[vinyl anachronist]

On Aug 4, 10:41�pm, Bret L wrote:
The BBC was after repeatability from facility to facility, and
probably weight and cost were a factor. I agree that SOME of their
reference designs were fairly good for general listening, the problem
being getting them made to the reference design outside the BBC chain..

Which is why they came up with "professional" and "consumer" versions
of most of their speakers.

�That's very exactly what I'm opposed to, given the fact that the
consumer versions are often marketed by the BBC reference, such as
LS3/5a, when they are not evian conforming to the type Certificate, so
to speak, in the first place. The whole point of buying a speaker
having anything to do with the reference design is to have
repeatability. Do you want fidelity or just likeability? High
Likeability is easy to do-that's why single driver speakers and single
ended triodes have a market. But their fidelity sucks **** through a
straw.

�One of my friends who is BIG into Sinatra has one of every type of
speaker used at the major facilities Frank cut his important records
at. He's researched it. He wants to hear it as much like they did back
then, so he has a transcription table and long arm, the old GE head
amp (for mono) that uses 6V6s for outputs, the whole nine yards. It's
like a Star Trek fan with a full bridge layout. Anal? Well, yeah.
That's the point.







This doesn't really relate to the current Harbeth line, which doesn't
necessarily reflect the classic BBC sound. These are by far the most
musically satisfying speakers that have come out of the UK IMO. The
40.1s, for example, may seem very expensive for what is basically a
big 3-way box, but I can't think of another speaker I'd rather listen
to (and I've listened to a lot of pricey speakers). I used to love
Quad ESLs until I heard the 40.1. The Compact 7-ES3 is Harbeth's
second-to-the-bottom of the line, but they're fairly amazing as well.
The only Harbeth I don't absolutely love is the HL5, and that's
because I think the supertweeter adds a little too much sizzle to the
top end.

You may hear these speakers and not like them. (In fact, I'm sure you
are too biased at this point to offer a reliable opinion.) But I've
never met anyone who has spent any time with Harbeths and didn't
really enjoy them...and that includes some of the other speaker
manufacturers out there.

�Well, I would be too biased against them if I knew what they were,
which is why I would insist on listening them against something else
without knowing what they were, to be able to say I had an honest
opinion of them. I KNOW that I have prejudice against them in
particular, because I have postjudice against very expensive (and even
many only moderately expensive) �high end saloon consumer speakers. (I
also have postjudice against many pro and mid-fi products too, but at
least they don't befoul the Grace Slick Directive. (Slick famously
spent $5000 to have the engine of her prewar Roller rebuilt-at a time
you could build a Top Fuel drag engine or a R-985 P&W for that, I want
to say '69 or so-only to have it throw a rod a week later. She, being
Grace, �told the shop that she didn't mind getting ****ed but did at
least like to come!)

�But here's the salient point. I recognize and understand my own
biases. I deal every day with people who honestly believe they are
"not prejudiced", they are "objective". Well, no one is without biases
in every topic that genuinely interests them. But I know what mine are
and i adjust for them. I try to be honest insofar as possible about
them.

�When I said I'd "put these (Madisound ribbon tweeter two ways) up
against the Harbeths", I did not say that these were indifferentiable
from them. I meant that overall they would prove an overall equally
worthy speaker. That is a testable claim, I regret I don't have the
money to buy a set of the Harbeths-they wouldn't loan me them were I
honest about my intentions, in fact they wouldn't loan ME them at all-
and demonstrate this.

�My professional career in electronics mostly involved two concepts,
calibration and characterization. Calibration means to make the meter
read what the signal is known to be. Characterization means
understanding its foiles and applying compensation after the fact. We
can not calibrate our own ears, only characterize them. We can
calibrate the speakers but they are the most difficult part of the
chain to mess with.

�Postjudice is another word for characterization. We may get mad at it
on high minded principles, but it is what has kept our species alive
these millennia. Not all snakes are poisonous or aggressive, but
enough are that we avoid them by instinct.

If we were having this discussion in person and I got up and walked
away in the middle of it, would you follow me or would you get the
hint? Your habit of droning on and on about your narrow spectrum of
knowledge is probably why you spend more time posting off-topic
threads in an Internet vaccum than relating to real-life people.

It's simple...either the speakers have value to you or they don't.
You'll never know without listening. Anything you say that does not
address this specific point is just blubbering.