Stirling SB-88 or Harbeth SHL5 for classical music?

[F456GTM]

Hello,

A few months ago I sold my Tannoy Gold monitors and I need a pair of decent speakers.

My wife has health issues and I am tied up with a lot of work around the home. So, I have downsized my system, I do not have the time to turn on and off different components, just a simple integrated amplifier will do.

A dear friend of mine highly recommended the Graham Audio SB-88, and another, the Harbeth SHL5. My Meridian 551 puts 55W/Ch into 8?, it will work fine with the Harbeths but not sure if it has enough power to drive the Grahams.

I grew up with The Beatles, The Kinks, Led Zeppelin, Joe Cocker, etc., but at home the music played by my parents and grandparents was classical. When living in Vienna we had season tickets to the Musikverein and when possible trips to the Berlin Philharmonic or London Philharmonic were made. I only play classical music now, I am an old chap.

Why British speakers? My first speakers were a pair Tannoy 15" Gold Monitors in Lancaster cabinets, then, and in no particular order, I had QUAD 57, three pairs of QUAD ESL-63, KEF 105, Spendor BC1, Radford Studio S90, Celef PE1, Mission 770 and several loudspeaker kits from Richard Allan and Falcon Acoustics. I had a pair of Goldmund Dialogues too, lovely speakers but when a tweeter blew up there was no replacement available. Nothing new in Goldmund 's way of doing business, but poor service attention, I could not even find parts for my T3F tonearm. I also had a pair of Aerial Acoustics 10T and a pair of Altec 845 Valencia but they did not impress me.

Is there a forum member who is familiar with both speakers?

Cheers,

Horacio

 

[tmallin]

While I have not owned either speaker, I'd like to suggest that for an apples-to-apples comparison your friend has specified the wrong Stirling speaker. The comparison should be between speakers which are modern descendants of the legendary Spendor BC-1, as are the various iterations of the Harbeth SLH5.

The Spendor BC-1 was a two-cubic-foot speaker, about two feet high and a foot deep and wide. It had a single 8-inch low/mid driver complemented by a lower tweeter and a supertweeter. The design is unusual both for having three drivers without a separate midrange, and for having no crossover until about 3.5 kHz.

The high crossover to the lower tweeter means that most of the sound comes from the single bass/midrange driver, yielding a quite unusually coherent sound, while the treble not being coaxial gives these speakers a nice "height illusion," that is, a "big" image and staging quality not found in coaxial models and not really common to many "compact" speakers of similar size.

Excellent sounding more modern descendants/derivatives of the BC-1 include the Spendor SP1/2 from the 1990s, the Stirling Broadcast LS3/6 from about 10 years ago but still in production, the current Harbeth SLH5+ HD, and the current Graham Audio LS5/8. Each have driver complements and crossovering similar to the old BC-1. I have owned the Spendor SP1/2, the Stirling LS3/6, and now the Graham LS5/8.

I have written extensively on WBF about the Stirling LS3/6 and the Graham LS5/8. I also suggest that you pay special attention to Robert E. Greene's reviews of the Stirling and the Graham. I expect that the Harbeth is also excellent and just balanced a bit differently. You should audition the Stirling, Harbeth, and Graham to determine which is most to your liking. They are all playing in the same excellent ballpark for classical music.

The Stirling Broadcast SB-88 is a smaller two-way speaker which gives up a bit of bass and treble to the others and which has a bit lower crossover at 3 kHz. I'm sure it is also a fine sounding speaker, but the Stirling LS3/6 is better yet, if more expensive.