About The Harbeth C7ES-3 XD Speakers
An all-around satisfying listen, the Compact 7ES-3 loudspeaker has fantastic micro-resolution and an electrifying clear presentation.
The Icon Of Clarity, Detail, Essential Neutrality & Natural Tonal Balance: Allow sensational music moments to come to life in the comfort of your home with the multi-award winning, medium-sized C7ES-3 XD loudspeaker. Acclaimed for its accurate three-dimensional sound, this speaker will impress even the most religious demands of an audiophile.
The Harbeth secret for accuracy and lifelike sound is the meticulous attention to detail during the design stage. Critically important, but hidden, is the crossover, which carefully integrates the drive units across a wider horizontal and vertical arc. Incremental changes to this fundamental component have allowed this legendary loudspeaker to present the most challenging instruments with increased presence and transparency.
No other loudspeaker communicates the emotional power of the artist so eloquently.
Beautiful Sound At Home: Crafted by one designer to convey the recording not to reinterpret it, there is consistent musicality right across the Harbeth loudspeaker range. Deciding on the best Harbeth for your system will come down to three things: what size speaker you're comfortable with, what power handling and frequency range you need, and what your budget can stretch to. No matter which model you choose you can be sure your speakers will have the natural, realistic, engaging sound Harbeth's are renowned for.
The fantastic tonality, the selection and use of the finest materials throughout and sourced from the best suppliers around the world all combine to a lifetime of listening satisfaction and pride of ownership. Customers regularly comment that their Harbeths are the best investment money can make.
Radial Cone Technology: In 1990 Harbeth embarked on an ambitious three year research programme, supported by the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) to develop a new speaker cone material.
Alan Shaw: "We had three graduate engineers here, half funded by the government and half funded by us, who looked at the whole mysterious business of the acoustical properties of loudspeaker cones. It was an enormous project, and part of the ongoing process was to invent a material, make a number of samples of it and then from that, calculate its density and acoustic properties and so on.
We plotted the mechanical properties of the materials versus frequency, and started to understand what was going on acoustically inside the plastics. Eventually we realised that what we wanted was something that was very stiff in one frequency band and had certain characteristics, and yet had different characteristics in another band and yet other characteristics in yet another frequency band! So we got into the business of blending different materials whereby we could optimise the frequency response and the acoustic quality according to the ratio of different materials we had combined in the blend.
At the end of it we came up with an injection-moulded material which we called RADIAL (from Research and Development In Advanced Loudspeakers). It would have been very hard to get a supplier to make suitably small quantities of this custom-blend as sheet material for vacuum forming. Fortunately, injection-moulding overcame this problem and gave a huge performance benefit as well."
RADIAL™, now in Mk 2 form, is still unbeatable for clarity and resolution and is used in all Harbeth speakers.
Linfield Factory: Lindfield production is the hub of the Harbeth operation, where batches of loudspeakers are assembled every day. One day you'll see P3ESR's alongside and dwarfed by the mighty Monitor 40.3s under assembly, the next day the SHL5plus alongside the C7ES-3. Harbeth only builds to order, and with 95% of production in-bulk and destined for export customers, the factory has a full order book for months ahead.
Loudspeaker design and manufacture, rather like the crafting of musical instruments, is a particular combination of art and science. Aside from the natural variations in veneers — which make for variety on the production line — art hands over to science as the only way to control consistency. There are a hundred or so piece parts that combine onto a finished loudspeaker, and all of these are hand-assembled by experts who have worked together at Harbeth for a combined 60 years. Harbeth know their products inside out!
"Visitors are amazed at how efficient Harbeth is at production." Alan Shaw – Designer, Harbeth Audio Ltd
Harbeth In Society: Harbeth Audio has been hand-making high-quality loudspeakers for over thirty years. The products are exported to Hi-Fi enthusiasts around the world, and the brand is also popular with broadcasters.
Unlike modern, snap-together boxes Harbeth speakers give many decades of service, often outliving their users. Since they have a virtually indefinite life there's no need for any Harbeth speakers to be thrown away.
Every Harbeth is made in an environmentally-friendly way, using long-established methods. They can therefore be rejuvenated because of the expensive, but traditional, way they are designed and built. Further, Harbeth work closely with their suppliers to encourage the most sustainable approach possible.
Understanding The XD Series – An Interview with Alan Shaw
With the success of the previous series, why did Harbeth need to change it? As you know, we have been running the Standard series alongside the Anniversary series on our production line for a few years. You would be surprised at how few components are common to these two series. The cabinets are different (veneer choices and cut-out for the terminals), all the capacitors are of a different style, shape and size on the crossover boards and there is an adaptor board in the Anniversary speaker to convert the connection of the WBT terminals into a long-term 'Harbeth standard' for internal wiring.
Taken together, this has expanded the number of unique products that we offer to over forty-five, and that has proved to be a complex logistical matter for a small company. So the core rationale behind the planned phase-out of the Anniversary series has been 'simplification and standardisation' – the new XD series has reduced forty-five product lines into sixteen, with efficiency gains throughout production.
How did you first approach the challenge of improving the new XD series? Interesting question. My first desire was to eliminate all the cosmetic features of the Anniversary series as that moment of celebration has now passed. That means, any elements which added complexity (such as the WBT connectors), even though they looked impressive, had to be removed. Of course, the customers had become accustomed to the Anniversary sonic performance and we had to at least match that in the XD series, but in a simplified package. The art was to know what features added complexity without justified sonic advantage and remove only those.
What are the main innovations that have made the difference to the sound of the new XD series? My test and measurement facilities give me a sonic 'microscope' into the performance of the speaker. Over the years I have invested in a more and more powerful analytical 'microscope', and small deviations from perfection that I could not observe years ago are now very obvious. So I have flattened-out small 'lumps and bumps' in the frequency response by using custom made resistors, coils and capacitors. So the overall sound is better integrated bass/mid/top.
In particular, which speaker are you most proud of in the new range? I've always had a particular fondness for the Compact 7. I like the form factor. When I heard the Compact 7ES-3 I could hardly believe that it was the product of my own creation! Of course, the completely redesigned P3ESR-XD is also very special.
If you had to summarise the effect of all these changes? I have, coincidentally, been reading over the last year about Japanese management practice, and in particular the influence of Honda in LEAN manufacturing philosophy. It seems that business efficiency is really the secret of great success, and the XD series is not just another Harbeth family, but the encapsulation of a shift in Harbeth's approach to production.
Harbeth C7ES-3 XD Review
"Over the past three years, Alan Shaw has completed a project of upgrading the entire line of Harbeth loudspeakers to XD status, which stands for "eXtended definition": greater transparency, extensive crossover work for better integration of drivers, and RADIAL 2, the latest formulation of Shaw's proprietary polymer compound widely recognized for reducing coloration and distortion in cone materials. This latest version of the Compact 7 is over most of its range one of the most neutral transducers I've heard in my six decades as an audiophile, and unquestionably one of the most musically natural, boasting a truthfulness to voices and the timbre of instruments and a coherence, transparency, and lack of coloration that rival the best in my experience. It also has a life, vividness, and dynamic window that completely belies its compact size and (only apparent) simplicity. Its bass extension approaches the bottom octave, albeit at reduced level and power (though more than adequate for the vast majority of acoustic music, including most symphonic music and even a lot of rock and roll). For its size and design type, this loudspeaker is at once a true reference standard and a music lover's dream." 2023 Golden Ear: The Absolute Sound
Our Take
The Harbeth C7ES-3 XD is a superb all-rounder. It's a little like a Goldilocks speaker, not too big, not too small, not too expensive and able to fill even quite large rooms with near full range sound. The secret sauce is the Harbeth designed RADIAL2™ Mid/Bass driver which is possibly the most neutral speaker cone ever developed. It speaks with one voice over most of the frequencies which are important to the reproduction of music in a smooth and effortless fashion.
Of course the fabulous cabinetry, top class crossover and ferrofluid-cooled tweeter all play their part but we keep coming back to that driver. Oh, and there's also the not inconsiderable talent that designer (and owner) Alan Shaw brings to the party. Without his almost obsessive level of attention to every detail involved in the design of this speaker including the hundreds of hours of listening required to finalise the design we just wouldn't have this, or any other Harbeth. You can't buy him and take him home but you can buy his creations and the C7ES-3 XD is one of his sweetest.
Main Features & Specifications
- Design: Front Ported Bass Reflex 2-Way Stand Mount Speaker
- 25mm (1") Ferrofluid-Cooled Tweeter
- 200mm (8") Harbeth RADIAL2™ Mid/Bass Driver
- Frequency Response: 45Hz – 20kHz, ±3dB free-space, grille on, smooth off-axis response
- Impedance: 6 Ohms, easy to drive
- Sensitivity: 86dB/2.83V/1m axial
- Amplifier Suggestion: Works with a wide range of amplifiers – suggested from 25 Watts/channel
- Power Handling: 150 Watts programme
- Connectors: Two 4mm Harbeth branded binding posts
- Space Requirements: Overall response optimised for use away from walls
- Stands
- Optimally to bring ears level with tweeters (Tweeter: 440mm up from cabinet base)
- We recommend TonTräger Speaker Stands
- Packing: Single speaker per protective carton
- Available Finishes: Cherry, Walnut, Rosewood & Okoume
- Grille Colour: Black
- Dimensions (WxHxD): 272 x 520 x 305mm (+12mm for grille and binding posts)
- Weight: 13.2 kg each
- Manufacturer's Warranty: 5 Years
Note: Features & Specifications Subject To Change Without Notice. E&OE.