What Is So Special About Harbeth?

Putting it in perspective, Harbeth is a tiny company with 15 employees. Here is their UK business filing (link). Their budget is shockingly small to me (but I work in the tech industry). Hardly what I would call a "powerhouse in marketing".

I think it's the marketing prowess of the distributors more than Harbeth as a company, but effective marketing doesn't require an army of marketing majors. It really only takes one person who understands the market and what drives sales. 

 

 

alan shaw often doesn’t do himself (nor his speaker owners) favors in how he issues goofy (usually self serving) blanket statements about amps, cables, stands and how they add/detract from the speakers’ performance... he thinks he is being ’strategic’ in wanting the focus and consumer spending power focused on the buying the best harbeth speaker, focus less on ancillaries... experienced users see through this...

i do agree that prat and speed are not harbeth’s shining strengths, though the upper models do that pretty darn well, if properly driven

atc’s are another matter, while also being an excellent british make, they present a totally different set of attributes, i still have two pair, they are leaner cleaner, utterly unforgiving and demanding of pristine source material and upstream gear... incredibly inefficient and revealing as in for true in-studio monitoring use level of clarity... they play what you feed them with all blemishes warts wrinkles right up front... some may want that type of presentation in their homes, many don’t

with the exception of ‘incredibly’ preceding inefficient, a pretty damn good exposition..

I have a pair of SCM11’s in my bedroom driven by Exposure Xxiii / 3010S2 monos and am not bothered at all by an overly analytical/clinical sound.. The Exposures make a wonderful pairing.

The two upper end models are extremely musical, easy to listen to, and good sound staging. I believe this is a house sound as I have always enjoyed listening to them.. 
 

Yours in Music,

Ted Denney III

Lead Designer/CEO Synergistic Research Inc.

This thread is really not helping the brand. It seems that if you want to experience distortion, er um sorry, no distortion, whatever, that the only way to really hear this schitzophrenic speaker is with a Hegel amp

Lol! Harbeth has been around for 40 years and has a sizable customer base. I really don't think it needs to be 'helped'. I'm running the SHL5+ with a 50 watt class A tube amp, never heard better sound in my listening room. Obviously, it's not for everyone and is not perfect. Which speaker is?

I think it's the marketing prowess of the distributors more than Harbeth as a company, but effective marketing doesn't require an army of marketing majors. It really only takes one person who understands the market and what drives sales. 

I hardly see any commercial marketing of Harbeth. I think it is the influence of the fanbase more than anything else (e.g. look at discussions here on Audiogon).

For myself, Harbeth is excellent for my listening (mostly classical music), and I do consider myself a fan. However I can see that Harbeth isn't ideal for all types of music.