Jerome W
Active member
- Thread Author
- #1
Hello folks,
We often write reviews when we fall in love with a product, not when whe happen to dislike it.
So this is an other view of the 30.1.
I borrowed a pair of 30.1 with their Skylan stands at my local dealer to try them in my living room.
Amp is a huge 300XLS single ended integrated from the french company Halgorythme. 2 x 22W. And Halgorythme phono stage.
For the ones who think that a 22W single ended amp cannot drive the 30.1, please note that the power supply of this amp is huge, the amp weighs 55kgs, and it drives perfectly my 40.1 : better than any other amp I tried. The 40.1 are much more difficult to drive than the 30.1.
Sources : Rega P9 with DL103 Expert Stylus Co and AMR DP777 dac.
Listening : from the first note, you can spot this unique mids and treble naturalness and uncanny sound typical of Harbeth. Smooth and full and incredubly realistic with rich and saturated timbres, and incredible transparency and detail retrieval.
The music fills my 50m2 room with ease, with much more presence and authority than the P3ESR.
The bass seemed very impressive at first.
Very tight and powerful. But after 30 minutes and a few tunes from various recordings, it started to bother me. Something was just wrong. It seems that it was always the same musician with the same instrument playing on all recordings.
I felt that a clear bump was present at around 60/70 Hz and was unbalancing the speaker.
Like if the bast boost or a bass loudness was always on, and turned at the maximum volume.
I do not like unbalanced speakers at all. I most often never use my loudness controls on my vintage Mcs, and when I do, it is often to decrease the bass when the sound engineer wanted to impress in this field.
So amazed I was. An "unbalanced" speaker from Harbeth ??? Is this possible ??
So I went on the web and found a similar finding in HighFidelity from Poland :
"the Harbeth M30.1 still had rather pointy, somewhat colored higher bass, sometimes a little dull" and "You can hear now that the tweeter is more opened and that higher bass is slightly "tweaked". I think that’s OK but I wouldn’t go any further".
For the ones who want to read the whole thing : http://highfidelity.pl/@main-334&lang=en
Well, definitely not "ok" for me. This bass boost was causing me fatigue and was making the whole bass transcription very repetitive, and tonally poor.
Of course, I understand that this bass boost can be pleasant for many people. There is a sound for everyone.
As much as I consider the little P3ESR a supremely balanced speaker, as well as the 40.1 that can explore the bass like very few speakers in the world can do, I do see the 30.1 as an "unbalanced" speaker and cannot understand how these can be called "monitors" with a bass that is so much colored. I loved so much the mids and the treble that I am very sad of this issue. Hoping for a 30.2 that will solve this. I cannot believe that Harbeth is not aware of this bass boost.
I guess they made it on purpose, to have the 30.1 "sound like a big speaker".
Well, only big speakers can sound like big speakers. That is summed in the french LaFontaine tale of the frog who wanted to be as big as a beef. One of the key of happiness lays in the acceptation of the essences of the elements.
I listened once to the SHL5 and heard no bass because of a poor acoustics room. But my guess is that the SHL5 is a much more balanced speaker.
We often write reviews when we fall in love with a product, not when whe happen to dislike it.
So this is an other view of the 30.1.
I borrowed a pair of 30.1 with their Skylan stands at my local dealer to try them in my living room.
Amp is a huge 300XLS single ended integrated from the french company Halgorythme. 2 x 22W. And Halgorythme phono stage.
For the ones who think that a 22W single ended amp cannot drive the 30.1, please note that the power supply of this amp is huge, the amp weighs 55kgs, and it drives perfectly my 40.1 : better than any other amp I tried. The 40.1 are much more difficult to drive than the 30.1.
Sources : Rega P9 with DL103 Expert Stylus Co and AMR DP777 dac.
Listening : from the first note, you can spot this unique mids and treble naturalness and uncanny sound typical of Harbeth. Smooth and full and incredubly realistic with rich and saturated timbres, and incredible transparency and detail retrieval.
The music fills my 50m2 room with ease, with much more presence and authority than the P3ESR.
The bass seemed very impressive at first.
Very tight and powerful. But after 30 minutes and a few tunes from various recordings, it started to bother me. Something was just wrong. It seems that it was always the same musician with the same instrument playing on all recordings.
I felt that a clear bump was present at around 60/70 Hz and was unbalancing the speaker.
Like if the bast boost or a bass loudness was always on, and turned at the maximum volume.
I do not like unbalanced speakers at all. I most often never use my loudness controls on my vintage Mcs, and when I do, it is often to decrease the bass when the sound engineer wanted to impress in this field.
So amazed I was. An "unbalanced" speaker from Harbeth ??? Is this possible ??
So I went on the web and found a similar finding in HighFidelity from Poland :
"the Harbeth M30.1 still had rather pointy, somewhat colored higher bass, sometimes a little dull" and "You can hear now that the tweeter is more opened and that higher bass is slightly "tweaked". I think that’s OK but I wouldn’t go any further".
For the ones who want to read the whole thing : http://highfidelity.pl/@main-334&lang=en
Well, definitely not "ok" for me. This bass boost was causing me fatigue and was making the whole bass transcription very repetitive, and tonally poor.
Of course, I understand that this bass boost can be pleasant for many people. There is a sound for everyone.
As much as I consider the little P3ESR a supremely balanced speaker, as well as the 40.1 that can explore the bass like very few speakers in the world can do, I do see the 30.1 as an "unbalanced" speaker and cannot understand how these can be called "monitors" with a bass that is so much colored. I loved so much the mids and the treble that I am very sad of this issue. Hoping for a 30.2 that will solve this. I cannot believe that Harbeth is not aware of this bass boost.
I guess they made it on purpose, to have the 30.1 "sound like a big speaker".
Well, only big speakers can sound like big speakers. That is summed in the french LaFontaine tale of the frog who wanted to be as big as a beef. One of the key of happiness lays in the acceptation of the essences of the elements.
I listened once to the SHL5 and heard no bass because of a poor acoustics room. But my guess is that the SHL5 is a much more balanced speaker.
