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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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In Reply to: Guth, what happened to the S5e's? (nt) posted by Aria51 on June 7, 2005 at 22:46:35:
Back when I originally auditioned the Spendors and the Harbeths I was still using my Arcam FMJ CD23T as my digital source. I ended up with an opportunity to trade-in the Arcam for a used Naim CD5 with a Flatcap power supply. After the source change I decided to try the Harbeths again and found that the brightness/listening fatigue I experienced in the past had been eliminated. It didn't hurt that when I called to inquire about auditioning the Harbeths again, my dealer happened to have a mint used pair of the C7s for a good price. In the end I decided that I preferred the Naim/Naim/Harbeth combination over the Arcam/Naim/Spendor combo.With the Arcam on the front end of things, I was getting good detail, but after some time had passed with the CD5 in its place, I started to feel like I lost more of that detail than I orginally realized. However, the CD5 combined with the Harbeths works out great. The three biggest strengths of my system as it sits now would be A) timbral accuracy - I feel that this is improved over the Arcam/Spendor combo, B) great detail/resolution without soundig "clinical" - I'm hearing more details out of my recordings than ever before (even my wife has commented on this when listening to recordings that she is familiar with, which is a huge indicator, because my audio-related expenditures are really starting to get on her nerves) yet I'm still enjoying playback of practically my entire music collection (not just the well mastered ones), and C) sounds fantastic at low volumes - the Spendors were also great at low volumes, I'm just getting more details/music now at those lower volumes than I was before.
Althought they certainly wouldn't be my first choice for the playback of rock music, I feel that as with the Spendors, the Harbeths are a pretty respectable "all-around" speaker working with a variety of music.
This change was not without its tradeoffs:
The S5es exhibited almost no box colorations. This certainly must have contributed to the tight, tuneful bass. I loved that aspect of the Spendors. I also think that in the context of my system, the Spendors hold up better at higher volumes due in part to the tuneful bass. Ironically, to a certain degree some of these system changes were brought about because the Harbeths integrate better with my room.
While the Spendors were fairly easy to place, it was certainly possible for them to overload my room with bass at times. I know that they aren't rated as low as the Harbeths, but in my room they sounded like the were producing more than an ample amount of bass. And while the Harbeth's lower frequencies exhibit more detail than the Spendors, there was something to the Spendors low end response that was simply fun and very enjoyable.I still feel that the Spendors are great and recommend them highly. Even after learning of the importance of source matching, in a different room, they could still very well win out over the Harbeths for me. Both are great speakers.
All the best,
Guth
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Follow Ups
- Victims of System/Room matching... - Guth 06/8/0500:43:23 06/8/05 (0)
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