but I would trust them the most.

I had Harbeth Super HL5's for a few years with an MSB S200 power amp. Great for classical, jazz, and more acoustic music, but I found them very lacking in punch for the rock music that I listen to...