Experienced audiophiles best speaker

ATC !!!
You really need some experience to get it perform. If you do not have the experience, be rest assured that you will learn a lot, and anyway get the "experienced" tag

music lover speakers = Harbeth, Spendors
audiophile speakers = wilson audio, magico, Dynaudio

Spendor, Yes but Harbeth ? Not at all. Harbeths are both extremely colored and analytical, thats a rare combination. It is colored on the thick/fat side to hide its analytical character which anyway comes through. Lot of people fall for the thick sound of Harbeth thinking thats "musical".

Analytical is not always revealing, it is a sound which has such kind of distortions that it does not sound like music but just sound. Some may also call it "dry", which I did find in the Harbeths but along with the dryness it had a presentation which gave a feeling of "no music just sound".
I have heard the SHL5 driven by Rega Brio and Senders Pre-power.

I don't think that explains the discrepancy as most Harbeth users do seem to be using SS and "musical" does seem to be the most common phrase used to describer them

Thats exactly why it was on the top of my shortlist when I was upgrading from my Dyn Contour 1.3SE speakers a year back. I was drooling all over the "Harbeth" brand and the aura around it. At that time I had created threads on AA asking about Harbeth vs other speakers while some people raved about it, some "experienced" guys did tell me to be careful and not buy a Harbeth blind as they are not as musical as Spendors and I may not like them as much as I am thinking. Thankfully I auditioned them, rejected them in 15 mins.

Yes, Spendors were far better, they did sound musical, what it is touted for. May be this gives a clue where I am coming from. Since I was upgrading from a Dynaudio which was a fair bit more neutral than the Spendors, I could not convince myself to buy the Spendors. But yes, the Spendor is a more musical speaker than Dyns in general.
Finally I hit the sweetest spot with the best of the neutrality and highest grade of musicality with the ATC !!
They are God level speakers, where others end, they begin.
Set them up correctly and you would not be able to upgrade, which is such a rare thing in Audio. Unfortunately they draw a lot out of you in terms of matching electronics, cables, positioning, room treatment (need not be exhaustive but some care needs to be taken for bare walls especially if concrete). All these things take time if you are doing it on your own and you learn a lot. Most importantly one can blindly trust the speakers not being at fault if there is something wrong in the overall sound, they are brutally honest in a good way. One can listen to the poorest of recordings on these speakers and enjoy every bit of it (if there is anything to enjoy in the music) without getting fatigued....but all that after the painful setting up process is close to done.

I have heard metal domes in many speakers like the Epos M12.2, Thiel, Monitor Audio...even though I prefer a silk dome any day, these speakers with metal domes do not sound analytical to me, they do sound bright and a tad hifi-sh though. I somehow feel it is the mid-bass driver of the Harbeth which has a dry but thick midrange...what a rare combination !!!

Yes, they were 3 year old. The fact that they were SHL5 which is one of the best Harbeths left no doubt on my mind that they are what they are.

I would also like to add, Harbeths are not very revealing, they are just a bit bright which makes them sound illuminated in comparison to the likes of Spendor and Dyns. The reason I say this is because the company themselves suggest that their speaker can sound good on even an entry level amp, basically they are amp independent. I myself heard them with two different amps one costing about $1000 (Rega Brio) and the other costing about $6000 (Senders Pre-Power), frankly there was very little different difference in sound, except that the bass was a little tighter and faster with the Senders. Common sense tells me that the speaker did not reveal enough for me to judge anything about the two amps.