Setup
"Overall response is optimized for use away from walls," states a document on the Harbeth website. I followed that direction, assisting Swanbon, who visited for setup. We ultimately positioned the speakers roughly 3' from the front wall, 5' apart, and 4' from sidewalls.
I began my evaluation with vinyl but soon jumped to digital, including the over-performing
HoloAudio May DAC fed data from a
Roon Nucleus+ powered by Andrew Gillis's excellent Small Green Computer power supply, via a Sonore OpticalRendu and a TRENDnet switch. I controlled Roon with my Apple iPad mini. A
PrimaLuna EVO 400 integrated amplifier (70Wpc into 8 ohms, Ultralinear) powered the Harbeths.
Listening
"
Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher," wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; he is best known as the author of
The Little Prince, but the quote comes from
Terre des Hommes. In its earliest English translation, by Lewis Galantiere, the passage reads, "In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness." This quote comes close to summing up my observations of the SHL5plus XD.
The Super HL5plus XD succeeded at being exceptionally refined, robust, and fun, in roughly equal parts. It was ultradetailed but never surgical. Its immaculate resolution never sounded less than natural, smooth, never processed. The seamlessness the SHL5plus XD bestowed on music, in both tone and dynamics, coupled to its ability to disappear completely, startled me first, then soothed me.
Writing about an
earlier version of this speaker, Art Dudley noted its "beauty." Indeed, this may be the most beautiful-sounding speaker ever to grace my West Village crib. But it also conjured a mysterious, beyond-its-specs, inscrutable magic.
I found the SHL5plus XD transparent, in the sense of faithfulness to the recorded event. It didn't turn bad recordings into good ones, but it made listening to well-recorded sounds a special, consuming experience. The SHL5plus XD played with more ease, fluidity, and seamless dynamics than most speakers. Not to sound daft, but at the same time, they seemed to exude a spiritual quality, a life force beyond that of conjoined wood, paper, metal, and polypropylene. They practically gleam from the inside out. This speaker was at once literal—natural—and something more. Magical. Luminous. To the sense of a piece of music recorded in a specific time and place, they added something more, as if those (cabinet?) resonances were not just physical but emotional—as if the speaker tapped memories buried in the music.
By this point, you must think I've snorted fairy dust. I am not suggesting magic in any literal way. I'm trying to find ways to communicate the faultless musicality, exquisite voicing, tone, articulation, lyricism, and
mojo I heard from the SHL5plus XDs, which seem to add up to something more than those individual elements. My Spendor BC1s sound sweeter, warmer, soggier. They have a rounder, less dynamic low end. But they lacked that spiritual quality the Harbeths exuded.
My audio running buddy Dr. Cohen noted, while listening to Hermeto Pascoal's
Zabumbê-bum-á (LP, Polysom 33368-1): "While the speakers do the basic chores of having excellent frequency balance and soundstage cohesion, it's their liquidity and lack of upper midrange and lower treble grit that is perhaps the most intoxicating element to the sound." While visiting and enjoying John Coltrane's
Crescent (LP, Impulse! AS-66),
Stereophile colleague Alex Halberstadt said, "Though they are smaller speakers in a smaller space, the Harbeths have a life force and openness similar to the
Klipsch La Scalas. They are unambiguously amazing."
If anything, you'd expect an intentionally resonant box to get in the way of decay tails, interfering with themselves and making them shorter; instead, they were off the charts. You might also expect such a design to collapse the stereo image, attaching it to the box. Didn't happen. Imaging and soundstage were similarly profound: an enveloping 3D soundfield, at least with recordings with that potential.
Turning to the HoloAudio May DAC, I streamed music from Qobuz and Tidal via Roon, beginning with UK-centric pop and jazz. If you've read my previous reviews and music features, you know I love the British jazz scene, which is overflowing with talented young musicians who are busy reworking American jazz, adding influences from Caribbean calypso, African highlife, Afrobeat, UK drum and bass, and other musical styles.
Leeds-based ambient trio Mabgate relayed slippery drum rhythms and woozy guitar scrawl on "I Asked" (16/44.1 download, Bandcamp); their humming organ tones and dreamscape reveries recall defunct English band Broadcast. The Harbeths mined Mabgate's ringing, watery reverb and midrange warmth to maximum effect. In "Pigeon," the first single from the album
Secret Measure (24/96 FLAC, Rock Action Records) by Glasgow-based duo Cloth, the twin siblings whispered vocals and angular beats that sounded like a somnambulant version of PJ Harvey's "Man-Size." The Harbeths drew a massive soundstage with booming, snapping drumbeats and streaking guitar. "Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against Tha Wall" (24/48 EP, FLAC) from English producer/DJ Nia Archives is a nervous amalgam of vocals, computer-regulated electric bass, and projectile-against-the-skull drum and bass rhythmic tomfoolery. The Harbeths presented those banging sounds with clarity, acuity, and deep-bass thickness. The Harbeths didn't just get the details right; they connected the dots into a musical and irresistible whole.
The SHL5plus XDs did a fine job with female jazz vocals, staying true to their vocal tone and rhythmic phrasing and presenting them on a soundstage that's wide and deep. On "I Walk a Little Faster" from
Born to Blue (Decca, FLAC 44.1kHz/16bit), Beverly Kenney's creamy vocal was intimate and (dare I write it?) kissable; this recording places Hal Mooney's large ensemble of brass, piano, strings, and acoustic bass far behind her. Kenney committed suicide in 1960 at the age of 28, but her legacy lives on in six terrific albums, each a singular take on jazz standards. These records are very popular both in Japan and with some record collectors, particularly her Roost recordings.
By contrast, vocalist June Christy is an upbeat life force regardless of material or accompaniment. Her 1954 debut 10",
Something Cool (16/44.1 FLAC, Capitol Records), is often credited with kicking off the cool-jazz vocal movement, but Christy's singular strengths transcend any such genre limitations. Her soulful style shines on this debut, which includes a relaxed take on "It Could Happen to You," a resolute version of "The Night We Called It a Day," and a take-charge reading of "A Stranger Called the Blues." Christy's vocal set is large and centered; the Harbeths draped Pete Rugolo's subtle orchestrations around in a way that transforms us into engrossed listeners at a small local bar. The Harbeths' knack for creating a sense of intimacy and closeness within a large soundstage was uncanny and, again, practically spiritual.
Conclusions
The SHL5plus XD may, as Shaw said, be tuned to modern tastes interested in a wider range of music, but I found it less than ideal for rock. It's hard to explain. They worked extremely well with electronic music (like
Fuse, the new album by Everything But the Girl) and the rowdier tracks listed in my listening notes above. They're tailor-made for well-recorded classical with its grandeur, spaciousness, and separation, and I very much enjoyed jazz through these Harbeths, especially female vocals. But when I played anything that required major
boogie factor—ZZ Top, Led Zeppelin, Mastodon—I found I wasn't satisfied. They seemed to lack the drive needed to fill my small room with convincing rebel sounds.
Yet the Harbeth Super HL5plus XD is easily the finest standmount speaker I've heard, and it challenges most floorstanders for pure musicality and enjoyment. It manages to combine high definition, warmth, soundstage dimensionality, intimacy, lyricism, gracefulness, refinement, insight, and clarity, and to weave those elements into a beautiful, sensuous, fulfilling whole.
