What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits—the 1974 album by those San Jose yacht-rock sages the Doobie Brothers—could also describe an audiophile’s life.

The journey begins with booze and bong money spent instead on an entry-level turntable and cartridge; it did for me anyway. Then starts the churn, through many components and configurations seeking that elusive, blissful audio fix until finally we find our audio oasis, our own sonic peace, our gearhead nirvana. We achieve a system that satisfies our listening indulgences, whether it be based on streaming or spinning, class-D or tubes, with Belden wire or 0.999999% pure-silver single-strand wire that costs more than a Range Rover. It doesn’t last.

My audio evolution began in the late 1970s, with a Garrard 42M Automatic Record Changer, a skanky, toneless Lafayette LA-25 solid state integrated amplifier with fake woodgrain wrap on its yucky tin shell, and a Utah Radio Products A-70A speaker system. Not pretty. Soon enough, a Bang & Olufsen Beogram RX turntable joined the mix; that led to a pair of Cary Audio Design CAD-300SE monoblock amplifiers—progress—an Oracle Alexandria turntable, a chunky Audio Research SP-9 preamplifier, and an Art Audio Diavolo SET 300B amplifier. More recently, I’ve locked down my jones with B&W, ProAc, Gallo, DeVore Fidelity, Shindo Labs, Thorens, Kuzma, and VPI.

Good stuff, it makes me happy, but satisfaction is fleeting and soon I—we—need another new fix. You find yourself exploring again, dodging hurricanes and meteorites to reach new audio vistas. It would be wise advice not to listen to those urges. We know this, but we do it anyway because we know in time we’ll stumble onto something new that rocks our world.

More than one audiophile has found hi-fi contentment in a pair of Harbeth loudspeakers. Founded by former BBC engineer Dudley Harwood and based in West Sussex, England, Harbeth Audio Ltd. has sold thousands of loudspeakers to people who cherish clean musical expression, luminous tone, and exceptional midrange lucidity, achieved with the company’s unusual thin-walled cabinetry. Though generally requiring more than flea watts to drive, Harbeths work well with a wide range of amplification: solid state, reasonably powerful, push-pull tubes—even, probably, high-performance class-D. Harbeths have this reputation: That they can put an end to audiophilia nervosa, becoming one’s final loudspeaker purchase.

I’ve never owned Harbeth, but the brand has enjoyed much love from my Stereophile brethren. In the March 2018 Stereophile, Herb Reichert wrote, “Harbeth’s Monitor 30.2 [Anniversary Edition] is the most neutral, accurate, tuneful, fun, and music-loving stand-mounted two-way speaker I’ve heard.”

Writing in our May 2015 issue, Art Dudley wrote, “With both of the amplifiers I used, … the Harbeth Super HL5plus sounded conspicuously, even startlingly, clear. The Super HL5plus simply emanated a greater amount of sonic detail and musical information, especially in terms of pitch and timing, than I hear from most speakers, and did so with ease, beauty, and an utter lack of artifice or strain.” He concluded, “For the listener who wants a loudspeaker that is both explicit and truthfully beautiful, the Harbeth Super HL5plus is an excellent choice.”

The hallowed halls of Harbeth

The roots of the Super HL5plus XD can be found in the late 1960s with BBC engineer Spencer Hughes’s Rogers LS3/6. Upon leaving the BBC, Hughes developed the Spendor BC1; I own a pair. That speaker’s success inspired the Rogers Export Monitor, which set the stage for the Harbeth H.L. Monitor developed by Harwood. The H.L. Monitor was the first speaker to use a polypropylene-cone woofer, which Harwood developed and held the patent on. After a 24-month study in the early ’90s, under Alan Shaw’s leadership, Harbeth created its RADIAL (Research and Development into Advanced Loudspeakers) driver technology. The SHL5plus XD incorporates the latest formula of Harbeth’s exclusive cone material.

The HL5 series is based on the very first Harbeth, the HB-1, which was introduced in the year of the company’s founding, 1977. The latest in that series, the Harbeth SHL5plus XD ($7995/pair), is two generations beyond the version Art reviewed. It upholds tradition while adding Harbeth’s XD upgrades, which span the whole Harbeth line. Though the cabinet size, driver dimensions, sensitivity rating, and frequency response closely resemble those of the Super HL5plus, several upgrades make the SHL5plus XD rather different and, one hopes, better.

“The standard circuit diagram dates from 2016,” Harbeth designer Alan Shaw wrote in a note to importer/distributor Walter Swanbon of New Hampshire’s Fidelis Distribution, the US Harbeth distributor; Swanbon then shared it with me. “Looking at the standard versus XD crossovers, there are five component-value changes, all of which improved the overall balance of the speaker to give it a more modern, open, even presentation across the audio range, which suits the contemporary listener with a more diverse range of musical tastes.”

The Super HL5plus XD’s stout, stylish, front-ported cabinet is made of thin layers of birch MDF. Each speaker measures 28″ high × 13″ wide × 12″ deep and weighs 40lb. Behind a fabric grille is one 200mm (7.87″) RADIAL2 polymeric composite-cone bass/mid driver, a 25mm (0.984″) ferrofluid-cooled aluminum tweeter, and a 20mm (0.787″) aluminum dome super tweeter, both made by SEAS to Harbeth specs. (“Super” in the product name indicates the use of a super tweeter.) Specifications include a frequency response of 40Hz–20kHz, ±3dB, a nominal impedance of 6 ohms, and a sensitivity of 86dB/2.83V/m. All Harbeth speakers are handmade at the factory in Lindfield, a village in West Sussex, England.

“All woofers are handmade in-house, using injection-molded proprietary cones (a mix of 5 compounds),” Swanbon explained via email. “The tweeters are made by SEAS according to Harbeth specifications. Both tweeters in the Super HL5plus XD [use] treated/coated low-mass aluminum domes. Crossover points are 3.5k and 10k, with response out to 40kHz.”

“XD” upgrades in the SHL5plus include VanDamme internal wiring, new damping material, new binding posts, more tightly spec’d tweeters, and that new crossover design, which in addition to those component-value changes includes upgraded capacitors. Amid all this newness, the basic thin-walled, MDF-comprised Harbeth box follows time-tested BBC principles. “The cabinet utilizes specifically damped, lossy panel construction based on 50+ years of BBC research,” Swanbon said. “The Super HL5plus XD uses the tried-and-true, classic BBC 2-cubic-ft. box, ideal for this woofer-cone size. This model is historically the biggest seller in the Harbeth line and has quite a legacy.”

“The backs of all Harbeth speakers except the P3 are removable,” Shaw told Hi-Fi News for its November 2007 issue. “A bell cast with no cracks: Hit it and it rings forever. Introduce even a hairline crack into the bell, and it resists resonating. And that’s exactly the same principle. The sound waves have to work through the less-than-perfect joint. It’s a BBC idea. If you were to take the same box, remove the front and back, and then PVA them back on (footnote 1), you’d get a totally different sound.

“Let’s accept that we cannot dispose of all that energy,” Shaw continued. “Instead, let’s steer it away from where it’s acoustically objectionable—the mid frequencies—down to where it’s not objectionable—the very low frequencies—and make the box [walls] thin, and manipulate those resonances by adding mass and damping the panels, and pull it all down to the bottom. So, you’ve got this extremely clean midband and this sort of warm, involving low end, which is ideal for some music.”

Harbeth’s finishes are almost as revered as their sound. Everyone visiting my Manhattan listening den during the review period was knocked out by the review pair’s rosewood boxes even before they started making music. Equally lovely were the German-made TonTräger stands, built especially for the SHL5plus XD. “Using solid wood from FSC-certified local forests” with surfaces “coated with natural oils and pigments in several processing steps,” the stands employ “extended tenons” atop each column, which are said to “allow direct absorption of cabinet resonances and decouple the speaker from the ground.” (The quotes are from fidelisav.com.) Individual “ToneBeds”—oval hollows on top of the tenons—are said to “prevent vibration bridges”; so says the TonTräger website. The stands are lightweight but, at $1650/ pair, they’re not cheap. They fit the SHL5plus XD perfectly and sounded better than the old pair of all-wood stands I use with my Spendor BC1s.

Footnote 1: PVA, polyvinyl acetate, is your basic wood glue.

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COMPANY INFO

Harbeth Audio, Ltd.

3 Enterprise Park, Lindfield

Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 2LH

England, UK

(44) (0)1444-484371

harbeth.co.uk

ARTICLE CONTENTS

Page 1
Page 2
Specifications
Associated Equipment
Measurements

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