Warm romantic & detailed


Good morning Gentlemen & ladies... 

I'm just starting to toy with idea of replacing my Focal 1038's... No matter how I treat my room, or what equipment I throw at it I just can't seem to tame the harsh highs on this speaker. 

I'd like to stay in the same price range of the Electra's (7/8k), I don't mind buying used, the musts for me at this point are: Warm, romantic, yet detailed... It would be beautiful to just sit and listen and not have ear fatigue after 15 minutes of listening. 

Can you please recommend something? 
jeffinnh76
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
Soooooo would it be fair to say that in a well treated room I'd be fine with the 40.1's

Room size 13W x 20L (speakers on short wall) 
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....


The Harbeth M40.2 speakers on their own , would still be considered a warm romantic speaker in the general scheme of speakers. They are a lot more room friendlier than the M40.1 version.