Founded in 1977 to bring the BBC’s pioneering loudspeaker designs to the serious listener, today’s Harbeth speakers are the product of the longest-running science-based loudspeaker research program ever undertaken. Crafted around a genuine engineering core, a Harbeth delivers accurate and involving sound at home or in the studio.
Owning a Harbeth is, and has always been, a life-changing experience and there’s a model to perfectly match your listening environment and budget. Every Harbeth is hand assembled and individually tested in Lindield, England. Customer feedback over the past thirty-two years confirms ownership of Harbeth speakers as a truly greatest investment in serious listening.
Today’s Harbeth offer stunning clarity and effortless imaging to bring the real sound of the studio or concert hall to small, medium and large listening rooms in a range of attractive real-wood veneers. All our designs are direct descendants of the publicly funded blue-skies research work undertaken by BBC engineers with a sound that is intentionally well balanced at even low-to-medium replay levels. Since our formation in 1977, we’ve continuously refined and developed new materials and techniques to refine the BBC’s critically-damped cabinets, polymeric speaker cones and sophisticated crossover networks which our founder pioneered at the BBC Research Department, and which led to the famous BBC LS Series of compact, high quality monitors.
The incredible resolution and micro-detail that is the hallmark of a Harbeth conveys the listener deep into the heart of the recording. No matter how well you think you know your music collection, you’ll hear details on your Harbeth speakers that are masked by conventional speakers. Take an audition of any Harbeth and appreciate the micro-detail that’s clouded or inaudible on normal speakers – you’ll be hooked on the Harbeth super-resolution.
Harbeth cabinets employ the same constructional techniques used in musical instruments, where material selection and damping are all-important. The traditional veneered cabinet conceals a critically damped engineering solution in which unwanted internal sound pressure created by the forward/backward motion of the bass unit is absorbed and diverted from the sensitive midband to let the music flow from the speaker into the room for a warm, involving overall sound.
At the heart a Harbeth speaker is our exclusive British hand made bass/midrange drive units. The astonishing Harbeth low-level resolution is the direct result of the exclusive RADIAL-2 cone material which we seamlessly combine with the best tweeters available using sophisticated and expensive crossovers components. The result is a magical sound that fills the room from the lowest frequencies with total believability and unmatched clarity and neutrality.
Whichever Harbeth you have the space and budget for, all excel at naturalness, low-level detail and a warm involving sound at a moderate listening level. Even the largest Harbeth speaker sound natural when listened to from just a few feet away and this unique ability means that Harbeth speakers are neighbor-friendly late at night and in the smallest room. Every Harbeth speaker is engineered for total excellence and to provide a lifetime of listening pleasure at home and in the studio.