I had a chance to listen to a pair set up next to some mid-level B&W's. Too me they sounded boxy. Where the B&W's sounded more open, the Harbeth's sounded more artificial and closed in. After reading so much praise about them in the past, I was surprised how much I didn't like them. Good luck DB

To me, they sound better than almost any other box speaker I have heard. They scale so well with high end systems, its shocking. I think what I heard was the monitor 40 and some smaller model. The bigger one was amazing! Put it this way, I enjoyed the Harbeth room more than any Wilson demo I have ever heard.

Dave,

Advances in technology and materials science also gave us the Ovation guitar.

It's a fallacy to assume that newer is necessarily better.

If you're of the idea that you should hear drivers and not cabinets, newer is generally better. If you prefer things the old way, and you want to be able to feel the cabinet vibrating as the music is playing, speakers like Harbeth and DeVore may be for you. IMO the Monitor 40 is textbook on how not to design a speaker. Imaging on those is a disaster, thanks to a front baffle that's a kajillion feet wide.

One thing designers have learned in the last 30 years when trying to integrate large woofers is to either place them on the side, or use a two-piece design so that the mid and HF drivers can be placed in a much smaller cabinets. Monitors image better than large towers for a reason, and if you can make the top of your speaker behave like a small two-way, you can try to replicate that while still preserving full range response that is generally not possible with a two-way. Gershman goes so far as to separate the two pieces entirely.

Dave, I have to ask, where do you find the time to audition all the gear you recommend or poop on? Do you have some extended listening secret source for extremely high end gear?