Spendor, Harbeth...why so hot ?

The new "D" series Spendors are very nice sounding loudspeakers. I have also listened to Harbeths. I think it depends on what amp/preamp/source  are used in the system, that makes the system and hence the loudspeakers, enjoyable to listen to. BTW, the Spendoes are not at all harsh as some people make them out to be. I think a wrong combination of amp/preamp is how some folks listened to, and came up with that conclusion.

If I had it to do over again, I’d have a pair of Harbeth 40.2’s. These are the most organic and natural sounding speakers out there. Tonally, they are correct. The last time I heard them they were being driven by top tier Naim electronics. I'd love to hear them with good tube electronics. 15-16k per pair ... a little steep for me at this point in my life.

Frank

Just curious if anyone else noticed the big time gap between the original thread and the 9/6/17 post by wjt3 that looks like a direct response to a comment made 16 1/2 years ago?

That may be a record!

The Harbeth are built with thin walls and  " lossy " attachments. So no heavy over dampening to take the life out of the sound. Pretty simple.

soundsrealaudio,

I have to disagree: nothing in audio, especially speakers, is that simple.
Any end result for a speaker is about execution, and no one simple approach predicts one will be more successful than the other.

I've had several speakers that used the "singing cabinets" or thin walled approach.   I've had speakers with the opposite approach.  Both can work very well.

I recently owned the Harbeth Super HL5plus, while also owning Thiel 3.7 speakers.  The Thiels are built exactly the opposite: damping spurious resonance at every opportunity to remove the speaker signature.
One may predict on your theory that the Harbeths would be the speaker with "life" and the Thiels would be the more "dead" sounding speaker.

Just the opposite:  I sold the Harbeths because they could not IMO produce the sense of life - of aliveness and immediacy and dynamics - the Thiels gave me. 

I recently also purchased smaller Thiel 2.7s.   Those speakers are damped just like the big ones, and have just as complex a crossover, and are in fact significantly less sensitive.  One may have presumed they *should* be harder to drive and it would take more to get them to sound lively.  Just the opposite: hooked up to the same system the 2.7s sound even more life-like in dynamics than the bigger 3.7s.  And certainly far more dynamic, in terms of producing the enthusiasm of recorded musicians, than I ever got from my Harbeths (or any other Harbeths I've heard, including the 40.1s).

Nothing is simple in high end audio.  Surprises abound.