What Is So Special About Harbeth?

Harbeth to me Are in the same category like Teckton they look plain ugly

This had me laugh out loud.  A classic, reserved British monitor look is not your cup of tea?  Cool.  But on the same footing as the Tectonic monstrosities?  LOL.

A recent look at a Harbeth XO by GR Research found about 30 components in the XO!  Unfortunately, although this can produce a nice flat frequency response, which will satisfy potential buyers but more importantly be favourably mentioned by the reviewers, will reduce dynamics and micro-detail. Low level nuance also suffers.

This kind of stuff is often claimed in audiophile circles.  But then so is lots of "stuff."

I'd like to see this actually demonstrated, and not just by some audiophile's say-so.

If we are talking regular old anecdotal subjective listening impressions, Thiel's complex crossovers used to get grief from the "don't put too much stuff in the crossover region because blah, blah, blah" crowd.  Yet every Thiel I've had has been world class in it's price range in terms of detail, soundstaging, timbre and dynamics.

Personally I don't rely on audiophile shibboleths - the result is what matters.

And as for the parts quality in the Harbeths (which I have a fair amount of experience listening to), the results are what count.  Engineers will point out that good or clever engineering isn't just "what you can do if handed the best possible parts and budget" but rather being able to achieve excellent performance without having to rely on the most expensive parts.   Which is what Harbeth seems to have done.

Dan Richie in his videos does some interesting and entertaining and educational stuff.  But I am not inclined to ignore that he is a salesman with stuff to sell, and arguments for his own products and services,  as much as anything else.

On the "what is special about Harbeth?" question, here's part of my answer.

Having auditioned an insane amount of speakers - the Harbeth have just stuck out in terms of being able to produce the "gestalt" of the human voice, as well as acoustic instruments.   But human voice in particular.

I've long been obsessed with live vs reproduced.   Not that I expect a sound system to be able to reproduce sound truly indistinguishable from the real thing.  Just the opposite!  In paying attention to live vs reproduced it's only highlighted the differences between live vs reproduced.   I've done recordings of my family's voices (as well as instruments we own being played) and done direct live vs reproduced comparisons with various speakers I've had (and also used those tracks sometimes when auditioning speakers).    The ways some speakers do better in these comparisons than others was always fascinating to me.

Just as when I audition speakers, when I go to audio shows I'm constantly comparing live vs reproduced.  How?  By comparing the sound of the live human voices talking all around, vs the sound of voices being played through the various sound systems.  Inevitably many systems are playing a well recorded vocal that is supposed to impress us as sounding "realistic."   Very often these are certainly producing a VERY vivid and clear "something" in between those speakers.  But it's not really a human voice.  It's usually still electronic sounding, like a voice "reconstructed through hard materials" and often insubstantial, like you can wave your hand through it.   Human voices sound "organic," made of "damped flesh" and they have an acoustic density, where eyes closed you sense it has density, it's occupying space in the room.  It's this amazing combination of clarity and the organic warmth and density that to me distinguishes the real thing.

So at shows if they are playing a vocal I will close my eyes and listen to the (invetable) sound of someone talking in the room and compare it to the reproduced vocal.  "What is it that the sound system isn't getting about the real thing?"  It always shows up the artificiality of reproduced voices.

EXCEPT....to some degree...the Harbeth speakers for which I've done this "test."

I remember a full day at the last show doing this eyes-closed "live vs reproduced voice" comparison and in a Harbeth room I was simply astonished to finally hear a speaker that came that close to the real thing.  I'd listen to the real voices in the room, the voice coming through the Harbeth, and the "gestalt" in how it was reproducing the human voice was amazingly close.  No other system had quite done that, to my ears.

I owned some Harbeth speakers for a while and to this day the thing they did better than any other speaker I've owned, was to find the "human quality" in voices.

Which is a pretty damned impressive thing, and something the designer should rightly be proud of.  I certainly get why the brand is coveted by many.

Whether a speaker is "good" for X, Y or Z genre is always going to be a subjective call. It’s "good for X music" insofar as you enjoy that music on the speaker.

For my kids, apple earbuds are "good" for everything they listen to. There are people who love classical music, but who listen through small speakers utterly incapable of anything like orchestral dynamics...but the musical message is coming through loud and clear for them.

So you always have to take someone’s assessment "X speakers are good for X but not for Y" with a grain of salt, since that only means "I enjoyed X music but not Y music" on the speakers.

This subjectivity plays out with Harbeth speakers like any others. There are those who will say "Harbeth speakers are only good if you like THESE genres of music" while plenty of other Harbeth fans will say they like Harbeths BECAUSE they seem so well balanced they seem to play all genres pleasingly.

I’m in the latter camp. I found Harbeth speakers, e.g. the SuperHL5plus (and even the smaller 30s) to be beautifully balanced, in that all the elements in a mix seemed to come through sounding "right" - nothing shortchanged, nothing over emphasized. That went for all the funk, rock, prog rock etc that I loved, as well as acoustic material. It was all very satisfying.

Now that doesn’t mean I can’t get as much or more pleasure through certain other speakers I like or own. For instance I’m currently using my Thiel 2.7s, and I love the depth of bass, impact and sheer scale they provide. So I do like certain aspects of the Thiel sound over the Harbeth (and visa versa). But that’s not to say I found myself thinking the Harbeths were a failure in any particular genre of music.  No more than the fact there are plenty of more powerful speakers than the Thiels means I'm feeling the Thiels are substandard with some genres.

The Thiels rock my world with some Rush I was playing yesterday, with tons of punch and dynamics for my taste. But I’m sure to a horn fanatic they "just don’t do dynamics" as they want, and they’d find some genres unsatisfying on the Thiels, where I enjoy everything. And so it goes...

I sometimes think that the Harbeth 40 could be my ultimate speaker.   (The Super HL5plus didn't quite make it when I owned it, but I've heard the 40 do some remarkable things).

Unfortunately the form factor (aesthetics etc) just won't work in my set up.

As I've mentioned, Harbeth are one of my favorite speaker brands.  I've heard the whole line up a few times and owned the SuperHL5plus.   I could certainly live with Harbeths as my speakers.

If I could fault them on anything, the Harbeths do lack some of the punch and solidity I find in some speakers (especially my Thiel 2.7s).

The Harbeths do have a clear, open sound.   And one of the attributes I love is the density - voices etc have a corporeal, filled out sound with body.   So they are rich and have a sense of density in that sense.

But the overall sound, compared to my Thiels for instance, is a little bit "puffy," sort of like I can sense the box a bit, and drums, bass guitars etc don't have quite the "right there" solid slam and presence.  The Thiels (and some other speakers) also sound a bit more tidy and clean, more precise. 

I still think Harbeth have a particularly great sense of balance to the sound, and I enjoy all genres on the Harbeths.  But if I had to pick nits, those would be mine.