Challenge From Harbeth... (part II)

[darrylfunk]

Perhaps Harbeth owners don't worry too much about dynamic range, bass or any of the other hifi jargon that others fret about.?

well if you guys fussing and fretting about how tight your mains plug screws are and if you have the right light but rigid stand and on team cables and hundreds of your other obsessions put some time into checking up on the round earth types in between getting bob dylan or miles davis and other music....we would know the answer wouldn't we...thank god for naim users saving music.....you've made such a good job of it.....dave.

 

[dave]

You're most certainly welcome, Darryl. Glad I could assist.

 

[darrylfunk]

you won your battle dave but you lost the war.

 

[dave]

No war or battles here that I'm aware of Darryl.

 

[darrylfunk]

of course dave , of course....

 

[dave]

of course dave , of course....

My posts provide ample evidence I don't seek conflict.

 

[Evil Emperor]

Perhaps Harbeth owners don't worry too much about dynamic range, bass or any of the other hifi jargon that others fret about.?

So 'bass' is hi-fi jargon, is it? Funnily enough, I spent the evening playing Jaco Pastorius' eponymous album. His fretless jargon playing was outstanding.

Of course, in Harbeth-speak, he was a guitar player. And Charles Mingus played the violin. Neither of them played on 'Sailing By' though, so I guess that's why their jargon playing doesn't register.

Here's a hint - there are more than three octaves below middle C. Not one and a half.

 

[Joe P]

Evil Emperor,

Well at least he's consistent. He sounds as dreary as his loudspeakers.

I thought the 40.1s sounded good when I heard them, though I prefer my smelly ol' Tannoys overall. The bigger box, bigger woofer and much higher efficiency of the GRFs make for better dynamics in my view, albeit at the expense of horny colouration. (Some people can't get past colouration, but I get used to it pretty quickly.)

Honk if you're horny.

Joe

 

[dave]

So 'bass' is hi-fi jargon, is it? Funnily enough, I spent the evening playing Jaco Pastorius' eponymous album. His fretless jargon playing was outstanding.

Of course, in Harbeth-speak, he was a guitar player. And Charles Mingus played the violin. Neither of them played on 'Sailing By' though, so I guess that's why their jargon playing doesn't register.

Here's a hint - there are more than three octaves below middle C. Not one and a half.

Sorry but many would rather have less low frequency extension vs the sound of a booming box in typical price ranges even if it goes a bit deeper. (IMO, quality over quantity always...and quantity ain't cheap when it comes to bass)

 

[Evil Emperor]

Sorry but many would rather have less low frequency extension vs the sound of a booming box in typical price ranges even if it goes a bit deeper. (IMO, quality over quantity always...and quantity ain't cheap when it comes to bass)

That sounds like a jargon-filled excuse to me. Like trying to sell a shirt with only one sleeve, and claiming that's how shirts should be.

 

[dave]

That sounds like a jargon-filled excuse to me. Like trying to sell a shirt with only one sleeve, and claiming that's how shirts should be.

Except in this case no one including me or Harbeth claims high fidelity can only be achieved by limiting bass.

I'd rather have Kans than a big box that went deeper but all fuzzy on peaks, one note-y and masking other instrumental lines in the process - sometimes less is more.

All else being equal, deeper bass is better but again, at what expense?

Dick Burwen's System

 

[Martyn Miles]

Evil Emperor,


(Some people can't get past colouration, but I get used to it pretty quickly.)



Joe

Off topic. I understood it is 'coloration', not 'colouration '. But then, the Yanks can't spell properly anyway...

 

[merlin]

ATC Owners on the subject

 

[Brian]

Might that be because there actually isn't any difference between half-decent amplifiers?

It might be, yes. Remember that a naim pre-power sounded the same to me as a quad pre-power back in 1985 when I did a sighted, non-level matched comparison, so I can easily believe there may not be much of a difference between certain amplifiers.

Alan Shaw is about the most ethical person I know in this business. Rigged testing is not the way he works.

S.

I don't know the bloke and I'm not questioning his ethics, I'm sure he's solid, however, my recollection from the original thread was a proposal an individual should listen to something like 100 short clips of music. I'm not sure how long that would take but that is an absurd suggestion that is bound to result in an individual not being able to tell a difference, even if one was artificially introduced! If I misread the original proposal for the challenge feel free to explain what it was and I'll reconsider my opinion.

The fact that audiophiles were objecting to a high current switch puts everything rather nicely into perspective.

That use of the word "audiophile" in a derogatory fashion appears again.

As has been pointed out to you by someone else recently, the equipment you own marks you as "a person enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction" so that makes you an audiophile under the current definition.

That's part of the reason I offered an alternate test. I found the suggestion of a rigged test absurd under the circumstances.

Alan, It's not absurd at all if the original format of the challenge was as I understood it to be. Perhaps you might explain the original format of the test if I have it wrong? As I said to Serge, I'm happy to reconsider my opinion if my interpretation of the format is incorrect.

Regarding the idea of a switch, it looks from previous posts that I'm not the only one who doesn't have a clue about this alternative suggestion you made, I don't recall noticing it. After saying that, it's irrelevant to me anyway as I'm bothered about a switch so maybe it just didn't seem important. The switch complaint is a red-herring imo.

Either the original test or your modified test were fine as far as I was concerned. Both would have resulted in the same findings, as both were valid.
The original test was just so much more convenient, and anyone with half an iota of audio engineering knowledge would accept the original test as valid.
It's sad that some here don't have even that half-iota of technical knowledge, preferring blind faith.

s.

There had to be an insult or put-down in there somewhere, which sadly isn't a surprise as it is the style of some of the objectivists. There are examples all over the audio room.

 

[louballoo]

Except in this case no one including me or Harbeth claims high fidelity can only be achieved by limiting bass.

I'd rather have Kans than a big box that went deeper but all fuzzy on peaks, one note-y and masking other instrumental lines in the process - sometimes less is more.

All else being equal, deeper bass is better but again, at what expense?

Geeze Dave, you are making an uncharacteristic amount of sense today.......


Louballoo

 

[sergeauckland]

Another nice one from Alan:

" The true music lover
Let's not get too tightly focused on tone controls or any other specific feature of the amp. My point is that the user should be provided with as many features as will allow him to get the very best sound at home, in an environment a million miles from the money-no-object acoustics of the concert hall or recording studio. To deprive him of the very facilities which a professional sound engineer uses every day on every recording by default is just downright wrong whatever marketing BS has indoctrinated a generation that 'less is more'.

My first introduction to high fidelity sound at home was when I was about 11 years old. My school friend's father was the deputy headmaster, and head of the English department. At their home he has a study, lined floor to ceiling with books. In there he would spend his evenings in his Hush Puppy suede shoes, smoking a pipe with a glass of wine to hand. He had thousands of records, and marking homework or researching he always had classical music playing, and in later life taught musical appreciation too. His entire system was QUAD, initially the valve 22/II and later the 33/303. He could not be remotely called an 'audiophile'. He knew nothing about technical matters and cared even less about them. He was a true, 100% music lover. His encyclopaedic knowledge of English language, literature and drama (he was into amateur dramatics), and of art and of music was vast.

So when I said, a few posts ago,
... have always admired the QUAD marketing strategy of the 50-80s, where the true music lover pops into his hifi dealer and says, 'give me a system preferably from one credible brand .... I'm not interested in the technology, reviews, cosmetics, shape, size, colour or price - but I do expect tone controls that allow me to get the best from my listening room and source material' ...
... I have had in mind that very consumer.

I may be wrong of course, but I suspect that most true music lovers are ambivalent to hi-fi equipment. Certainly musicians are. So our marketing position would be, frankly, that the dedicated died-in-the-wool audiophile would never be a potential customer for a Harbeth amp. It wouldn't have the right name, colour, shape, size, technology, features, reviews, cult and would be too cheap. So let's not kid ourselves that we would ever sell a single piece to that group - we wouldn't.
Alan A. Shaw
Designer, owner
Harbeth Audio UK"

Interesting, that was the very customer profile I was successful with when I had my dealership in the mid '80s. I sold a lot of Quad to 50 year-old Solicitors and Chartered Accountants, sadly there weren't enough of them, and most of the people coming through the door would have a copy of the latest rag under their arms and would rather believe what their favourite boy-scribbler wrote rather than what anybody actually knowledgable would tell them. I was spectacularly unsuccesful with those people, and there weren't enough of the former.

S.

 

[Tony L]

What was your shop called Serge?

 

[merlin]

That use of the word "audiophile" in a derogatory fashion appears again.

As has been pointed out to you by someone else recently, the equipment you own marks you as "a person enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction" so that makes you an audiophile under the current definition.

There appear to be two definitions of the term Brian.

Wiki defines it as "a person enthusiastic about high fidelity sound"

The Oxford on line defines it as "a person enthusiastic about hifi equipment."

I would place Serge and Robert in the first category.

I believe they are using the term to describe those who fit in with the second.

 

[sergeauckland]

What was your shop called Serge?

It was Beechwood Audio. I opened the first branch in Braintree Essex in 1984, a second branch in Bury St Edmunds in 1986, then had to close both a few years later. I don't regret having had a go, but sadly I was totally unsuited to dealing with HiFi enthusiasts as opposed to music lovers or engineers. If it didn't make engineering sense I wouldn't sell it, and actively discouraged upgrading as wasteful. Silly really to think I could run a shop but at the time I felt I needed to run my own business.

S.

 

[Evil Emperor]

Except in this case no one including me or Harbeth claims high fidelity can only be achieved by limiting bass.

I'd rather have Kans than a big box that went deeper but all fuzzy on peaks, one note-y and masking other instrumental lines in the process - sometimes less is more.

All else being equal, deeper bass is better but again, at what expense?

Dick Burwen's System

You are still being an apologist for a glaring omission. This is why the old-fashioned audio business is dead. Sorry, nearly dead.

So at 'affordable' levels, you either get uncontrolled bass, or no bass. At stupid money levels, you might be able to get good, deep bass, but once again need to make excuses about high cost, size, weight, ugliness and outright silliness of the system.

A pair of Sony MDR-V6 headphones can play music from something portable with no need for apologists or compromises.

You want 'out there' sound? Try a Soundmatters foxL. It's staggeringly good. It even has bass that doesn't boom but goes low. Smoke and mirrors? Perhaps, but I can put up with smoke and mirrors if it's the size of a Mars bar, and sounds just as good with dub is it does with Debussy.

Buy both. In fact, you could buy both five times over, and an iPad to play it from, and still not have spent as much as you would on a single pair of Harbeth P3ESRs.

Is it really any wonder why people gave up on traditional loudspeaker-based systems when even the non-audiophile audiophiles need to use weasel-word language to justify their expensive, boring monkey coffins?