Harbeth-7es or Fritzspeakers carbon-7

Here's what I've gleaned from my time with em':

Harbeth's will have the advantage in terms of treble detail/extension along with better midrange clarity. If you want an expressive speaker that does a good job of capturing tone, this may be the way to go.

The Carbon 7's are fuller sounding and a bit more rolled off. Both speakers are colored, though the dynamics and bass prowess on the Carbon 7's surpass the Compact 7 ES 3's. The Carbon 7 sounds more full-range and is easier to listen to on crap recordings. If you want a speaker that won't discriminate too harshly against poor recordings, this is probably the route you should take.

As an aside: neither of them are the last word in bass accuracy (in terms of speed) or sound-staging. They also aren't built to be totally transparent speakers, which means they have a tonal color that imparts itself onto every recording. So long as you like the sound, this shouldn't be a problem. If you don't however, you could get tired from all of your music more or less sounding the same.

Well, thats all I got for now. Good luck!

Rumadian,

Thank you for your observation. I'm going today to listen to the Harbeths and hopefully Fritz will come by soon with his speaker. I will let you know my findings. Thank again.

Harbeths cannot come close to Carbon 7.

never heard the harbeths, but i just got some Fritz Groves 2 weeks ago and they are one of the best speakers i have ever heard.

If the midrange is hi priority on your list, the c7s are extremely difficult to beat!
It has a midrange that even some hi end speakers cannot compete with.
If you value naturalness, that is another vote for the C7s.
I've messed around with tons of speakers over 20 years & when it comes to the midrange, the harbeths are hard to beat.
However, if you want soundstaging, bass, imaging, extended highs and extended lows, definitely a lot of good candidates out there... that is not the forte of the harbeths.