Hi Talc,
Tell us about your room, and speaker locations?
Best,
E
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Erik asks some good questions, but only you can answer the question of whether you think Harbeth speakers will work with your NAD equipment.
If you're buying new, perhaps you could work with your dealer for a home demo or for you to bring your NAD gear to the store for a listen.
If you're buying new, maybe you could just buy a pair. If you then don't like how they sound with NAD, you could resell them for little or no loss or figure out how to get different electronics.
Good luck! |
Dear OP we are an NAD Masters Dealer and this combo should work great, The over all sound quality of the Masters series is clean, tight, fast articulate.
The Harbeths tend to be a bit on the warmer side so this combo should be good.
The real question is why just the NAD gear there is a ton of great gear out there.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ NAD Masters dealer |
Thanks to each of you for the responses. My room is basically 20 x 20 and it carries into a 12 x 24 kitchen area [32' in total sound projection]. Standing at the island you will be facing the speakers. I don't have a dedicated listening room. These will be for everyday/extensive use.
Why the NAD gear? I guess I just like it and haven't spent enough time exploring other options. For me personally, there's way too much stuff out there, and I've had good luck with there stuff in the past so I went with the best they have. Usually paired it with top end klipsch which I liked a lot, but now I want something more refined. Thought B & W would work and not really impressed. Like my klipsch better.
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I like a really rich/warm sound. I'm not a bright/high tone guy which is what the B & W seem to give me, even more than the Klipsch [Forte 2]. Gets hard to listen to after a while. Hoping my equipment can achieve that with the Harbeths.
ps - im a layman so don't make fun of me for my terminology. lol
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Personally If I were looking especailly at the 40.2 I would look at a serious upgrade over the NAD pieces.
The 40.2 were just at the New York show with way, more expensive gear and they sounded surprisingly good.
I would look at a Naim stack, or a Krell integrated, the Coda CS iB is a stunning integrated amplifer, and the Coda separates are just fantastic.
Then add a good external streamer and dac or a good streamer and you will have a fantastic system.
A real cool integrated amplifier is the Unison Unico 150 a tube/hybrid integrated for $6,500.00 the preamp uses fantastic Russiona 6H30 tubes with a powerful solid state ouput stage. Just stunning.
If you need any guidance we sell a lot of of fantastic lines of electronics that will sound great on the Harbeths.
It will really come down to a number of factors
Do you want an intergrated amp with a dac/streamer a two piece setup or a dac/preamp amp combo like the Nad which is also two pieces?
What will your sources be analog, digital? TV connection, other?
Do you have a price range that you want to explore good setups would run from $4-6k up to $20k and beyond with the Harbeths.
Would a hybrid tube preamp plus solid state amp be possible? Tubes in a preamp tend to be less expensive and last longer.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ |
I usually at least generally agree with Audiotroy in these forums. Here, I have to disagree. The NAD M series gear i’s quite good. The “best” gear (whatever that means)? No. But, it’s very clean sounding, environmentally friendly (efficient) and he already has it. And, it’s fully “worthy” of driving the Harbeths. If he/she was unhappy with it, or starting from scratch, I can see looking at other gear in addition the NAD. But, there appears a bias in these forums by many that NAD is somehow less than good. I find it is better than a lot of gear that might be more expensive.
My suspicion is that Harbeth will pair nicely with the NAD M series. But, a home audition would be the way to find out for sure.
My $.02.
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Even more than with most audio topics, there's a real lack of consensus over what kind/power of amp pairs best with Harbeth, particularly SLH5 and 40.2. Take a look over, for instance, at the Harbeth User Group website, or other threads here. Several people point out that you often see H shown with Luxman. Vinnie Rossi's amps also produced wonderful results. The only generalization that seems to hold is that a bunch of people report good results from a really widely differing range of amps. |
mgrif we did tell the OP that his NAD pieces would work we just let him know that even better gear would make the speakers perform even better.
Dave and Troy
AUdio Doctor NJ |
Thank you to all for your replies. To mgrif104's point, I already own my NAD stuff and I'm generally happy with the stuff. Once my kids are off to college I will be looking to upgrade. Nonetheless, I appreciate your feedback and it pretty much confirmed my intuition [there's a thousand amp's & dac's better....but this will work well...but you should buy this...lol].
So to the deeper question, the SHL5, SHL5plus, or the jump to the 40.2? I have a decent size and my wife will hate how they look no matter which one I buy [haha]. I'm leaning toward the SHL5plus.
I'm looking for general feedback as my closest dealer is over 2 hours away. |
I don't have a decent size wife..."I have a decent size room" [20 x 24]. lmao |
OP if your wife doesn't like the look of the Harbeths maybe you should check out other speakers your wife might like the look of.
The 40 are much better suited for the size of your room.
Legacy loudspeakers the Signature is a very smooth loudspeaker has very deep bass, sounds fantastic with the NAD gear and is an $8k loudspeaker and can come in many finishes, will also fill up a big room superbly.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Legacy and NAD Masters dealers |
