Why do Harbeth speakers have such a cult following

Because they don't have a bright tweeter, don't have grainy midrange, don't have "ear grating" types of distortion. Most high end speakers hurt the ears of many sensitive listeners who are bothered by rough/harsh/bright distortions. Most Harbeths have subtractive faults which don't hurt that type of listener's ears. If anything they are missing detial, missing extension, which does not typically hurt ears.

I don't own Harbeths, never did, never had any sort of business with them in any way. But I know what I have heard from most Harbeths, and have had many occasions to hear them.

Danoro said: "My point is that suggesting that a loudspeaker has a more natural timbre than some other loudspeaker is, in itself, flawed."

I will answer back, not directly pertaining to Harbeths versus most high end speakers, but simply a statement of most high end speakers: Since most speakers directed toward the high end industry have too much high frequency energy (a come-on to the listener in a showroom) and/or way too much distortion from 1k on up, it is entirely possible that the speaker that seems to have a more natural timbre very well could be a less distorted speaker. Certainly, a speaker that has a "more natural timbre" should not be dismissed simply due to that aspect of its sound!

Kiddman

I just bought the 30 model for $1400 including stands for my friend. I hope he likes them.

They are comfortable to listen to for hours on, without listening fatigue.

They seem to do classical music well.

I am excited about them.

all speaker has it's own characters. I owned HL5S and it has it's own sound being un-amplified and natural but also lacks dynamic punch and doesn't go very low. They are easy to listen to and very musical with all kinds of musics, I toe tapped with everything I played but I missed a bit of excitement. Great musical speakers and not audiophile speakers.

dynamic punch can be achieved using punchy amp and source(dac) and copper interconnects modified with mundorf solder which contains silver gold etc.In my case Krell amp and bryston dac and Musical fidelity vlink192 does this trick