Naim and Elac Adante, Wow

@audiotroy 
disagree with your assessment of Harbeth being musical and lacking detail similar to the Vandersteen speakers.  
I appreciate your extreme knowledge of speakers and speaker design but IMHO the Harbeths are musical and detailed, especially the C7ES3 and SuperHL5+ which have very nice, detailed sounding Seas aluminum dome tweeters.  they also sound very natural, simialr to live music due in part to the warmth from controlled cabinet resonances.  In addition I have never owned a speaker that let me enjoy nearly all of the music in my collection without unacceptable harshness. 
many speakers have additional detail, some artificially so and as such become "hyper detailed" to the point of listenning fatigue and incompatability with a greater percentage of recordings. 
It is a fine line to walk down that balances detail, fatigue and pleasing sound.   

Avanti, 

Heard the 40.1 at the New York Audio show, and the 30.1 at Capital in both cases the speakers didn't have that incredible treble clarity that we hear in many of the more modern designs. The Harbeths have a great midrange and very listenble. Both cases neither speaker system made us go wow.

Harbeth is one of those brands that a lot of people swear by, and if you enjoy yours that is fantastic. 

The entire concept of cabinets which ring is very controversial, yes it is musical but do you want a transducer to color the sound or do you want to hear what is actually there?

This is the arguement between the "musical" camp and the "high resolution" camp.

Owned Quad 63 for years yes you could listen to them for hours and hours but compared to the WP 3/2 and the 5 we moved to they didn't sound like live music the way the Wilsons did.

Our philsophy is to produce the sound of real music warts and all. So in the case of a speaker like the Adantes which are very visceral loudspeakers with a bit of a spike at 10k means you have to find electronics which compliment them and whose properties are the inverse of what the speakers faults are that produces a good match. 

Adantes require a warmer amp with a polite top end, which is the typical sound of Naim and certain tube amplifiers and of course other solid state brands as well. 

We prefer the more neural sound of ATC over the Harbeths when it comes to classic British monitors, haven't heard the new Spendors so we can't comment on those. Also the ATC are priced lower for a comparable speaker, howerver, the Harbeths are stunning loudspeakers while the ATC are plain janes. 

Again it all comes down to what you value.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

no sense arguing with the technically incompetent 
a tapered enclosure solve a different problem than an aerodynamic magnet structure..

of course you are claiming that the patent office got it wrong, while citing a bunch of patents pending...might want to rethink that..

as for pistonic, becoming easy to measure, versu claim with recent German advances in laser technology - nice utube video of the 7 driver vs a “ claimer” with 10% out of phase trash

as for balsa, you claim no innovation there - prove that with facts....

you get end grain high density balsa to adequately bond to CF reinforced epoxy resin without core crush and I will fly out and pay your patent fees....but as it turns out you have invented what ????

get off the hate, acknowledge the innovation, say it aint your cup of tea....but for intelligent customers you come off as an unprintable word...