Harbeth 30.1 or legacy calibre


What would you choose between the 2 in a room without a subwoofer?
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Showing 3 responses by audiotroy

Two totally different sounds. You either are a Harbeth fanboy or not.

These are yin and yang speakers with completely different qualities some of which were mentioned before.

Harbeth has a very midrange oriented sound with good presense in the midrange, good midbass performance and very little real lower bass and a smooth but recessed treble, they are inefficent and do not play super loud, most of their models are classic two way designs. sometimes augmented, they tune the cabinet to resonate in time with the music. 

Harbeth fans tend to like Jazz and light Classical, not the best rock speakers.

The Legacy Calibre's are a much more impressive speaker, these play loud and rock out as well as having a nice balance overall.

Legacy goes for a high tech driver approach with a completely dead cabinet, German built Heil AMT tweeter, a custom Italitan seven inch composite midrange and a very long throw custom built eight inch woofer with 1 inch of linear throw augmented by twin passive radiators.

The Legacy's will play loud, throw a huge image, have fantastic top and bottom range, the bass hits hard and is nearly in a true subwoofer range. 

Very clean and extended top end with a great detail in the treble.

The Legacy's are very efficient and play loud, they will excel at all music and are very dramatic, monitors which sound like a large floor stander.

Another cool atribute is that the speakers can come active as well which means you would just need a dac/preamp or a dac with variable output.

One caveat with the Legacy's is that they are really stand mounted loudspeakers and would have issues on a shelf where the Harbeths would sound great no matter how you position them. 

We are Legacy's dealers and were blown away by the Calibre's which we recently heard setup at the New York Audio Show. 

Hope that helps to see which camp you are in.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ


Avanti  I had my concerns with the Calibres for their price they are $5,500 plus a set of stands, which means $5,800.00 pretty close to the Signatures so originally we weren't intersted in flooring them.

After hearing them at the New York Audio Show, we were convinced.

The Calibre is a force unto itself. The biamped version is totally off the charts. If you consider a set of Calibres with the internal 750 watt amplifiers and a Wavelet processor which is also a preamp and a dac and you would have a fantastic compact system that is a two piece system that totally rocks. 

All you would need would then be a streamer and viola a tiny Aeris.

This is a wonderful system for a reasonable price point, under $12k for an entire system that puts many more expensive setups to shame.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
D2girls if you are asking us for a price on Harbeths please go to a Harbeth dealer.

We are not Harbeth fans, have heard numerous models including the 40.2 dont understand all the hype.

In our opinion way too much money for way too limited range.

Stunning cabinets and a nice midrange in the Harbeths, give me a pair of ATC for 2500 less okay not so pretty but one of the best monitors at 4k or a set of the Calibres if you want a truly impressive true floor stander in a compact box.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ