Harbeth Love and your experiences

had harbeths (40.1 and HL7 supers) and spendors (sp1/2 and SP100s), but i keep coming back to ProAcs (D1.5 and now D30R’s) and my never-ever sell-them Quad ESL 63s... I think I like a slightly sympathetic, ’boosted sound’ in key frequency ranges like midbass and lower treble... to my ear it makes the music sound a little more alive... just being honest to my own tastes

chazro -

with spendors (esp. s100/sp100) there is a lovely deep rolling bass that is wonderful on one hand, but with some music with ’snap’ the woofer response seems somewhat slow to me... despite these being not inefficient speakers, i find for a more lively, quick bass response you actually need quite a good, powerful amp that has strong damping factor to grip the woofers well to make spendors sound more dynamic ... this is also true of the big harbeth 40’s and its giant woofer cones.... with spendors, to me, the real timeless magic of the speaker is that they invite you listen to the music as an integral, artistic whole... revel in the beauty of the tones voices etc etc, of the whole picture... their imaging is less precise and tonality is more forgiving, they are never aggressive in a way that reminds you that this is a hi fi ... on the other hand when you try to really listen INTO the music, i feel the spendors lack some high end detail and bass drive (as mentioned above). harbeths are a notch better in this regard as their tweeters are more modern and more alive, and the proacs are better still, in that they use smaller woofers that are quicker to move, and sweeter/sharper tweeters that give more resolution into the music without losing the beauty of the whole ... all three classic brit speaker brands do fundamental justice and truth to the midrange, and for that alone, they will never do out of style...  hope this helps