Harbeth 40.3's. Should I buy them?

I am always surprised when folks say that Harbeth speakers don't rock. I have 30.1s driven by a Luxman integrated. They rock. 100 watts of Luxman power drive the 30.1s extremely well, and when I pull out some classic rock (The Who, Rod Stewart/Yes) they sound great. They do not have ear piercing treble shrillness, but they sound great, and I have worked hard to minimize tremble hardness.  Also using the Luxman amp allowed me to stop using a sealed sub in the system. I get very nice bass in my room without going through the painful process of matching and tuning a sub to the room and speakers. The sound is more cohesive without a sub (for me, in my room, with my system and ears). Good luck on the search. There are a ton of nice speakers out there.

having been a lifelong fan and owner of numerous big spendors, harbeths and proacs over the years, i would add that having the right amplification for each is (obviously) important in extracting the best performance from each, and also knowing how each has/had been developed is useful

harbeths are less efficient, proacs typically the most efficient (the outlier response d38 an exception), and usually use multiple smaller woofers in a d'appolito configuration, spendors somewhere in the middle ... stewart tyler has historically optimized/voiced his upper proacs with medium power arc 6550c tube amps - so if you hook up solid state to proacs there is a chance they can sound a little bright

it is well known that modern harbeths have been typically developed and run at shows using hegel solid state (h360/390) and quad before that

spendors (terry miles and derek hughes earlier) use solid state mostly (quad 66 and naim power amps) in their testing and voicing.... that said, spendor classic 100’s and their predecessor s/100/sp100/r2 models are quite tube amp friendly with impedance well above 6 ohms through the range and around 89-90 dbwm efficiency

@desalvo55 

Interesting to see you owned the MBL 126 speakers!

I owned the previous model, the MBL 121s, for many years.

What I liked about the 121s is they are a bit bigger and fuller range compared with the newer 126.    The other thing is, while I enjoyed the MBLs on various amps I tried - from big beefy Bryston to my CJ Premier 12 tube amps (140w/side)...both of which produced energetic sound...my favourite pairing turned out to be the old

Eico HF-81 integrated tube amp - a mere 14W side of cult-classic tube power!

The Eico, across various speakers, exhibited a quality of both that tube richness and fullness, but also an energetic, sparkly presence, with a slightly over-warm (lack of control) bottom in the bass end.   This proved to be magic with the MBLs.  The sound was super rich, organic, sparkling, present, tons of detail, incredible dimensionality, and the slight under-damping on the bass didn't feel "bloated" but instead felt like the speakers had added bottom end.  It felt less like I wanted to add a subwoofer.

One of those pairings you'd never think would work until you try it.

Anyway, as for the Harbeth and needing an all-rounder speaker:  the reactions to Harbeth are interesting.  On one hand they are often depicted as "pipe and slippers" speakers, specializing in the narrow range of acoustic music and vocals but "don't ask anything else of them."  On the other hand, you'll find plenty of Harbeth owners saying they were driven to Harbeth precisely because they were good "all rounder" speakers, good with all genres. 

I find myself more sympathetic with the latter - I found Harbeth very well balanced for all music (I auditioned the full line, and owned the Harbeth SuperHL5plus for a while).  I think the dichotomy arises from this:  I think the Harbeth speakers are very well balanced - full sounding from top to bottom, generally no weird suck-outs or big wiggles in response so as to favor some sounds over others.  And this results to my ears as presenting the mixes in a track in a way that sounds "right" or very authentic, the sense I'm hearing everything as balanced by a mixer, rather than by the speakers.   It was actually hearing how bloody fantastic a pair of Harbeth 30.1 played some prog rock in a store that got me re-interested in the brand.

So I think this sense of "finely balanced" is what give many the sense they seem to sound "right" no matter what recordings you put on them.

However, balance is different from things like "slam" and "impact."   An a Harbeth you'll hear the bass and drums well controlled and situated, but the sound will be a bit softer in terms of sonic impact than say a Wilson speaker or whatever.

I compared the SuperHL5+ with my Thiel 3.7 and Thiel 2.7 speakers.  The Thiels would present instruments like drums and bass with a soldity and a hit-in-the-gut propulsion that was less there with the Harbeths.   Didn't mean that listening to the same tracks on the Harbeths wasn't immensely enjoyable.  Just depends what satisfies an individual listener.

I was trying to downsize from the Thiels.   The reason I didn't keep the Super HL5+ is that in direct comparison with the Thiels, the Thiels did almost all the Harbeth did, but "better" and more real.  With my CJ amps the Thiels weren't thin but lush and organic and tonally beautiful.  But they were also cleaner, more precise, more sonic density to the imaging, just a bit more "real sounding" in every comparison.

The Thiels never quite reach the magic of the Harbeth with vocals, so sometimes I miss that.  But the rest was in favor of the Thiels.

If I had the right room for them, though, I would definitely have put more serious consideration in to the 40s, as I heard them sound astonishing (in a big room).

Cheers

@prof

Ditto!

@jjss49 that is super helpful intel. Knowing what amps were used in designs and optimized to operate with certain speakers, sure can save people a lot of time. Was not aware of the design origin of the 6550 amp / Proac combo. Interesting.