Harbeth and shindo : Don't do it !!!!
 

Hello folks,

To my great surprise, I realize that some of my posts may have a bad effect towards some readers and I have to apologize for this. I have received some messages from members interested in the combo and wanting to try Harbeth speakers and Shindo. And this also from an other audio forum !

I am NOT an audio expert, neither do I have golden ears.
My writings reflect only my personal opinion and exerience.

I do not advise anyone to try to pair Harbeth speakers and Shindo amplifiers as I did at home.

Jonathan Halpern, the US Shindo importer consider this matching to be far from optimal if not very poor. Other members share this view. Jonathan is one of the best Shindo expert in the world and his views are much more relevant than mine.
2 friends of mine ( Georges and Jean Marc ) listened to my Harbeth speakers with the Shindo amps and they preferred clearly the little MC225 driving them.

I still do prefer clearly the Shindo CCQs with my Harbeth and have no will to change anything.
I discovered a very poor synergy while using the EMT XSD15 cart ( an «invasive» bass ) and will surely sell this cart now.
I discovered that the sound improved by reducing the gain on my power amps and using the preamp at a higher volume. And the biggest improvement came when I realized that the sound came really to life after one hour of warm up of the amplifiers ( they never showed that with all my other speakers... ). I also changed the position of the speakers in the room.
Although I could not be more happy than with this set up now, this is just about my ears, my musical tastes, the synergy with all the other components of my system and my room.

All over, it is very clear that getting a great sound from this set up took a lot of time and efforts.
Please, do not follow my path.

PLEASE, do NOT buy blindly Harbeth speakers if you intend to use them with Shindo amplifiers.
The risk of being disappointed by doing this is very high!

Don't worry Jerome - I won't mate!!

Cool !
You are not the only one tempted brother !

Jérôme, have you been secretly taking English sarcasm classes from Julian? :lmao: Very subtle and well written!!!

Subtle must mean something different in French.

:lmao:

Jim, my post is not sarcastic at all. It is completely serious.
But I confess that I would love to have Julian's humor.

Hmm well each to his own I suppose Jérôme--I must admit slightly puzzled by your

forthright comments-my own observations with my Shindo Amp/ Harbeth combination was

superb sounding

Taste matters but oh so different servings I gather

Good listening to you my friend

Des

"Taste matters"

Yes it certainly does, completely agreed Des. Completely.

Doesn't electrical matching matter too?

My point about Harbeth and Shindo is not a taste issue as much as it is an electrical issue. Output transformers in most Shindo amps are set up for and designed for 16 ohm loads optimally. 8 ohms is okay too. 6 ohms is pushing it. 6 ohms and 84db is just a bad idea. Electrically! The amp is not only mismatched in its reflective impedance, its being driven hard at the same time to compensate for the low sensitivity. The reflected impedance causes current to rise, tubes and transformers are pushed hard and out of their ideal zone. Premature tube failure is just one possibility.... It has nothing to do with power supply. It has nothing to do with the weight of an amplifier or the size of transformers as has been suggested in previous threads. Just like kicking tires tells one nothing about the performance of an automobile.

So yes, taste matters. So does electrical matching.

Jonathan

I was tube rolling one night (in the dark) and accidentally subbed a 5814 (12AU7) into my amp's 12AX7 phase inverter slots. Looked just like a 5751 in the dark. It sounded different, but pretty nice! Very smooth. I didn't notice the error (besides the large difference in sound) until a few days later when I went to roll again. Actually, I ran that bad matchup for another week or so, since it was nice. But I felt dirty for doing so!

I'll bet that tube swap created a worse electrical mismatch than Shindo/Harbeth does. Especially since Harbeths are designed to run at low (well, what I'd consider very low) volumes, which eases a LOT of the burden on the amp's ability to deliver power into the load. We know what Shindo says on this...what does Harbeth say about the matchup?

Jerome...keep on enjoying your system!

Just an fyi- 12AU7 and 12AX7 are very similar and no damage would be done. And no, the mismatch is not even remotely the same as mismatching the output impedance.


Jonathan