Harbeth C7ES-3 XD and Monitor 40.3 XD Loudspeakers

Generally speaking, when I begin to evaluate a speaker system seriously—or any component, for that matter—I cue up some music, seat myself in the listening position, more or less upright, with ears at tweeter level, and leaning forward in a posture that suggests great concentration. This is how I began listening to Harbeth’s Compact C7ES-3 XD, the latest version of the company’s C7 model, which dates from 1994. Without quite realizing it, within at most, I’d say, a minute or so, I found myself easing back into a more relaxed position as a big smile appeared on my face. Man, this is one beautiful sounding speaker system—right out of the box, sans any of the usual warmup or break-in. Alan Shaw, owner of Harbeth Audio Ltd. and designer of its loudspeakers, has always claimed his speakers don’t need that ritual, which proved substantially true here and with other Harbeths I’ve reviewed (they become a bit smoother over the first few days and a tad warmer, but after that the break-in is effectively complete).

Over the course of the first few weeks, the members of my usual listening group—fellow audiophiles and other music lovers, a few industry professionals (from both the recording and equipment sides of the business), some musicians—fell by, not to mention random guests curious about new audio gear I have for review. Each and all had almost exactly the same experience as I—within the first minute or so, postures relax and smiles appear on faces. Everyone commented right away on the high listenability of the C7-XDs. Those more experienced, knowledgeable, and sophisticated in audiophile terms, who listened longer or returned on other days with other source material, observed that this listenability is not at the expense of such usual desirable characteristics as detail, resolution, clarity, and transparency, nor did they find any shortage of involvement, definition, vitality, rich colors and textures, rhythmic drive, and dynamic range. Despite its compact size—approximately 20″ x 10″ x 12″—this speaker is capable of some seriously room-filling reproduction in my 21 x 15 x 8-foot listening room and also in my new office, a garage conversion commodious enough to accommodate a lovely listening area, which is where I first set them up.

Inasmuch as I reviewed the third version of the Compact 7, the C7ES-3, back in 2007, I won’t pretend I remember what I wrote in any sort of detail or even what the speaker sounded like except in the most generalized sense, i.e., like a Harbeth. Nor have I heard the speaker again in the 16 years since I returned the review samples (although two friends purchased pairs on the basis of my review and continue to enjoy them with great pleasure). That being the case, I determined not to re-read my review right away, which allowed me to approach the new model without recent or firm recollections of the previous model.

This initial period extended into several weeks, rather longer than I had intended. They are so satisfying I gravitated more and more to the new listening room just for the sheer pleasure of how beautifully they reproduce music, and I soon found myself folding them into evaluations of other components in my reviewing queue. One afternoon I pulled one of my longstanding reference recordings off the shelf, the Bernstein recording of Bizet’s Carmen (DG vinyl and CD), a source I use with every piece of equipment I review, planning to sample a selection here and there, beginning with the thrilling opening. Before I knew it, nearly three hours had sped by and I had listened start to finish through all six sides, all four acts, absolutely rivetted, something I hadn’t done with this recording in I can’t remember when.

Whenever I evaluate compact speakers like these Harbeths, I always play a lot of “big” music, from classical to big band to hard-driving rock-and-roll, just to see how well they do. The Compact C7 XDs acquitted themselves excellently. They are capable of setting forth a wide and deep soundstage with very precise imaging and placement within the soundstage, including movement of performers if the recording happens to stage a drama or story, as the Bernstein Carmen or the Solti Ring cycle, another of my longstanding references, certainly does. From opera house to Broadway by way of a staged concert performance by the New York Philharmonic of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (CD, New York Philharmonic): I hadn’t listened to this in years either and was swept off my feet by the energy, conviction, enthusiasm, virtuosity, and sheer adrenalin of this brilliant performance, a live recording that places you in ideal seat in the concert hall. 

Lately I’ve taken quite a liking to Shostakovich’s near-maniacal Fourth Symphony—the one that got him into so much trouble with Stalin—in the blazing and blazingly engineered version by Myung-Whun Chung and the Philadelphia Orchestra (DG CD). The opening, a shriek from the strings punctuated by cymbal clashes followed by tympani and augmented brass in a march that is both parody and scarily menacing, is here served up with playing and reproduction of amazing virtuosity and fidelity. Midway into the movement comes that furious fugato for strings, taken by Chung at an insane tempo that should be impossible to play with any sort of articulation, yet this storied string section brings it off like child’s play. The dynamic range is awesome—the 80–100-piece orchestra typical of the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries is for this piece increased to 140, with augmented brass and percussion—yet these compact Harbeths took it in stride, including even the crushing, pile-driving climax that follows the fugato.

Grand pianos can in their own way be as demanding as a full symphony orchestra. The first piano recording I played, within a day of setting up the C7 XDs, was Mitsuko Uchida’s magnificent new Beethoven Diabelli Variations (Decca CD and Tidal MQA streaming), my candidate for the best new recording released these last few years of any work for piano. The Decca engineers found an ideal perspective: close enough for the piano to appear vibrantly present with exceptional clarity and definition yet with just enough ambience to keep the recording from being dry—indeed, the warmth, body, depth of tone, and apparent fidelity to the wealth of color, nuance, and character, the miracles of exquisite touch and phrasing for which this singular artist is renowned, are gloriously reproduced by these Harbeths. The venue is England’s Snape Maltings Concert Hall, familiar from many of Uchida’s other recordings (not to mention Benjamin Britten’s). I’ve never been to this place, but the hall is famous for its combination of warmth and clarity, which is exactly how it sounds in this recording over these loudspeakers.

Voices? Well, superlative reproduction of voices is by now so solidly inside the Harbeth wheelhouse it seems unnecessary to remark upon it unless it happens to be absent, which is most emphatically not the case here. I recently lucked upon an original LP version of Hyperion’s famous album of sequences and hymns by Hildegarde de Bingen, the twelfth-century abbess who was a mystic, a poet, a composer, and a visionary (eventually canonized as a saint): A feather on the breath of God, by the Gothic Voices. As recorded by Tony Faulkner, the singers should appear slightly set back from the plane of the speakers but palpably present. There are only eight singers. They sing solo, in duet, trio, or quartet, but never the whole group together. Thus, there should be no “depth” between or among the performers in the normal understanding of that word, and if they appear too distant, the response of your playback chain is somewhere recessed. But they are captured with an uncannily real-sounding dimensionality, roundedness, and purity, while the rich atmosphere of the venue, a London church, above, around, and extending well behind them should be very evident. Set the level right with the C7 XDs and you will hear what Peter Walker meant by his metaphor of “a window onto the concert hall” when trying to describe his goals when he was designing his QUAD ESLs.

During this period, I still wasn’t evaluating the speakers as such for review, “merely” listening to them and enjoying them. But from a certain point of view this constituted the most valid “evaluation” of all. Isn’t unfettered enjoyment of music, after all, what Aristotle would call the “final cause” of our pursuit of equipment to reproduce it in the home? One afternoon I wrote down my thoughts, the only notes I took during this period.

First, over most of its range the C7 XD is one of the most neutral transducers in my six decades as an audiophile, and unquestionably one of the most musically natural. Second, it boasts a coherence, transparency, and resolution not unworthy of comparison to my longstanding references: three generations of Quad ESLs, from the 57s to the 63s to the 2805s. Third, it exhibits a lack of coloration that again rivals my Quads. Fourth, to say that it is capable of a dynamic window that belies its compact size and its apparent simplicity is an understatement that borders on the risible. It was at this point, about two months after I had unboxed the speakers and begun listening to them, that I consulted my 2007 review. And it is at this point that I urge you to stop reading this review and read that one: Google “Seydor Compact 7,” since much of what follows begins where it leaves off.

Setting aside Harbeth’s P3ESR XD, which is a mini-monitor (aka, sub-compact), the Compact 7 is the entry-level Harbeth for those seeking a full-range loudspeaker, the principal limitations of which are reduced bass in the bottom octave (i.e., 20Hz–40Hz) and an inability to generate paint-peeling levels in large rooms. Its –3dB point is 46Hz. This is actually pretty low and more than enough to cover the range of most acoustic instruments; and it does not mean the speaker can’t reproduce frequencies lower than that, merely that it does so at reduced amplitude and volume (more on this anon). In size and outward appearance unchanged since the mid-90s (see specifications for details), the driver complement remains the same: two-way 8″ bass-reflex bass/midrange woofer, the high-frequency driver a SEAS 1″ ferrofluid-cooled tweeter. Stand-mounting that situates the tweeter at ear level and positions the loudspeakers away from front and sidewalls remains the preferred way to get the best of what this remarkable speaker is capable (the importer Fidelis AV supplied TonTräger stands, highly recommended albeit pricey; an entirely worthy alternative at substantially lower cost is the dedicated stand from the Canadian manufacturer Skylan). 

Like all Harbeths, the C7 XD presents a benign impedance load (nominally 6 ohms) and is not fussy about what you drive it with assuming the electronics are of good, i.e., audiophile or better quality (but you will certainly hear the quality of whatever you place in front of it). Its 86dB efficiency indicates medium sensitivity; 25Wpc of, again, good clean power is recommended at the minimum. I used several amps ranging from 40–180 watts per channel. At no point either in my main listening room in the house or in my garage-to-office new space (differently dimensioned from my main listening but, in fact, larger in volume), did I ever feel I had pushed the speaker to its upper loudness limits, even on powerfully recorded rock like Paul Simon’s Graceland or the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed. Quality of parts, engineering, fit and finish (beautiful wood veneers flawlessly pair-matched), and reliability are at a level that could be standard-setting for loudspeakers costing several times its $4590/pair retail.

Turning back to that 2007 review, I no sooner got to the second paragraph than I read this: “Between about 80Hz and 10kHz there is nearly nothing wrong with the frequency response of the 7ES-3” and concluded: “Indeed, with respect to its class and design type—compact two-way in a box—this speaker sets, in my experience, a new benchmark in neutrality and natural tonal balance over its usable range, regardless of price.” Bearing in mind that I no longer have easy access to the C7ES-3 itself, there’s still nothing about those two statements that I would walk back as regards the XD version. And I have an advantage now that I did not back then, inasmuch as I can check some of my subjective reactions against in-room measurements using Dayton Audio’s OmniMic V2 Acoustic Measurement System. From one meter on axis, I got one of the flattest, i.e., most linear, readings from the midrange through 10kHz since I started using this program a couple of years ago. Beyond 10kHz the response slopes toward 20kHz, which is really how it should be if a speaker is not to be too bright for a domestic setting, and which is what you get here and accounts for why the tonal balance is so natural with listening fatigue banished.

For what it may be worth, once I had read my review of the ES-3 version, I played all the recordings I discussed there over the XDs and soon found myself coming to the same conclusions about almost everything. For one example, as I pointed out about the C7ES-3, so too the new XD—it’s actually slightly more accurate through the presence band than my QUAD ESL 2805. For another: how readily it takes tonal correction if you swing that way. A recording I did not have back then is Kei Koita’s organ recital Bach: Organ Masterworks Vol. II (Claves CD). The friend, an organ enthusiast who introduced me to this superb recording, came by one day. We were both suitably impressed, as we should have been, by how loud and cleanly the XDs reproduced the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and we both agreed that while the bass was very good, even in several respects quite excellent, especially in view of size of the midrange/bass driver, it was not in the same league as his Harbeth SHL5+ or my Monitor 40.3 XD, to say nothing of good subwoofers, nor did we expect it to be.

Then, just to see what would happen, I went over to my McIntosh C53 preamplifier, which is outfitted with an 8-band equalizer, and advanced both the 25Hz and 50Hz knobs to around 2pm. This immediately kicked the satisfaction co-efficient up a few notches (that, boys and girls, is just one reason why you really do want tone correction of some sort or other). No, it still wasn’t what a larger woofer or a subwoofer would provide, but the bass was now satisfactorily substantial. Perhaps even more impressive was how in stride the speaker took the boost, without apparent strain. As you move up from deep- to mid- and upper-bass, the XDs become pretty amazing for the body, texture, and clarity of the presentation. Go the beginning of Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody in the great Stokowski recording on RCA (SACD or vinyl) and be prepared to be amazed by the reach and strength of the double basses and trombones, not to mention the registral definition and clarity.

Finally, I hauled out a recently acquired vintage British Decca pressing of Zubin Mehta’s Also Sprach Zarathustra with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Back in the day, this was a frequent demonstration record because the 32-foot, low-C organ pedal point that opens the piece is actually on the LP. As well as the 7 XDs handled double basses on the Stokowski, it did come a cropper on Zarathustra. The pedal point was there and audible, but with nothing like the authority and sheer foundation of its larger sibling, the Monitor 40.3 XD. The same is true of the heartbeat on Dark Side of the Moon. That said, the C7 XD takes very well to subwoofers (I connected up my REL with superb results).

In the earlier review I remarked on how splendidly the C7ES-3 reproduced strings. One of the close friends with whom I listen from time to time is a top Los Angeles studio musician, a violinist. One afternoon when we were listening to a recording of a Beethoven string quartet, he said, “You know, one of the things I love about these speakers is that they really get the sound of a viola right, and that’s not easy to do.” Fairly well along during my evaluation of the C7 XD, I lucked onto a pristine vinyl copy of Les Musiciens’ recording of Brahms’ String Sextet No. 1, Op.18 (Harmonia Mundi, vinyl and CD). Words all but fail me when it comes to describing how beautiful both recording and performance are—sweet yet lushly, ardently romantic, with nothing “hi-fi” about it—and how truthfully the C7 XDs appeared to reproduce it. But as already noted, truth to the timbre of instruments and the character of voices is among the principal things this loudspeaker is all about.

Before wrapping up this portion of the review, I want to return to my opening note about the neutrality and naturalness of these speakers. As I’ve had occasion to observe elsewhere, these adjectives are interpreted by some audiophiles and audio critics as euphemisms for “unengaging,” “uninvolving,” “unemotional.” I’ve just finished listening to Judy Garland’s Capitol recording of “Over the Rainbow” on both vinyl (not vintage) and remastered CD (the latter is superior). This is the recording she made of her signature song in 1960 at the so-called “London Sessions.” When she first sang and recorded it for The Wizard of Oz in 1939, she was 17 playing a Dorothy identified in the book as 12. The song is always at least a little sad because it’s about yearning to return home and not knowing if you’ll ever be able to, but at least back then and in that movie, there was a home beyond that rainbow to return to, and Garland knew the character she was playing would get back there. By the time of the London Sessions, after years of struggling with drugs and addiction, emotional and physical abuse, anxiety and other mental health issues, various ailments and illnesses, marriages (five) and relationships often marked by cruelty and ending in heartbreak, Garland had long since gotten to the other side of that rainbow where in life those skies were nowhere blue and the clouds, no longer far behind her, blocked both sun and hope. The emotions expressed in this powerful performance are not just sad but authentically tragic. By the time she gets to the closing question, “Why, oh why can’t I?” the combination of despair in the voice against the crescendo in the orchestra is devastatingly ironic.

Unengaging? Uninvolving? Unemotional? Not bloody likely with these speakers! Inasmuch as I’ve not come remotely close to hearing all the obvious competition, I can’t and wouldn’t pronounce the C7ES-3 XD the best compact two-way out there, but given my priorities in what I want from music reproduced in the home, it is certainly the best with which I’ve had any sort of long experience or exposure. It’s a really great loudspeaker.

Harbeth Monitor 40.3 XD

I’ve given lead position and allotted more space to C7ES-3 XD here because it’s the latest (and last) Harbeth to get XD treatment and so much time has elapsed since I reviewed its predecessor, whereas I reviewed the Monitor 40.2 in 2017 and the 40.2 Anniversary in 2019 (Google “Seydor Harbeth Monitor 40.2”). I urge readers to read those reviews, especially the one of the Anniversary, which was mostly a Monitor 40.2 cosmetically tricked out to celebrate Harbeth’s 40 years in business. There I pointed out that the differences between the two versions on most music were so small as to be literally undetectable. I also observed that in both versions the 40.2 has to my ears a slight shelf-down beginning around 1kHz: “With those relatively rare recordings that aren’t closely miked, the Monitor 40.2 can sound just a mite reticent, but never do they lose those elusive qualities of aliveness and sheer authority that help account for their extraordinarily high levels of satisfaction and the brand loyalty they inspire. They never glare, they’re never fatiguing unless the source is, they’re always natural sounding yet highly detailed without ever being nasty, harsh, or peaky. And so far as I can tell, they are incapable of contributing any offensive sonic characteristics or colorations of their own.”

For the XD version, Shaw made a slight adjustment in the midrange-to-tweeter crossover that effectively eliminates this shelf-down by raising the tweeter level by 0.5–0.75dB relative to the midrange driver. This may not sound like much, and on complex signals, like most music, such a change in playback volume would be undetectable. But when applied across a broad frequency range, such as that covered by, say, a tweeter, it’s a significant and readily observable difference. Fortunately, it is to my ears also an entirely salutary one. One member of a past listening group, who happens to have a particularly sharp ear when it comes to small variations in tonal balance, remarked of the 40.2 that it seemed to him a bit lacking in “vividness.” I don’t believe he would say the same of the XD version.

I’m also happy to report that the effect of this crossover change is not to make the speaker “bright” as such; rather, what the change does is simply eliminate the slight shelf-down. Again, my Omni-Mic measurements bear out the evidence of my senses: I got one of the flattest, smoothest most linear responses at one meter I’ve ever measured—almost textbook. Inasmuch as I had both the 40.2 and the 40.3 in house at the same time, I can assure Monitor 40 fans that Shaw has made no attempt to reinvent the wheel of what is obviously a very successful and highly regarded loudspeaker. The additional work he did on the crossover, however, does reap small benefits in transparency and coherence, “small” used not pejoratively, rather, that the earlier models were already at a high level of excellence in those areas. In other words, a truly great loudspeaker has been improved in some key areas.

But so much so that you have to sell your 40.2? Nobody reading this magazine for very long, I hope, needs to be told that such questions rarely admit of simple answers. If you really love the sound of your 40.2—and it is surely a reference to be loved—there is no guarantee you will like the slightly flatter response of the 40.3 better. It’s hard to imagine you’ll dislike it, simply that you might not like it quite so much. In my Anniversary review, I pointed out that the 40.2 is “a little midrangey”; the new balance of the 40.3 XD reduces that. Again, not hugely, because there wasn’t much of it to begin with, but still, it’s subtly different. I personally went for the 40.3 XD because I like the change and had an eager buyer for my pair of the Anniversary, but trust me, had I not, I would still be listening to them without feeling in the least deprived.

Several friends of mine asked me if I would be comparing the 40.3 XD to the Graham Audio 5/5 that I reviewed so enthusiastically several months ago. The two speakers are, after all, direct competitors. I told them I would, but I’d be doing so with great reluctance. Why? Well, because words used for comparative purposes have a different and sometimes misleading weight, even meaning, from when they are used non-comparatively, and there’s certain kind of mindset that will fixate upon the comparisons to the exclusion of any other consideration. The two loudspeakers in question offer a prime example of this. Both derive from their designers’ training at the BBC, both employ some of the same methods and techniques, both are three-way reflex arrays, both use familiar voices as a primary reference, and both fall easily within the boundaries of what I call “acceptable neutrality”: supremely natural reproducers of music with great authority and tonal fidelity to source material.

Compared to the 40.2 with its shelf-down, I found the 5/5 subjectively a little more accurate and judged it in that respect the best large three-way speaker in my experience. When the 40.3 XD came along, that statement lost its validity. This is because the 40.3 XD is equally but differently accurate. Perhaps a better way to put this is by referencing that old saw among speaker designers, to wit, when two speakers sound different, chances are they’re both wrong. Which is another way of saying that no loudspeaker is perfect, none is ever not “wrong” in some way or other, however “right” it may be in other or most ways. For me, these are now the two best large three-way loudspeakers in my considerable experience with the breed.

There are two tonal areas where the Harbeth and the Graham diverge. First, the 40.3 XD begins its downward slope just beyond 10kHz, whereas the 5/5 continues on out well past 13kHz before it starts sloping. This is audible especially when listening to a lot of jazz and rock-and-roll, while on classical music it can sometimes make for a bit more air in the presentation. By no means, however, does it ever result in the Graham sounding excessively bright or, indeed, bright as such. Neither does the Harbeth sound in the least rolled off. To the extent that these characteristics are audible in either speaker, it’s entirely in comparison. It’s an irony that on the vast majority of overmiked recordings, the Harbeth actually sounds a bit more natural; the same is true if you’re wedded to moving coils, most of which have rising top ends. On the other hand, if you’re a detail fanatic, you might favor the Graham, though keep in mind that part of the rationale behind the XD modifications is higher resolution and detail retrieval, and I’ve never found any iteration of the Monitor 40 deficient in that regard.

As for the second tonal area, going back and forth between the two speakers, it sometimes struck me that the Graham sounds a bit lean next to the Harbeth, while the Harbeth sounds somewhat richer in texture and body next to the Graham. But having articulated this comparison, I want immediately to qualify it. Listening to each speaker on its own, nobody without cotton in his or her ears would ever describe the 5/5 as lean or lacking texture and color, while, as I’ve already indicated, the 40.3 XD has effectively shed virtually all the midrangey-ness as such, mild as it was, of its processor without losing any of its much-loved drop-dead gorgeous midrange.

The one area in which the Graham has a clear advantage over the 40.3 XD is horizontal dispersion. Owing to its slots over the woofer and the midrange drivers, the 5/5 maintains its top to bottom tonal balance over a 60-degree frontal window. By contrast, the 40.3 XD, like most speakers with drivers on a baffle in a box, has a much narrower window that mandates on-axis orientation for best and smoothest frequency response. The Graham’s slots were designed precisely so that recording mixers could hear a top-to-bottom tonal balance while moving back and forth across a long mixing console where they will inevitably travel in and out of the dispersion window of most speakers lacking slots. If that doesn’t apply to you or if you’re not a peripatetic listener at home, this advantage may not mean much. Relative to which I should add that during the several months I used the Graham, I always oriented their frontal axis toward the listening position because they sound better that way. (I’ve never been a fan of facing loudspeakers straight ahead because it compromises imaging, coherence, and phase and frequency response.)

So, which one of these superb speakers is better? My colleague Robert Greene reviewed the two earliest versions of the Monitor 40, I reviewed the three most recent versions (and now own the XD), and I reviewed the Graham in considerable detail last year. Since there is surely enough in all that coverage to assist anyone in making up his or her mind short of actually auditioning the speakers, which you must do anyhow, I shall say no more on the matter of comparative recommendations. Instead, as I prepare my exit, allow me to remind you of what that reprobate Macheath says of his two inamoratas in The Beggar’s Opera: “How happy could I be with either/Were t’other dear charmer away!”

Specs & Pricing

Harbeth C7ES-3 XD

Driver complement: 8″ Harbeth RADIAL2™ bass/mid vented; 1″ ferrofluid-cooled tweeter
Frequency response: 45Hz–20kHz, ±3dB free-space
Impedance: 6 ohms
Sensitivity: 86dB/2.83V/1m
Recommended amplifier power: 25Wpc minimum
Dimensions (approx.): 10.7″ x 20.4″ x 12″
Weight: 29 lbs.
Price: $4400/pair (cherry finish, other finishes available) 

Monitor 40.3 XD

Driver complement: 12″ bass (vented) RADIAL2™; 8″ RADIAL2™; 1″ ferrofluid-cooled tweeter
Frequency response; 35Hz–20kHz, ±3dB free-space, on-axis grille on
Sensitivity: 86dB/2.83V/1m axial
Recommended amplifier power: 35Wpc minimum
Dimensions (approx.): 17″ x 29.5″ x 15.27″
Weight: 82 lbs. each
Price: $19,990/pair (cherry, other finishes available)

FIDELIS AV (U.S. Distributor)

460 Amherst St, Nashua, NH 03063
(603) 880-4434
fidelisav.com