Latest post from A.S. about this topic.
The consumer auditioned a Harbeth speaker and bought it.
What a beautiful way to end the story, to promote his speakers.
Oh for goodness sake!!!!!
I used to sell a couple of UK brands which offered active versions of their systems (adding extra expensive boxes in a stack and equally expensive shelving racks to display them in latterly in one of the manufacturer's cases).
The thing is, one of the makers made a HUGE point about getting the tweeter level set 'just right' with the upper end of the bass-mid drivers. I did it myself on one of the systrems where the hf setting was a rotary preset with click-stops. More than one step each way (around a dB I seem to remember), the 'sound' really did go off in a subtle way and getting it 'right,' meant hours of non-fatiguing listening as much as the system itself allowed
Alan has posted (not just in the above quotes) that some new design prototypes they're investigating 'measure' very well indeed, but because of some slight issue at the crossover not seen in a frequency plot, the audible results aren't quite there.. Maybe a Klippel test might, but I'm clutching at straws here (and one European speaker maker with Klippel-level testing available, makes some pretty sh*t sounding speakers - incredibly strident and maybe for mid European tastes? - for tens of thousands of Euros I feel)
Going back to comments made earlier, we should ALL be willing to learn and widen our knowledge as we progress through life. I've known Alan for thirty five years now and I'd definitely say he's learned a heck of a lot and applied it to his work, the current product range sounding far more 'neutral' than the warmer gentler sounding speakers of twenty years back. I'd like to say I have as well and coming here to ASR with its many engineer and industry experts and generally friendly contributors, has also helped consolidate and focus concepts I had floating around my mind - some/many needed 'unlearning' and others more research to more fully understand, but now I'm not 'in it' any more to any great extent and not having finances to indulge as I once did, it's kept the hobby and 'dream' alive for me and shown me more vistas to explore. I hope
@ThoFi can grow to appreciate this as it's so easy to sit on one's keyboard and chuck brickbats and so on... The ONE thing Harbeths do so well over the decades, is present as seamless as possible transition from mid to tweeter - it's an art form I feel and one not to be dismissed as 'bland British' as some have.