Stands for harbeth superHL5

Congrats Chris. You just ordered the best value in home audio speakers on the planet. I've listened to nearly everything up to (and above) 10K and IMHO for the money the HL5 Supers simply cannot be beat. They make music! I don't know what you are driving them with but make sure you put some power behind them. I've seen and heard them with custom stands from Sound Anchor. They are well made but rather bulky adding to the overall presence of the HL5's in the room. The folks at Harbeth like Skyland. Given the fact that the panels of the speaker are designed to flex the best stand would be a lightweight, open frame that did not interfere with the vibration of the panels. Not sure who makes one like this. Check out the Signals website. He is a Harbeth enthusiast dealer in the UK. I've seen photos of stands such as the ones I'm describing there. Also, you might want to go to the Harbeth website and join the Smartgroups discussion. Put up a post with your question and you will get a better answer than the one I'm offering here. Enjoy the speakers and don't bother trying to figure out whether you might do better with something else--unless you have 20K to spend!

Chris,

I have year old C7s and used the recommendation of Alan Shaw from Harbeth. I called Skylan in Canada (you can get to their website by going to A'gon's manuf. section) and found the owner Noel more than helpful. He specializes in Harbeth and will assist in determining height of stand needed for your room and sofa/chair. His stands, in my opinion, are better than Sound Anchor (and about 1/2 the price) because they use a non-metal non-resonant material. They can easily be filled with sand and are very easy to put together. The shipping is less because Sound Anchors come pre-filled with some sort of cement material which makes them quite heavy.

By the way, the Sonus Faber Amati Homage is a better speaker than HL5. But it costs $24,000.00.

Oh yeah, don't get neurotic about speaker height. One inch either way is not going to make any difference whatsoever. Remember, your own height changes throughout the day and you are about an inch shorter at night. You also can change your listening height 1-2 inches simply by being tired, more relaxed, etc.

You might want to check out the somethingSolid stands. Here is a link. I prefer these open frame stands to any of the others I've heard. They recommend 12" stands but I ordered mine in 16". It depends on your seating height.

http://www.chevinaudio.co.uk/html/speaker_stands.htm

Is there a sonic advantage to the 4-post Skylan stands
vs. the equivalent Sound Anchors for the SHL5? Thanks in advance.

RGS92, while I can't directly answer your 6-23 post because I haven't actually listened to the speakers on both Skylans and Sound Anchors, I can suggest that if you do some more research on the web, including the Harbeth Users Group comments accessible from the Harbeth Home Page, you may find some information indicating that some Harbeth users have commented that they've heard a "ringing" when they used some metal stands with Harbeths. I think you'll also find that there are Harbeth owners have found both Skylans and Sound Anchors to work well with their speakers, which suggests that it would be hard to go wrong with either one.

If you decide, as I did for my Monitor 30s, to go with Skylan, you'll find Noel, the owner, to be very easy to deal with and very professional when giving advice and making promises about shipping dates.

Thanks Jim! It sounds like you, personally, are satisfied with
the Monitor30/Skylan combo. It is my understanding that the SHL5s benefit from whatever external factors add to bass control, meaning upstream equipment and their stands, so I
was thinking that was the most important factor in choosing stands. By the way, if one is not concerned about image height, what about floor placement, or on a low platform like
and amp stand? (In the real old days, I'd just plop AR3a's
on the rug, zone out and happily listen...).

Try making your own. With a lot of experimentation I found that Harbeths are not finicky speakers. Any quality stand or amp, they always sound great! Alan Shaw even suggests Ikea plant stands that are inexpensive. I bought a pair of C7s last year and my wife (who is quite handy)made some stands out of walnut about 20 inches high; they are filled with sand, look and sound great and it was fun building them with her to boot. Added bonus, I'v got WAF BUILT IN to my system--she feels included ;) Congratulations on the purchase of excellent speakers. Don’t forget to checkout Harbeth’s user forum on the Harbeth website there is some great info there.
Cheers!