Warm romantic & detailed

i will jump in here...

op, listen to scott/verdant - he really knows what he is talking about

- focals don’t need to be bright, but you need a warm toned amp to make that happen, most solid state will sound sharp
- harbeths, spendors would suit you very well, esp. with solid state amplification (hegels are just a wonderful match, per bassdude)
- upper proacs are excellent but their presentation is a notch brighter, more forward than the same level harbeths and spendors
- newest spatials are an interesting alternative if you would consider ’outside the box’ - like the proacs, they need a tube or two in the chain then they are silky, full, impactful everything you would want

i have no affiliation, other than own spendors (2 pr), proacs (4 pr), harbeths (2 pr) and just got a set of spatials (m3s) they are most impressive - had focals in the past they are gone

@donquichotte 

@ jjss491 : wow! You have 9 pairs of speakers, 8 of which are interesting to me! Could you please share what models of Spendor, Harbeth and Proac do you own? I own a pair of Spendor Sp2/3R2, some Harbeth M30.2 Anniversary and I'm considering some Proacs so I'd really love to take advantage of your considerable experience in form of some advises and comparisons. Would you agree to help me here a bit, please? Thanks!
@everybody else, especially OP: please let me know if you feel this would derail the thread too much so I can move this discussion to PM environment should this be the case.

in deference to the op and his asking for input on his pursuit, i suggest you and i take this off line - just pm me

in my two past experiences i felt sonus fabers were smooth and warm, at the expense of transient accuracy and dynamicism

@scott_w 

what kind of sponges do you use?  🤭

40.1s i had overloaded my room so i got rid of them

shl5+ worked better for me

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back to your original post subject title - "warm romantic detailed"

https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649684310-spendor-sp-91-beautiful-rosewood-pair/

these are a likely path to true satisfaction - i had sp100’s (these are the floor stander version) should never have sold them ugh - they were exactly that....

i would agree with other posters that older revisions of harbeths had more meaningful tonality changes - for 40.1 to 40.2 - for c7-ii to c7-iii - for super 5 to plus version - all dialed back the mid bass boominess that could overwhelm rooms and other frequencies in the range

if you had a room and a system dialed in to make the prior versions sound right, inserting the newer versions tended to lean out the sound and accentuated other frequencies, up the range especially - for a perception of greater ’transparency’ - what makes harbeths special imho is their fullness of tone married to sufficient detail/insight into the music, so it makes sense long time harbeth lovers often feel negativity towards changes in more revised models

this being said, in more recent years, with anniversary models, 40.2 to 40.3, xd versions, the change in tonal character is quite minimal... as i have said in other threads, alan shaw/harbeth seems to have adopted the ’bcg consulting’ school of product revisions... mostly for marketing schtick with price increases, get unsuspecting buyers to trade up, empty their wallets to have the ’best and latest’ for fear of missing out ... these are very marginal differences in actual performance - thus, much $ paid for little substantive value increase

op 

well done

enjoy