I owned a pair of Harbeth P3ESR amplified by Exposure 2010s2. I moved to KEF LS50 Wireless after one month of owning both, comparing.
Now, nothing touches vocals and small scale acoustic instruments on the Harbeth at low to moderate volume. Nothing that I've heard anyway.
If you listen to low-medium volume late at night to jazz, vocals, acoustic, folk, etc, Harbeth is the way to go.
The problem for me is I don't just listen to that, I like from time to time to up the volume and throw in other music genres.
The active KEFs get to about 90-95% of Harbeth's strengths with added scale, authority, bass, everything. When pushed to higher volumes the P3s start to compress, they are not a dynamic speaker. Not so with KEFs, these speakers maintain the low volume magic and "scale up" with added volume. What these things do with music is amazing.
To get to KEF's level of performance you will have to spend an obscene amount of money on separate components.
Not to mention I sold my dac, amplifier and streamer.
Now, nothing touches vocals and small scale acoustic instruments on the Harbeth at low to moderate volume. Nothing that I've heard anyway.
If you listen to low-medium volume late at night to jazz, vocals, acoustic, folk, etc, Harbeth is the way to go.
The problem for me is I don't just listen to that, I like from time to time to up the volume and throw in other music genres.
The active KEFs get to about 90-95% of Harbeth's strengths with added scale, authority, bass, everything. When pushed to higher volumes the P3s start to compress, they are not a dynamic speaker. Not so with KEFs, these speakers maintain the low volume magic and "scale up" with added volume. What these things do with music is amazing.
To get to KEF's level of performance you will have to spend an obscene amount of money on separate components.
Not to mention I sold my dac, amplifier and streamer.