What Is So Special About Harbeth?

I remeber a few years back I visited an old friend of mine in Philadephia and he had a set of the largest Harbeths, a Linn Sondek deck with Vandehul cartridge and Ayre electronics from phono to preamp to power amp. It was one of the nicest systems I have heard. The evening after dinner he played everything from classical symphonies to Daft Punk to Steely Dan to Nora Jones and it was very realistic powerful and also not too sharp or edgy like many big deal hifis are.  I just remember being very impressed.

weakest things of harbeths are these.Far away from natural

drum set, cymbal shimmer, bowed bass

All good observations made by existing Harbeth owners and ex-owners. I agree that the Harbeth are very good in reproducing tone and timbre of instruments and human voice. In my limited experience, not many speakers do well in this area. I find voices on Harbeth to be one of the best if not the best. Some (or many) costlier high end speakers fail to match the Harbeth in reproducing voices to sound close to the real thing.

I somewhat agree with this remark made by Extravaganza, only if it’s relating to the intensity or power of the striking of drums, the dynamics of the bass or shimmer and decay or cymbals. The dynamics are slightly lacking but if we are talking about the tone and timbre of instruments such as piano, acoustic guitars, violin, trumpet etc. it’s as close to the real thing as you can get. Human voice, it’s very very good, perhaps not the best but based on my limited experience I haven’t found one that reproduces voice to sound better and more believable than the Harbeth. The M30.2 does voices the best in the Harbeth line but I was made to understand that the new C7ES3 XD now gives the 30.2 XD some competition.

 weakest things of harbeths are these.Far away from natural

drum set, cymbal shimmer, bowed bass

I respectfully disagree.  Just got done listening to Zuill Bailey's most recent attempt at the Bach cello suites (Octave Records OCT-0008), and while not a bowed bass, the sounds I heard expressed the humanity of both the performer and the composer with spine-tingling authenticity.  Earlier today I had on Basie "Live at the Sands" (their performance in 1966 before Sinatra took the stage – MFSL 2-401).  When Sonny Payne cracked his drums I just about leapt out of my seat.  I had to play it again to believe it.  I was there (who needs Frank anyway when the Count's in town)!  That on a humble set of PSesr speakers (with a little help from an REL T/5).

Now I'm sitting in a smallish, well damped room (13' x 21') about 9' from the speakers listening at about 80dB (pretty loud for me, but my wife wasn't home).  The speakers behaved admirably (as usual).

Note that these speakers require some juice to get going (I've got 2x 110W with 120,000µF caps).  Not really huge, but more than you would expect you would need for such small speakers, and enough for my needs.  My old 60w amp didn't have the punch to drive them.

PS:  Frank would always request Sonny Payne whenever he played with Basie (yeah, he's that good)!

another thing - Harbeth speakers are special because they never sound irritating!

never a harsh note, startling shout, edgy glare or cringe moment. the best speakers for walking the fine line between forgiving and detailed.

trouble is, some music is meant to be offensive and when it is I want to hear it, hence my preference for ATC