Today, unless there are any unexpected surprises, I completed the development of the M40.2 and tomorrow, we build the first production pair and express courier them to Stuttgart, Germany. I will fly to Stuttgart on Monday next, and introduce the 40.2 to a German magazine, the last chance before they move offices. I've poured myself a nice, cool Belgian witbier, and if you have a moment, I'd like to bring you up to date on the project.
First, a review of some history. The M40x family was conceived as a three way design (bass unit, midrange unit and tweeter) to replace the two way (bass unit, tweeter; no midrange drive unit) BBC LS5/8, as we were encouraged to do by the BBC when the Rogers company collapsed around 1997 or thereabouts. We secured the entire stock of spare parts from the Rogers liquidator, and that kept the BBC's 5/8s serviceable for some years, although as soon as the (original) M40 was launched, the BBC started to trade-in their old 5/8s against brand new M40s. I have lost track of how many M40s there are at the BBC.
The reason that the M40 was designed as a three-way is for the extremely obvious reason that the audio spectrum needs to be split three ways if the speaker has a large, 12" (300mm) bass unit because, no matter how you tinker with such a system, bass units are always at their best in the bass region, and midrange units are optimised for midrange, relieved of the stress of moving air and handling high power. The two-way LS5/8 was a miserable compromise, and as we have many pairs here at Harbeth HQ traded-in from BBC studios as far afield as London, Belfast and Scotland (for Harbeth M40s), I think we know better than anyone, even the BBC themselves, how these production LS5/8 speakers actually measure, behave and sound. We've looked at that in detail elsewhere on this forum.
Because of this historical starting point, there was a necessity to design the M40 as a 'drop-in replacement' for the LS5/8 that sorted-out the serious spectral imbalances whilst not delivering a speaker that was so radically different from what long in the tooth BBC sound engineers (studio managers: radio, sound supervisors: TV) were used to working with. It never crossed my mind back in 1997 or so that there would be a domestic market for the M40, because the 5/8 was so extremely peculiar in its sound balance that it had never found a domestic market nor even a professional market outside British broadcasting - BBC and ITV, but the M40 was sufficiently superior to the old 5/8 that it found both a home market and a pro market, although it was sonically balanced (or 'voiced') with a definite nod towards the professional user, in a well damped, LF absorbing, 'proper' studio acoustic. Some domestic users found that the bass of the original M40 was an issue in untreated home acoustics, other found they fitted in just fine.
A few years ago (2008?) I undertook a mid-course review of the M40 and as my judgement was that by far the most important market for such a speaker was in the domestic arena, the M40.1 was conceived, with a different overall balance to the original M40 which subjectively made it much more domestically acceptable, and again, found favour amongst new generation installations in the pro studio market for its natural speech rendition. The most important element in the journey towards the M40.2 has been the simply delightful success of the SuperHL5plus, which has captured (and captivated!) a whole new audience and very significantly increased the turnover of the Harbeth company in just one year. Only a fool would have not connected the design innovations embodied in the SHL5+ with the universal praise it's received: it was designed differently from all previous Harbeths, and that difference is what the market evidently very much like. I observed the market, I listened to the feedback, I learned from the reviews, and I have applied the same magic that went into the SHL5plus into the M40.2. And some.
Had we started from a different perspective, I would not have named this new model '.2' because in fact, it is a very different speaker indeed. Frankly, there were times over the last weeks when, just as I experienced during the SHL5+ development last year, that I needed to reprogramme myself as to what a speaker should sound like and should do. It was easy to have mini crises where I had to fight the urge (OK, sometimes I gave in to the urge and then reversed myself away from that position over the next days) where I wanted to compensate for poor recordings (of which there are legion) and damp down the potential of the M40.2 so that even those iffy recordings sounded OK-ish. But as I found with the SHL5+, and again with the M40.2 but to an even greater extent, when the recording, the music and the performance are all in harmony, the overall sound is simply indescribably involving: an entrance, a doorway, a sound curtain hanging in space somewhere in the listening room like a worm-hole into another dimension. I've been fiddling about with speakers for forty years, and on an A1 recording, this M40.2 experience is really, really special. The speakers simply do not exist in the room to my ears anyway but it's for the market to decide if that's how others experience them. It's the closest I've got to a loudspeakerless listening experience.
Now, about the bass. As I mentioned above, the legacy of the M40 (the previous LS5/8) is that of a 'generous' bass which works when the room has sufficient damping, as you would tend to find in a traditional (but not modern, low budget) studio. For the M40.2, just as with the SHL5+, I have rebalanced the entire speaker so that the bass/mid/top frequency response is a flat line. That took every gram of creativity, and to do that with a tight cost constraint has burnt much midnight oil. The re-balancing has two effects: the greater presence takes attention away from the bass and makes the entire presentation more engaging and in reality, the speaker will work fine in just about any environment now, big or small, spare bedroom upwards, damped or undamped so there is no need to modify your domestic living space to get a really great sound. Of course, the M40.2 is a big box and it's up to you to decide if you can/must/absolutely must! make space for them in your life.
And about the M40 and M40.1 users. How will they feel? Well, both those models are low coloration designs, as of course is the M40.2, so there is no reason to consider them inferior if low coloration and an easy sound are your listening goals. In the right environment the M40/40.1 sound lovely, and if your musical diet is of less-than-perfect recordings (example: historical jazz; harsh, compressed, over-miked classical recordings etc. etc.) or your electronics or room environment is known to be bright, then the softer, easier sound of the earlier models, if that is what you are used to, may well be best option. But if you hunger for the last atom of transparency, accept that many recordings are flawed but appreciate a really great recording such that you have to constantly remind yourself that you are not at the recording venue, and that the performers have not, magically been conjureded-up at your command in your own room, then the M40.2 is the right choice: but they are devastatingly revealing of micro details, so that you can very clearly hear the different nature of recording microphones, flawed recording techniques and everything that gets in the way of being really there. That is what a true monitor speaker is designed to do though: tell it like it really is. It might be too much of a shock?
So, supposing that you are an M40, M40.1 (or even, GF, an LS5/8 user) should you automatically plan for an upgrade? No: you have to hear the M40.2 and what it is capable of first. That means we cannot even begin to consider the upgrade situation unless we have our entire dealer network on-side, because you will have to hear the M40.2 somewhere. And the best place is in a real, bricks and mortar Harbeth dealer's premises and of course, 'upgrades' cannot be expected to behave exactly as a new, fresh pair straight of the production line would.
I would urge you to invest time in establishing that the basics of your entire system are 100% correct before making the leap to this level of natural transparency. The one single factor you must be certain of is that your amp must not be driven to saturation (clipping) at any time by overly loud (digital)sources, let alone of inadequate power reserve to drive a big speaker and control it properly. Personally, I would give a very wide berth to any hifi amp, regardless of brand name or cost that has an insanely high input sensitivity for digital sources, such as 100mV, despite the tosh put out by marketing men. It's bad engineering and unjustifiable.
