Recommend A More Dynamic Monitor Than Harbeth C7

Get a Tannoy Sterling or ATC SCM 19, you will hear what most other speakers just cannot do even for $20k.

Harbeths are for soft listening, they seriously lack bass dynamics and overall resolution. People enjoy this softer rounded presentation as musicality!

The only Harbeth which preserves some level of tonal accuracy is the P3ES. All the other bigger Harbeths add their own special flavour to it (some kind of dark thickness).

Merlin is nice but you need to go to their TSM floorstander.

Sunnyjim,
I have not heard the latest HL5 Super so I cant comment on it.

However if you look at any other Harbeth apart from the original LS3/5 and to some extent the P3Es, they thicken the tonality and alter the timbre towards a darker shade, more choclatey, in a way. It possibly could be related to their driver design which get sluggish as they grow in size. The change in bass tone due to the sluggishness will ultimately affect other ranges too due to the change in harmonics.

I have heard the Wilson Benesch Arc many a times. Sure they have gone ahead tried new materials in order to get rid of unnecessary coloration. But then they have gone a bit too far and actually cleaned up a bit too much IMO. Some of the real musical harmonics have gone missing with that speaker. It is something thats very common with many of the current ultra clean audiophile sounding speakers.

Bcgator, I am entirely aware of box coloration brought in by typical wood boxes. And I am not talking about them being musical harmonics at all. I have heard many open baffle designs, completely aluminium cabinet studio monitors, electrostats and planar speakers and of course some horn speakers which have absolutely either no boxes around it or no wood around it. The good examples of all these speakers have no tendency of leaning out the harmonic content. They can play rock and pop the way it should, with its original color, drive and vigour. At the same time they play with extreme precision classical and jazz too. A true system should bring out everything that a recording has to offer. Most of the popular albums from the rock n roll era are not great recordings but they still have some raw juice and energy which comes out on most low to mid-fi systems. It is an audiophile dogma that high quality systems cant play such recordings. Its not true.

Bcgator, you are right!

BTW, have you heard an ATC ?

In my experience very few $20k speakers justify their price and sounds complete. Most of them are just big speakers with more drivers to justify the price. I respect companies like ATC which do not compromise at any price point. They build speakers for a certain purpose and then price it, not the other way round. To build such speakers they build their own drivers, their own crossover components, cabinets and amps (for active version). At a recently concluded AV show in Malaysia, a simple ATC active speaker costing $15k blew away many $300k systems and some. I dont use an ATC but they remain as my reference because they present the truth in one of the most honest ways.