A timeless seamless design. Single drivers, conventional two-way transducers, line arrays, planar magnetics, electrostatics, open baffles, omnis, ribbons, horns, beryllium and now graphene drivers... temptation’s path is long and alluring. Many audiophiles delude themselves—or attempt to trick their spouses—into thinking that they’ve found 'the one' loudspeaker, 'the one' amplifier. The truth is, most of us are serial monogamists. We are faithful to each product until a better one chances along. Some hobbyists and reviewers are more promiscuous. They revel in their large stable of gear, viewing it like coins in a collection or tools of the trade. And so the same old scene plays itself out wherever fine audio equipment is sold. You’ve tracked the package online from your office. Your mind mixes memories of the product you sold to raise funds with the burning desire for something new. When you arrive home early that evening, you await the courier’s knock with eagerness and trepidation. You know that the thrill of the unwrapping ceremony will be drowned in a (harmless?) verbal bloodbath, the ritual of spousal wrath. But you’re armed with your timeworn excuse: "This will be the last one. This one’s a keeper." You turn up the volume. Even your spouse admits it sounds good.


With the $6’800/pr Harbeth Super HL5 Plus, there’s a good chance you will keep the promise. It made me rethink the restless gear flipping so common among audiophiles. It worked magically with every musical genre including simple folk, complex orchestral music, classic rock, jazz trio and toe-tapping techno. If one speaker really sings with every genre and on several different types of amplification, why bother keeping other large boxes on hand unless you had more than one listening room?

Ah yes, that box. Harbeth stands resolute in its insistence that the wheel need not be reinvented. If the box ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Tweak it, perfect it. Not that Harbeth are unattractive. It’s a restrained and classy look designed to blend into a home's décor rather than dominate it. It’s a no-nonsense business model designed to deliver the best possible sound quality at middle-class to upper-middle class prices. Harbeth’s wood veneers are indeed of high quality and painstakingly mirror matched to involve costly sorting and rejects. Finish of this quality doesn’t come cheaply. Harbeth will blend seamlessly into your house if you have a sort of mid-century teak motif or hardwood floors. At the end of the day, most of us will love Harbeth for their personality. No dangerous curves à la Vivid Audio, no musical instrument motif à la Lawrence Audio here. The supreme irony is that the quintessential BBC box monitor sounds so utterly un-box like! Imagine the soundstage of the small Magnepan MMG without the deficit of tonal midrange richness and with far superior bass. I found the Super HL5 Plus went deeper, subjectively at least, than my Tekton M-Lore rated to 38Hz. As it floats half a metre above the ground, the Super seems to project more realistic double-bass images than my Tekton floorstander with Ray Brown and Christian McBride’s jocular joust on "In a Mellow Tone" from Walk On: The Final Ray Brown Recordings. As you see from the photos, the Super HL5 Plus is an unusual design. A stand-mount with a wide face, its volume is comparable to a small floorstander like my M-Lore. Bass images emanate from perhaps one or two feet above the ground as might happen with a double-bass in a live setting. With the bare-bones but high-priced $500 Foundation speaker stands supplied with my review sample, the sound was never muddied, always quick and agile and open.