I've had the CS300 for a home demo, it had no problems with driving my SHL5.
It sounded pretty good, but ultimately my Sonneteer Orton was better. The Leben was a bit too harsh for me (great bass, though), I just love silk-like smoothness combined with great dynamics of the Sonneteer. It sounds very "sophisticated" to me - smooth, detailed, but not aggressive in highs, dynamic and engaging. Soundstage is also pretty good (dual mono design).
For SHL5 I suggest listening to some Sonneteer amps (Orton if funds allow, but Alabaster is also very good).
Has anyone heard/used this combination? How was it? How would it be in a small room with nearfield listening at sensible volumes? The Cs300 is 12W and these Harbeths quite insensitive, though most say easy to drive.
Any thoughts appreciated.
Depending on the price of the amp, though, I'd be tempted to spend some of the money going to bigger Harbeths - say Monitor 30 - that are genuinely easy to drive and have the better resolution that comes from their funky plastic cone material.
Has anyone heard Harbeths driven by a very powerful solid state amp - say in excess of 150 watts at 8 ohms. Ok this would perhaps be silly for the P3es2 but I wonder how the added power would give solidity and assurance to the 5's, 7's or 30's. I can ask this on another thread if this is the wrong place, but since we're talking about the relative values of valves I thought I'd mention it. A comparison between a low powered but very good valve amp and some huge Krell or Chord style beast would be intriguing. I know Alan Shaw says extra power is useless, but he says a lot of funny things about amps.