People That Have Upgraded From Harbeth 30.1s....

@prof  Thanks for that. It's a good a write up on the Harbeth sound as I've read since R.E.G. 

The Harbeth lossy cabinet design is in direct opposition to the brute force inertia approach adopted by almost everyone else so it's very helpful to read your impressions.

I guess Alan Shaw himself would be happy to hear that all his efforts result in 'an almost peerless' rendition of the the human voice.

This has always been the key priority for Harbeth, no doubt stemming from it's BBC legacy where it's major emphasis on the clarity of speech.

I've been hoping for a reasonable priced used 40.1 to pop up. My wife hasn't :)

It's funny because a few years ago when I bought my 40.1's second hand, there were quite a few sets available.  They seem to only pop up once in a while.  I guess this is because people tend to hang onto them.  

Many many years ago I was taken with the urge to upgrade from the speakers I was running at the time, B&W DM1800 (a remarkably good speaker in its day).  I settled on Thiel 2.3.  They were fine, but needed a good bit of power.  Unwisely, I availed myself of the store's trade-in trade-up program, to 3.6's.  By then, I had acquired a pair of Muse 175 monoblocks. Undoubtedly, the most "accurate" system I had assembled, but I just didn't want to listen any more.  I returned to the fold with ProAc Response 2.5's, a great speaker--better to my mind than many of their more recent offerings--and subsequently as they aged to PMC Twenty.24's, which I enjoy.  After another round of more exhaustive auditioning (that urge again), I'm pretty sure I'm headed towards 40.2's within the next year.  I've now heard a lot of makes and models, and to me--just me--nothing I've heard tops them.

Harbeth m30.2 + dual HSU ULS 15 MK2 subs. 30.2s are not an incremental improvement to the 30.1. Far bigger soundstage, greater delineation of voices, tighter bass. Overall more forward sound. With subs it is a very different speaker than the 30.1 - which I used with subs as well.  

I upgraded to jbl 4367