Harbeth speakers

[ThoFi]

Out of interest what was the amplifier and the programme material/listening situation (loudness/listening distance etc)? To be really audible the change would need to be down to something like audible harmonic distortion, clipping etc. If you don’t like neutral you don’t like neutral, nothing wrong in that. I’m speculating though that unless the change was massive between the two amps that the wider context was more influential, meaning that this is more about how one feels (cognitively) than what one is hearing.

The differences are massive.
Room 6x4m, 2.5m listening distance. Spl average 69dB (not accurate , measured with iphone app).
so I think there is no power issue. (tube amp 50W).
I also do not listen to extremely dynamic music such as orchestras.
To be honest I do not understand.

 

[ThoFi]

My main system:

Sony CD/SACD
Technics SL1000 table with cartridge of the month - MM
MacBook Pro
Benchmark DAC3 & 2 AHB2 bridged
Benchmark cabling throughout
Lyngdorf Room Perfect
Harbeth 40.2
various subs

The Lyngfdorf solved room issues - I like it

what frequencies did the Lyngdorf correct? Also high frequencies?

 

[TLEDDY]

what frequencies did the Lyngdorf correct? Also high frequencies?

Unfortunately,I do not know. I used the built-in algorithm
Also, I am older (80) and trained in the Army without the benefit of hearing protection; M1 Garand rifles and artillery are noisy. My hearing stops at about 9K on a good day.

 

[ThoFi]

Unfortunately,I do not know. I used the built-in algorithm
Also, I am older (80) and trained in the Army without the benefit of hearing protection; M1 Garand rifles and artillery are noisy. My hearing stops at about 9K on a good day.

thanks for your reply.
Do only thing that matters is that you are able to enjoy your music!!!!
All the best and many happy hours of listening to your music!

 

[tuga]

Out of interest what was the amplifier and the programme material/listening situation (loudness/listening distance etc)? To be really audible the change would need to be down to something like audible harmonic distortion, clipping etc. If you don’t like neutral you don’t like neutral, nothing wrong in that. I’m speculating though that unless the change was massive between the two amps that the wider context was more influential, meaning that this is more about how one feels (cognitively) than what one is hearing.

If @ThoFi 's valve amplifier has high ouput impedence then the combined amp/speaker frequency response (or tonal balance if you prefer) will be tailored by the SHL5's impedance characteristics (significant hump in the upper-midrange peaking at 1.75kHz for an "exciting", "detailed" and "forward" sound?):

source: https://www.stereophile.com/content/harbeth-super-hl5plus-loudspeaker-measurements

 

[TLEDDY]

Here is the 40.1 review:

Harbeth M40.1 loudspeaker

The best, most enduring audio products have in their favor more than great sound: They have some sense of history as well. Particularly good examples abound from the British companies Spendor, Rogers, and Harbeth, some of whose products were actually commissioned into being by the British...

www.stereophile.com

I think it a fun read!

 

[ThoFi]

If @ThoFi 's valve amplifier has high ouput impedence then the combined amp/speaker frequency response (or tonal balance if you prefer) will be tailored by the SHL5's impedance characteristics (significant hump in the upper-midrange peaking at 1.75kHz for an "exciting", "detailed" and "forward" sound?):

source: https://www.stereophile.com/content/harbeth-super-hl5plus-loudspeaker-measurements

but my experience is not like as you mentioned here.
more unpleasant too me is the Class D amp…

 

[tuga]

but my experience is not like as you mentioned here.
more unpleasant too me is the Class D amp…

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "unpleasant"?

 

[ThoFi]

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "unpleasant"?

please read one of my posts before

 

[tuga]

please read one of my posts before

It is unclear why you prefer the valve amplifier over the Class D one.

 

[ThoFi]

It is unclear why you prefer the valve amplifier over the Class D one.

because of the Harbeth speaker?

 

[MattHooper]

Here is the 40.1 review:

Harbeth M40.1 loudspeaker

The best, most enduring audio products have in their favor more than great sound: They have some sense of history as well. Particularly good examples abound from the British companies Spendor, Rogers, and Harbeth, some of whose products were actually commissioned into being by the British...

www.stereophile.com

I think it a fun read!

Art's reviews were always fun, and he did an excellent job of putting in to words specific traits that I heard from the 40.1s when I'd auditioned them several times.

 

[ThoFi]

Listen with my Harbeth and Hypex Class D is like looking at a too sharp, detailed picture or TV.
This starts to become unnatural.
A too sharp picture,TV is too artificial to the eye
Same as a too detailed, neutral(?) sound is too much for the ear.
There is no perfection in the nature. No eye is perfect, sees 100% sharp.
Same as the ear.
I think the audio industry is on a wrong way, the way to be too perfect.
And Harbeth is on the same way…

 

[MattHooper]

Pardon me, but if the eye has limitations, how does it perceive that which goes beyond those limitations? Same for the ear; how can our ears hear something beyond their abilities?

Microscopes have shown for many, many years that there are things that the eyes cannot see. Microphones have shown that there are sounds all around us everyday that we cannot hear.

Just because our eyes don't see those things nor our ears hear those things doesn't mean that they're not there. It also doesn't mean that we don't live quite comfortably in a world that is filled with all the things we can't see and can't hear. Just the opposite; we can, and very competently and very comfortably.

You said, "I think ....."
Is it not possible that your opinions bias and control your perceptions? Jim Taylor

Ha!

I spent all too much of my life on the AVS forums and this reminds me of some of the bizzare debates that went on there.

For instance when Blu Rays came on the scene there were constantly on demo at Best Buys etc. People would often complain that "Blu Ray was too sharp and clear, it makes movies look weird." It turned out that was because Blu Rays were inevitably demoed with TVs that had motion blur reduction settings cranked up - the ones that use frame interpolation to add missing frames, which resulted in the "soap opera" effect, where it made 24fps movies look filmed on video (which was traditionally a higher frame rate, hence clearer motion).

Anyway, quite a number of times someone would say "Blu Rays motion is too clear and unblurred. That's not real life. In real life the way our eye works, moving things are blurred."

It as fascinating that they did not notice the incoherence of this claim. (Obviously they were misunderstanding the nature of how our eyes see motion - if in real life our eyes saw moving objects as blurry, the person in question could never have seen the "too clean" motion shown on the TV set).

 

[ahofer]

[I’ve said all this in other threads. Sorry]

I own the SHL5+ Anniversary Editions. I’ve really enjoyed my evenings listening to them. I have Genelec desktops (8010 with sub), KEF LS50W, JBL L830, and I came from Thiel CS3.6 and, before that, Magnepan IIIa. I prefer the Harbeths to all of them. When I bought them, I also auditioned KEF Reference 5, Legacy Focus SE, Wilson Sabrina, ATC passives, Paradigm Performas, and some large JBLs in the Harman showroom in midtown. I preferred the Harbeth to all of them, although the Reference 5s were pretty great (and much more expensive at the time, and large), and I certainly wasn’t able to listen to them all side-by-side.

My primary live reference is classical chamber music (my wife is a violist). There’s something about string instrument timbre that seems very right with the Harbeths. I find they project a large, stable image. Much larger than any comparably-sized speaker I’ve heard. And I have to say, as a NY apartment dweller, I like being able to move them easily.

I use a small hypex p252-based amp (March Audio), and it sounds terrific. I switched from a huge, Nelson Pass-designed Adcom 5802. I did an informal blind test with my son‘s help and couldn’t tell the difference.

As an aside, given the cost of my other systems, those JBLs seem like a pretty good value to me.

 

[richard12511]

Ha!

I spent all too much of my life on the AVS forums and this reminds me of some of the bizzare debates that went on there.

For instance when Blu Rays came on the scene there were constantly on demo at Best Buys etc. People would often complain that "Blu Ray was too sharp and clear, it makes movies look weird." It turned out that was because Blu Rays were inevitably demoed with TVs that had motion blur reduction settings cranked up - the ones that use frame interpolation to add missing frames, which resulted in the "soap opera" effect, where it made 24fps movies look filmed on video (which was traditionally a higher frame rate, hence clearer motion).

Anyway, quite a number of times someone would say "Blu Rays motion is too clear and unblurred. That's not real life. In real life the way our eye works, moving things are blurred."

It as fascinating that they did not notice the incoherence of this claim. (Obviously they were misunderstanding the nature of how our eyes see motion - if in real life our eyes saw moving objects as blurry, the person in question could never have seen the "too clean" motion shown on the TV set).

I could never make myself prefer that "soap opera" effect. It always felt like watching actors on a set.

 

[dougi]

what frequencies did the Lyngdorf correct? Also high frequencies?

Room Perfect will correct most frequencies, but tries to preserve the speakers bottom and top end roll-off. Here is my worst positioned speaker at the listening position (3.8m in a large >8 x 12m room). Note it is happy to boost a fair bit down low. It doesn't always get things right so I use an RME-ADI-2 on top to tweak a bit.

 

[ThoFi]

[I’ve said all this in other threads. Sorry]

I own the SHL5+ Anniversary Editions. I’ve really enjoyed my evenings listening to them. I have Genelec desktops (8010 with sub), KEF LS50W, JBL L830, and I came from Thiel CS3.6 and, before that, Magnepan IIIa. I prefer the Harbeths to all of them. When I bought them, I also auditioned KEF Reference 5, Legacy Focus SE, Wilson Sabrina, ATC passives, Paradigm Performas, and some large JBLs in the Harman showroom in midtown. I preferred the Harbeth to all of them, although the Reference 5s were pretty great (and much more expensive at the time, and large), and I certainly wasn’t able to listen to them all side-by-side.

My primary live reference is classical chamber music (my wife is a violist). There’s something about string instrument timbre that seems very right with the Harbeths. I find they project a large, stable image. Much larger than any comparably-sized speaker I’ve heard. And I have to say, as a NY apartment dweller, I like being able to move them easily.

I use a small hypex p252-based amp (March Audio), and it sounds terrific. I switched from a huge, Nelson Pass-designed Adcom 5802. I did an informal blind test with my son‘s help and couldn’t tell the difference.

As an aside, given the cost of my other systems, those JBLs seem like a pretty good value to me.

Very interesting.
I do have the same speakers and power amp and didn’t like it…!?

 

[ThoFi]

Ha!

I spent all too much of my life on the AVS forums and this reminds me of some of the bizzare debates that went on there.

For instance when Blu Rays came on the scene there were constantly on demo at Best Buys etc. People would often complain that "Blu Ray was too sharp and clear, it makes movies look weird." It turned out that was because Blu Rays were inevitably demoed with TVs that had motion blur reduction settings cranked up - the ones that use frame interpolation to add missing frames, which resulted in the "soap opera" effect, where it made 24fps movies look filmed on video (which was traditionally a higher frame rate, hence clearer motion).

Anyway, quite a number of times someone would say "Blu Rays motion is too clear and unblurred. That's not real life. In real life the way our eye works, moving things are blurred."

It as fascinating that they did not notice the incoherence of this claim. (Obviously they were misunderstanding the nature of how our eyes see motion - if in real life our eyes saw moving objects as blurry, the person in question could never have seen the "too clean" motion shown on the TV set).

No specifically motions only.
Too sharp images, videos (perfectly reproduced) are not „real“ because I think the eye/brain do not „see sharp“ in real environment.
I think, TVs, monitors, images, videos are recorded, produced, post-processed unnatural sharp.
Same with colors.
You can see “perfect“ white on an image. In comparison this white didn’t exist in real life.

 

[ThoFi]

Room Perfect will correct most frequencies, but tries to preserve the speakers bottom and top end roll-off. Here is my worst positioned speaker at the listening position (3.8m in a large >8 x 12m room). Note it is happy to boost a fair bit down low. It doesn't always get things right so I use an RME-ADI-2 on top to tweak a bit.

View attachment 155863

These, I guess, in-room measurements show hugh deviation from flat FR.
Because of that I do not understand the target of speakers flat FR.