Please let me put this to rest once and for all- Within the context of model and room size- ALL HARBETH MODELS CAN ROCK..... With the right amplifier. of course 200 WPC on the P3ESRs will not rock very well in a 20 X 30 room with a cathedral ceiling. Put them in a 12 X 14 or so with a robust 100- 150 WPC and they will rock hard with punch all day and all night. The only reason they lose it is because they are low efficiency and the amp is giving up, not the speakers. They can take it...
Billion, I heard the P3ESR blow my mind with some rock jams being driven by a high quality, robust MOSFET solid state amp. Drums and bass were fantastic.
Glad you find Harbeth to be exceptional rockers. Ive got 14-15 Amps of all types and NONE of them make my Harbeth's sound better than the majority of the other speakers I own...and I have more speakers than I can even list in my info section on this page due to space limitations.
Truthfully, I've only owned two speaker models that sounded broken when playing back hard rock or metal ... and they weren't made by Harbeth.
Sorry, but I’m not a believer in “these speakers can’t play X type of music.” If that’s the case, they’re just not good speakers, period. Size matters in terms of producing scale, but otherwise they should just be able to reproduce the signal they’re fed. All Harbeth models seems to be able to do that well, even if they can’t produce the scale of the 40.2. I auditioned many other speakers before I selected the 40.2, from other Harbeth models, to B&W, to Focal, to Audio Note, to Devore, and others. I listen mainly to rock, pop and jazz, and the 40.2 beat them all with all those genres of music. A lot of the speakers people think are great for rock sound horrible to me, even with rock. That’s to my ears of course, so your taste may be different.
Ive had custom made Devore O'96, Audio Note AN-E SPX Al Nico's...Heard the Sopra line and Many B+W's.....wouldn't use any of them for Rock as my primary listening. Want a Concert in your house....Horns work best. If one prefers ANY British Monitor to a JBL 4367, Classic 100 (or better) or the higher end Klipsch Heritage models for Rock N Roll lets just say I wouldn't take their advice on anything audio related.
One has to define the parameters of the discussion when one says a speaker can or can't rock. My first concert was Motley Crue's Doctor Feelgood and I also saw Guns N Roses not long back here in Hong Kong - so IF and this is a big IF - you expect a home stereo system to reach the level and impact of those venues - then Billions is 100% correct - Harbeth and Audio Note and Quad and B&W and 98% of everything that is deemed "high end" can't reproduce those levels and the smaller the speaker the less able they will be at getting close to that level. Had I known Billions' expectations here I would have not recommended the likes of Audio Note and Harbeth. There is Rock and then there is R O C K!!!!! I have been on boards for over 20 years and people will recommend Magnepan. MMG for people looking to play Metalica - I kid you not. The LS-3/5a is a nearfield monitor with a small driver and usually they can't handle more than 50 watts - they are not designed for bass, impact or being particularly "loud" Looking back I didn't understand what @Billion$Baby was really looking for. In retrospect - as he notes - horns do this better - big horns - MBL speakers - the big ones - do this well because the head engineer and owner is a professional heavy metal drummer. The things can PELT. Acapella speakers can PELT - AN E and M40.1 and DeVore can't. They can all play loud mind you - ear damage loud but not Rock concert loud. These speakers all "take the edge off" - horns do not. The best ones have the ability to make your eyeballs rattle in your skull. Most people like you and me talk about Rock in a smaller r term. We listen to rock at lower volume levels and we follow the instruments and vocals at mostly safe for the ear volume levels. Maybe 60-85dB. Acapella and its ilk are in the 120dB plus range while also hitting 20hz and have a sensation the band is in the room. Acapella is also excellent with singular vocals like Frank Sinatra or Julie London - so it can do it all. But it also starts at $55,000 and you probably need to spend double that to be really impressed. Of course you can spend less than that IF and only IF the only thing you will listen to is rock - but if you listen to other genbres that's where Klipsch and JBL usually sound pretty awful. To get it all costs a ton. Most audiophiles tend not to be trying to recreate rock concerts in their house or Pedal Organ pieces. Lastly, it's a reason I think so highly of the Cerwin Vega CLS215 for a mere $1500. No it's not going to beat Acapella but for rock and roll at high levels - this speaker does in fact "beat" the audiophile speakers we talk about because it can CRUSH the room at "eviction notice levels" as they like to advertise. So when we say an LS-3/5a which is what the Harbeth is or the KEF LS-50 or my AN AX Two can rock - it comes across as sort of silly. They're ability to "rock" is meant to be read as - they can rock within the group of "like" loudspeakers so the KEF LS-5o can rock better than an AX Two or an LS-3/5a but the Cerwin Vega for the same money makes these standmounts pikers. So I apologize if I led Billions down the wrong path because when I say an o/96 or AN E can rock it's a small r rock that fit most audiophile's expectations of the word. Moderate to high levels 60-85dB and projection from their relative size. Billions - I think with your level of income you should probably not bother with any of these smallish speakers with 8s and 10 inch woofers - they aren't getting rock concerts home. Acapella is the place to start. Also I would not waste time on gutless amplifiers like Pass Labs - no offense but you have money you should be looking at Analog Domain - 8000 watts per channel. I believe they have one that is 20,000 into 1 ohm. Pass Labs is middling junk in comparison. And you run the high power amps into the Acapellas. It's an entirely different league than Audio Note or Harbeth etc if you really want to play every kind of music and really have rock impress at a near concert level. They are 100dB sensitive and can handle continuous power of 1000 watts. 620kg per speaker. 130dB - 1024 watts (this can blow your ear drums). Having 14-15 mediocre amplifiers and a whole bunch of speakers frankly makes no sense. Sell all of it and get something truly elite. 14 $20,000 amps and 14 $15,000 speakers is just dumb. Get a world class "SPECTACULAR" speaker and amp. Klipsch? JBL? meh. If I had a billion dollars - and I had any component under $100,000 I would view myself as a miserable failure as a billionaire - $100k is chump change - it's what Bezos spends on dog food. At minimum this is what a Billionaire should own - MINIMUM - this is entry level! They come in any car paint colour to match your Bentley or Lambo
Retired in April 2009 in Mid 40's....What Income?? That's what I would like to know. Havent seen a paycheck since then and not expecting any Social Security checks for another 13 years probably. Do you know something I don't?? My Hewlett Packard PC Speakers play Rock...they don't do it well....but if that's all I had and haven't made comparisons I guess they are wonderful!! Always pointless to come on to a "Fanboy" thread and tell people there are better alternatives for a certain kind of music than the 1 pair of speakers they own. I probably have more Harbeth speakers in stock than all of them. I DONT just play Rock which is why I have a large variety of speakers and Amps to accommodate everything. I do not play music at excessive levels at all. Already have Tinnitus and I have a house full of pets who would be deaf by now if I did. Why are you assuming all this stuff...my income, listening levels etc??? I simply stated that for Rock there are better alternatives than Harbeth...or Audio Note/Devore, B+W would make your ears bleed and The Focals I heard (Sopras) had way too much emphasis on Bass for my taste. Yep....Just my opinions but at least mine are based on actually listening and owning a multitude of brands and combinations.
Owning and having owned several Harbeths, I understand Billion$Baby's assertions. It's no accident that most recording engineers will have a few different monitors, a couple of set of phones too perhaps - presentations differ, some will afford other strengths, indeed a perceieved weakness in a monitor can be useful for crosschecking a mix. In short, rarely does one size fit all, and even with a good all rounder like a Harbeth, you may just prefer the dynamism of a horn or the sub-bass of a full-range as it is more to your predilection. Harbeths are very good at what they do. I like my m30.2's quite a bit. Indeed, for my predilection and set-up, they're the best set of compromises I'm happy to abide by. Mostly that's what transducers are.
I get the feeling from this discussion that 'Rock speakers' just need to be 'Loud speakers' for some ?!
Yeah, sorry. That was my attempt to describe the scale, or size. If the idea is to recreate a somewhat scaled-down version of the performance captured in the recording, ie real musicians, singers, studio space, stage, performance venue, etc I find larger speakers move more air, so to speak. They give a bigger aural picture, and a bit better illusion of reality. Smaller speakers with a subwoofer can achieve this to some extent also.
That was always my thought. I listen to rock is code for "I want to blast some tunes and lose some hearing"
I sort of agree with the Harbeths (at least the model I owned) don't play rock to an extent and I agree that listening to rock music doesn't necessarily mean listening to stadium level volume either. When I owned the Compact 7-ES3, I ran them with both a 38 watt push pull tube amp and a 125 watt solid state amp. While the 7s excelled at smaller ensemble and acoustic stuff, playing something like Pink Floyd's Us and Them will totally trip them up, even at just moderate volumes. What I mean by trip them up, is during the crescendo of that song, the bass would be totally loose and overblown and the whole midrange would be cinched and everything would sound closed in, except for the loose bass and the top end. And Pink Floyd isn't even that heavy of rock. Now this opinion is only for the C7s, though I imagine the P3s also suffer from limitations with rock due to their size. I don't know if the Super 5s or 40s would do better, as I have not heard them.
This might sound weird, but rock music sounds good with speakers that offer refinement over JBL or Klipsch. Plus most of the rock music people like here is classic rock, not exactly Cannibal Corpse at 100 db. Several months ago I was even enjoying Tool's Fear Inoculum (aside from the poor mastering) on Harbeth SHL5s at an average active volume (not absurdly loud, but not background listening) in quite a large open plan living room, I imagine it's even better now that I have a higher power Ayre amp in that setup. I have no doubt I would have got more guttural impact from JBL or Klipsch but there is a lot in the mix that the Harbeths revealed and this is fairly dense music given the lower dynamic range. It would have been even better with multiple subwoofers to flatten out the response but I don't want those cluttering up a fairly precisely decorated room. Someone in the big classical music thread said that Harbeths really sing with classical works and it is hard to disagree with that (I would add jazz to his description) but their larger speakers are far from a one trick pony. If all I listened to was classic rock and indie rock (I'm not much of a metal fan outside of very few bands) these would still be my first choice for non-room dominatingly large speakers. Most true musical content is in the midrange and I use Quad ESL57s as my bar none-reference for midrange performance, it's very, very tough to match them much less in speakers that don't require refinancing your house, and even more so considering some of the absurdly exotic amps some of these owners had in their setups. This is why I love the Harbeth brand. I have less experience with other British speakers of similar lineage but would love to explore once this pandemic clears up. I've owned tons of speakers under $10k including several B&W and Maggies. I do have a pretty nice sounding set of JBL tower speakers in storage with natural sounding silk dome tweeters, I will have to give them a go at some point. I recall playing the quad mix of DSOTM on them (with their matching bookshelf models for the rears) and it was pretty damn nice with great slam. But this was before I heard Harbeths and Quads. One more caveat- I've never heard any Harbeths smaller than the SHL5. I have heard the 40.1 on many occasions and the 40.2 briefly.
Yeah. It's all about compromises in the end. But still. I mean, something like Creedence, rocks big time for me, but shouldn't be too difficult for 30.1's right? As long as it's a simple set up the studio? Good soundstage etc.
All excellent points and without question the idea of said ROCKABILITY needs to be qualified with expectations in addition to amplification and room size. But within their class and direct competition - e.g. stand mount monitors- they can rock with the best- for me, my self expectations and I.
Agreed...finesse over sledgehammer all day!Accurate reproduction is the end goal for me...if a speaker reproduces ANY genre of music accurately it reproduces all genres accurately...the speaker doesn't know(or care)what you are feeding it.
