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HARBETHS AND STANDS, do they make a difference

Disbeliever said:
I suggest you audition the KEF R500 just given OUTSTANDING PRODUCT rating in November Hi-Fi News & Record Review. "
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A friend had the somewhat related IQ90s and I felt they were horrendous, just awful hollow wallowing tuneless bass. I do however very much like the LS50, a stunning little speaker, though again I feel the ported bass lets them down just a little, but I'm very much a infinite baffle / horn / open-baffle / panel person. I just don't like ported bass on anything less than huge full-range speakers (proper studio monitor grade Tannoys, JBLs etc). The problem is I'm a bass player!
 
Disbeliever said:
AGAIN ABSOLUTE RUBBISH Go and read both the Hi-Fi News Review and on the net the Sound Stage Review. I have heard as the saying goes more loudspeakers than you have eaten hot dinners. I demonstrated the original Harbeth HLI at Heathrow with the designer Dudley Harwood . If you look at the KEF R range brochure you will see the internal construction of the R500 nothing like a stand.
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Everything I wrote is 100% accurate - please don't assume everyone is as clueless as you! You are fond of making sweeping and dogmatic statements that lack supportive evidence. In this case your claims of 'rubbish' seem to be based on your experience of one KEF model; I suspect that most will require significantly more before your comments are regarded as anything more than 'highly questionable'!
 
Martyn Miles said:
If I recall correctly, Alan Shaw does recommend Skylan stands for his speakers. Re. Amplifiers, he offered a pair of his M 40 speakers to anyone who could discriminate between different amplifiers in a set-up at Harbeth.

No one took up the challenge.

I have an open mind. With a scientific background at a University Chemistry Lab. I had to.
I use one of Peter Walker's amplifiers with my P3ERSs and it works well. The combination gives me great pleasure. I attend live music, run a PA and do a little recording as well.
After all, music is what it's all about...
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The Harbeth Challenge was never going to work.
The people wanting it most were the very same folk who deliberately misquote Shaw and others on amplifier sound. They wanted Shaw to compare two or more quite different amplifiers and declare, low and behold, they sound different. It's playing games and Shaw to his credit was having none of it. He correctly imposed conditions on the test as Walker, Albinson, Colloms, Baxandall, Self and many others had done before.

I do however agree that perhaps he should have just arranged the test himself. But he probably couldn't be arsed and I don't blame him. Humans are supposed to learn form experience and there is no need to keep repeating tests when the lessons were obvious decades ago ;)
 
YNWOAN said:
Everything I wrote is 100% accurate - please don't assume everyone is as clueless as you! You are fond of making sweeping and dogmatic statements that lack supportive evidence. In this case your claims of 'rubbish' seem to be based on your experience of one KEF model; I suspect that most will require significantly more before your comments are regarded as anything more than 'highly questionable'!
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I do not agree that £1500 is expensive for a rigid cabinet speaker., in fact IMO the KEF R500 & the Goldmund Job 225 are the two top bargains in Hi-Fi today. Of course retailers do not like the excellent Job 225 being sold direct to the Public at a bargain price. Slim TL speakers also sound excellent.
 
IF I misquoted the alleged Alan Shaw comments over all amps and stands sounding the same, then I take it back. I have heard these 2 arguments crop up many times with these comments being apparently made by AS. If he didn't say this, then I'm sorry for saying he did.
What I would say, is that my own Harbeth speakers sound very different on different types of stand AND with different amplifiers.
 
lordsummit said:
Give me a decent small speaker on a stand anyday. I'm with Tony here, can't see any benefit in making a floor stander other than WAF, and giving a little driver something a bigger box to fart into. Floorstanders always boom in my room. Heaven knows I tried a few. Speakers with decent sized bass drivers or my current stand mounts / subs don't. Discuss.
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Room seems to be the problem not the speakers. I agree you have to find a speaker that works well in your listening room.
 
Disbeliever said:
Room seems to be the problem not the speakers.
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I don't agree. To my mind speakers trying to reinforce / compensate for a small driver's lack of bass by using the out of phase back driver output through a port is just a compromise I can't live with. I'd far prefer to opt for either a larger physical size or less efficiency as it is a far less obvious compromise to my ears. To put it another way I can't bring to mind a single slim ported floorstander that I'd swap for a LS3/5A, S3/5, P3ESR or JR149 or whatever. The little infinite baffle stand mounts may not go anything like as loud or as deep and they are rather inefficient which can restrict amp choice, but their bass is in time, in tune and they don't have that hollow resonant 'ported floorstander' sound to me. They are also far easier to integrate into a room as there is no chicanery in their response.
 
Tony L said:
I don't agree. To my mind speakers trying to reinforce / compensate for a small driver's lack of bass by using the out of phase back driver output through a port is just a compromise I can't live with. I'd far prefer to opt for either a larger physical size or less efficiency as it is a far less obvious compromise to my ears. To put it another way I can't bring to mind a single slim ported floorstander that I'd swap for a LS3/5A, S3/5, P3ESR or JR149 or whatever. The little infinite baffle stand mounts may not go anything like as loud or as deep and they are rather inefficient which can restrict amp choice, but their bass is in time, in tune and they don't have that hollow resonant 'ported floorstander' sound to me. They are also far easier to integrate into a room as there is no chicanery in their response.
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I do not agree at all, however I have put the foam bungs into the two R5OO,s ports and have not found it necessary to bring the speakers forward to eliminate room/bass bloom. I used to have large custom made TL speakers with TDL bass units Latest design technology KEF R500 has caught up in bass quality with with Transmission line speakers obviously not as room shaking which I do not want. I still have a slim TL speaker
in my room I can not tell the difference in the bass despite the TL having a lower measured response. The LS3/ 5a, JR149 and similar are now very old hat.
 
In fairness I'm not on about comparing them to transmission lines, which are just a slightly different type of out of time bass! My preference is for infinite baffles, (front) horn-loading or panels, which are a whole other thing entirely.

PS Speaker age has nothing to do with it, it's design concept I'm on about, e.g. I'm currently listening to the new Aphex Twin album through some speakers designed way back in 1963 that feature a folded-horn-loaded 15" bass driver. They start and stop in a way no little speaker in a long narrow ported box ever has done or will ever be able to. One can't mess with physics.
 
Tony L said:
In fairness I'm not on about comparing them to transmission lines, which are just a slightly different type of out of time bass! My preference is for infinite baffles, (front) horn-loading or panels, which are a whole other thing entirely.

PS Speaker age has nothing to do with it, it's design concept I'm on about, e.g. I'm currently listening to the new Aphex Twin album through some speakers designed way back in 1963 that feature a folded-horn-loaded 15" bass driver. They start and stop in a way no little speaker in a long narrow ported box ever has done or will ever be able to. One can't mess with physics.
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I find Horn speakers including the most famous Voigt corner Horn to sound coloured and not accurate.I agree you can not change the laws of physics but technology advances and todays cabinets are much better, it is still and always will be room acoustics that has the most influence over any speaker.
 
Front loaded horns don't have to be coloured at all, the Voight ( copies I believe) I heard at Whittlebury a few years back were the most coloured loudspeaker I have ever heard.
Keith.
 
Martyn Miles said:
Let's get back to the Harbeth and the stands...
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RSNO in the Usher Hall last night playing Bartok was stunning from the Grand Circle. This was purely acoustic, no microphones/speakers were involved.

Enthused, I have been playing my Harbeth/Heybrook system this morning. This is a fine combination, though I still miss my old original Quad 'statics (now that is a REAL stand issue!)
 
Disbeliever,

Have you heard the Tannoy GRF rectangulars with early Monitor Reds?

They were extensively reviewed by a Canadian audiophile and the speakers received top marks across the board. Even that Canadian audio reviewer's wife, who rarely comments on matters audio, was heard to say, "Oh... my... God, are those the ones you preferred? Shit, where are you going to put them? Not the living room, I hope!"

Joe
 
Joe P said:
Disbeliever,

Have you heard the Tannoy GRF rectangulars with early Monitor Reds?

They were extensively reviewed by a Canadian audiophile and the speakers received top marks across the board. Even that Canadian audio reviewer's wife, who rarely comments on matters audio, was heard to say, "Oh... my... God, are those the ones you preferred? Shit, where are you going to put them? Not the living room, I hope!"

Joe
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I have not heard Tannoys for quite a few years, quite frankly I always tend to disregard them for being coloured, perhaps they have improved,
 
Disbeliever said:
I have not heard Tannoys for quite a few years, quite frankly I always tend to disregard them for being coloured, perhaps they have improved,
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The problem is, with perhaps the exception of a perfectly installed pair of ESL63s, everything is coloured, be it the port flub, hollowness & dynamic compression from slim floor-standers or that element of horn honk or cabinet resonance from Klipch, Tannoy etc. Good speakers all do some stuff well and some stuff wrongly. They all fall a very, very long way away from the 20Hz-20Khz flat-response highly efficient low-mass omnidirectional single-driver point-source that is the theoretical ideal. Ridiculously so in most cases. The fundamental truth is that all speakers are pretty crap. They all have obvious compromise. All one can do is chose a pair (or more) where the flaws don't irritate too much, and what irritates one person to the point of distraction is ignored by another.
 
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