Harbeth Monitor 30 Speaker Review

[kaka89]

Preference Rating
SCORE: 5.03
SCORE ignore LFX: 7.49

The rating is actually not bad. I thought it is worst than JBL 305P but it isn't

 

[amirm]

Perhaps you create an averaged/smoothed version in post-processing and present both overlayed?

Sadly there is no averaging in Klippel software.

 

[amirm]

Horizontal and vertical polar maps?

Sorry, missed posting them. Review is updated.

It is a separate area than spin area in the Klippel app to produce them. I did that but then forgot to post them in the review.

Everything that you see in my reviews is manually posted so that I can pay attention to what the data says as opposed to just dumping a bunch of files in there automatically. The down side is that I often forget to post a graph or two.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I'm really pleased Amir got to test some Harbeths so early on, they are one of the design philosophies that is worthy of testing and understanding. Their deliberate use of somewhat resonant thin wood cabinets is important.

IMHO this is where a waterfall plot starts to help elucidate what is going on in a more clear manner. Sure, the same information is present in the frequency response, but it is also present in the impulse response, and we don't ignore the frequency response and just publish the impulse response and say "all the information is there". Representation is important. All engineers and mathematicians understand that a change of bases can take a difficult to interpret problem into one that is vastly clearer to manage and understand.

Coupling of cabinet resonances into the impedance is absolutely a thing. I find it odd how little this is exploited. Something I have started to do a lot is to experiment with box damping and observing the changes in the impedance plot. It can be faster and more reproducible than trying to tease the effects of changes in the frequency response. But that is a different topic.

There is probably a lot more interesting information buried in the test data. Specifically these speakers are designed to radiate significant energy from their cabinet walls. And those walls have a lot of stored energy in them. Hence the waterfall plots. Normally this would be something to root out kill in speaker design. Here it is deliberate. It is part of the signature of the brand, and lots of people like the brand sound. This isn't to be ignored. There is something important to be understood, and it is very likey that this is first time speakers of this design regime have been so fully measured. The results are potentially much more useful than just rating the speaker with some trivialising metric and moving on.

I've not heard this Harbeth, but have listened to a couple others. I don't like the cabinet being involved. Now I listen to ESL panels and don't like any boxiness. The Harbeth's don't sound boxy in the sense of a mis-tuned speaker box, but I think you hear the cabinet.

In the few DIY speakers I did, building a thick, very stiff, rigid cabinet was an obvious improvement and step toward high fidelity sound. I wouldn't bother with less solid cabinets after that. That has been a few years when we didn't have this various measurement software. Harbeth's are a nicely balanced speaker, but just don't quite do it for me in the ones I've heard, and I think the cabinet is the reason.

 

[napilopez]

The rating is actually not bad. I thought it is worst than JBL 305P but it isn't

Yeah - it's a reason why sometimes quickly "eyeballing" measurements is misleading. Something I've quickly learned and big reason of why directivity is so crucial to speaker measurements.

Of course once you factor in price it's a whole nother matter but I'm always a bit surprised when an old speaker performs decently.

 

[Wombat]

Sorry, missed posting them. Review is updated.

It is a separate area than spin area in the Klippel app to produce them. I did that but then forgot to post them in the review.

Everything that you see in my reviews is manually posted so that I can pay attention to what the data says as opposed to just dumping a bunch of files in there automatically. The down side is that I often forget to post a graph or two.

Checklists help as one ages.

 

[jhaider]

Sorry, missed posting them. Review is updated.

It is a separate area than spin area in the Klippel app to produce them. I did that but then forgot to post them in the review.

Everything that you see in my reviews is manually posted so that I can pay attention to what the data says as opposed to just dumping a bunch of files in there automatically. The down side is that I often forget to post a graph or two.

Awesome, thanks.

If you still have the Revel center channel data available would you mind posting polar maps there, too? That's IMO especially interesting, because the horizontal woofer spacing should control directivity lower than a standard layout, but possibly yield some interference effects as well.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Awesome, thanks.

If you still have the Revel center channel data available would you mind posting polar maps there, too? That's IMO especially interesting, because the horizontal woofer spacing should control directivity lower than a standard layout, but possibly yield some interference effects as well.

I saw a second hand pair of the center channels. It made me ponder, Hmmmmm, these might do well for left and right channels. Should I stand them vertically or horizontally if I did that?

 

[jhaider]

I saw a second hand pair of the center channels. It made me ponder, Hmmmmm, these might do well for left and right channels. Should I stand them vertically or horizontally if I did that?

Amir uses them for all 7 channels, so I imagine they would work well. Find a third for center and that should be all set.

I would place them horizontally, as designed, if practicable. I know NHT had a well regarded speaker with horizontal midrange-tweeter, but I would prefer to keep MT orientation vertical.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Amir uses them for all 7 channels, so I imagine they would work well. Find a third for center and that should be all set.

I would place them horizontally, as designed, if practicable. I know NHT had a well regarded speaker with horizontal midrange-tweeter, but I would prefer to keep MT orientation vertical.

Yeah, the good thing about 3 horizontal ones is it would impress other people. I can tell them I have 3 soundbars in my video rig.

 

[twofires]

What's great about this is not so much "Harbeth speakers EXPOSED" or anything like that, but more "this is how a Harbeth measures - it's not accurate, but if you like it, this is what you like, and how to predict which other speakers you might like". If I ever get around to hearing any Harbeth speakers, this will be very, very useful info.

It also tells me that, unlike speakers that measure accurately, I definitely should not take a punt on them unheard just because I like the retro look.

On that subject, if anyone has any Heritage Klipsch stuff to send in, I'd be most appreciative!

 

[amirm]

Sadly there is no averaging in Klippel software.

Edit: I found that I can indeed filter it. Was in a place that I did not expect.

 

[DualTriode]

@amirm


I believe every pixel of that impedance plot. The plot shows every wart. That is a good thing.

However the plot is not the makings of a glossy sales brochure that we are accustomed to seeing.


To measure and plot speakers I use an APx1701 Transducer Test Interface along with an APx555. I posted a couple of plots on another site, there was huge offence taken.


Compression drivers and horns have very lumpy ragged jagged impedance plots.


Thanks DT

 

[ctrl]

Something is happening around the tuning frequency, because in all frequency response curves a small hump around 42Hz can be seen. A hearing test with a sine wave generator may help.

 

[MattHooper]

Interesting to see Amir measuring the Harbeths! And I see Amir's measurements are starting to get noticed in various other forums. This one was linked from Reddit.

Harbeth is one of my favorite speaker brands. Every time I hear them I find myself mesmerized by their combination of richness, clarity and (to my ears) believable organic timbral way with acoustic instruments and voices.

At the last Toronto audio show it was the Harbeths (30s IIRC) that made some vocal tracks sound more believably human than any other speaker I heard at the show. And when I was outside the room just a bit down the hall hearing some Jazz coming from the Harbeth room, more than any other "sound leaking from a room" the Harbeths left a more realistic impression "Yeah, that could be a real sax playing in there!"

I got to sit down and give the big 40.2 models a listen in a large showroom recently and before I put on some of my own tracks there was a track playing of a woman, stand up bass and a muted trumpet. I was dumbstruck by hearing the spookiest sense of a woman standing way behind the speakers singing and a full trumpet just "appearing" 10 feet off to her right to play. Not so much that wispy super sharp, clean, artifical and electronic sounding "imaging" from most audio systems, but the sense of a full sized person singing with a throat, a body, and a full sized corporeal trumpet just being "there." Such a surprise to have that experience from such unassuming old-school looking speakers!

As for the 30's I'd auditioned them before and liked them a lot but ultimately found them a tad darker-than-life sounding. I preferred the more neutral sounding SuperHL5plus (more even, open and extended sound, more believable high end, and deeper bass). I owned the SuperHL5plus for a while and only sold them because I ultimately preferred my big Thiels so I kept them. I sometimes miss that Harbeth magic way with voices. (I get a good dose of that though with my old Spendor S3/5 speakers).

I do like to look at speaker measurements to get some basic ideas of what's going on. But personally I doubt I'll ever be good enough at reading measurements to predict exactly how a speaker will sound or if I'll like it or not, so I'm still going to depend on auditioning over measurements.
I can see why Amir feels he would not want the speaker response he measured in these speakers, but I would take them over a great many other speakers that probably measure in a way that would satisfy Amir.

 

[amirm]

Something is happening around the tuning frequency, because in all frequency response curves a small hump around 42Hz can be seen.

Due to low output at the frequency from the speaker, the ambient noise protrudes:

The error is well below -20 dB so I have not bothered to find the source and quiet it down.

 

[ctrl]

Due to low output at the frequency from the speaker, the ambient noise protrudes:

Maybe some strange resonance between measuring room and bass reflex channel / tuning frequency - all of it entirely speculative

 

[direstraitsfan98]

Interesting to see Amir measuring the Harbeths! And I see Amir's measurements are starting to get noticed in various other forums. This one was linked from Reddit.

Harbeth is one of my favorite speaker brands. Every time I hear them I find myself mesmerized by their combination of richness, clarity and (to my ears) believable organic timbral way with acoustic instruments and voices.

At the last Toronto audio show it was the Harbeths (30s IIRC) that made some vocal tracks sound more believably human than any other speaker I heard at the show. And when I was outside the room just a bit down the hall hearing some Jazz coming from the Harbeth room, more than any other "sound leaking from a room" the Harbeths left a more realistic impression "Yeah, that could be a real sax playing in there!"

I got to sit down and give the big 40.2 models a listen in a large showroom recently and before I put on some of my own tracks there was a track playing of a woman, stand up bass and a muted trumpet. I was dumbstruck by hearing the spookiest sense of a woman standing way behind the speakers singing and a full trumpet just "appearing" 10 feet off to her right to play. Not so much that wispy super sharp, clean, artifical and electronic sounding "imaging" from most audio systems, but the sense of a full sized person singing with a throat, a body, and a full sized corporeal trumpet just being "there." Such a surprise to have that experience from such unassuming old-school looking speakers!

As for the 30's I'd auditioned them before and liked them a lot but ultimately found them a tad darker-than-life sounding. I preferred the more neutral sounding SuperHL5plus (more even, open and extended sound, more believable high end, and deeper bass). I owned the SuperHL5plus for a while and only sold them because I ultimately preferred my big Thiels so I kept them. I sometimes miss that Harbeth magic way with voices. (I get a good dose of that though with my old Spendor S3/5 speakers).

I do like to look at speaker measurements to get some basic ideas of what's going on. But personally I doubt I'll ever be good enough at reading measurements to predict exactly how a speaker will sound or if I'll like it or not, so I'm still going to depend on auditioning over measurements.
I can see why Amir feels he would not want the speaker response he measured in these speakers, but I would take them over a great many other speakers that probably measure in a way that would satisfy Amir.

I can almost guarantee you psychoacoustics played a huge role in your perception that the speakers sounded more “real” then anything else. Hearing speakers in an unfamiliar location, a new room is going to play havoc with your memory and perception of how it sounds compared to your speaker at home.

 

[MattHooper]

I can almost guarantee you psychoacoustics played a huge role in your perception that the speakers sounded more “real” then anything else. Hearing speakers in an unfamiliar location, a new room is going to play havoc with your memory and perception of how it sounds compared to your speaker at home.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but I'm very familiar with listening to speakers in this show room, including in the same location I auditioned the Harbeths. It wasn't that long ago that I sat in the same seat to listen to some other floor standing speakers which were nice (and looked gorgeous) but didn't do what I heard from those Harbeths. (I also auditioned other brands, and the whole line of Harbeths, over time, at this store). And generally speaking I'm quite used to auditioning speakers in unfamiliar places. I'm pretty good at this point in getting a read on what a speaker sounds like so I'm not surprised when I get it home. (The Harbeth SuperHL5plus sounded at home pretty much as they did in the audition rooms.
Same goes for my current Joseph speakers which I auditioned in a much larger hi-fi store room, but which sound essentially the same in my smaller room. So I don't seem to be discombobulated by listening to speakers in show-rooms).

 

[pavuol]

They are really nice without grilles, the woofers reminding of jet engines..

As of current models, It would be nice to see direct comparison of their "hifi" & "studio" models, like Monitor 30.1 vs. Monitor 30.1 Pro.