Apologies for resurrecting an old thread - had a bit of free time over the weekend so was tinkering around and wanted to share a comparison between my P3ESR and Spendor Classic 3/5 mini monitors. Usually I have them in different rooms and chains. Was curious to try them head to head in the same room. Since the Luxman 509 has 2 speaker terminals for two sets of speakers it was easy to quickly A/B them on the fly. The chain also consists of a Holo R2R dac running on I2S, Mogami 2804 speaker cables. JL Audio sub. Source was my computer and FLAC files. Normally this chain is used with my Harbeth M30s.
This is subjective but for me the soul of the kind of music I like lives in the midrange. The midrange of both the P3ESR and 3/5 are very good. IMO vocals on the Harbeth are the best I have heard when you want to get lost in the music with vocal heavy tracks. Spendor and ATC come second and third for me. I prefer the midrange of all three of them over similar stand mount models from Focal, KEF, Dynaudio, Fyne, PSB, Epos, Quad, Genelec, Amphion, etc. Even the timbre of various acoustic instruments sound more natural and not hyped in any way.
Interestingly if you have a decent sub that has been integrated well after taking measurements and run things in a small to medium room, the P3ESR for me is preferable to the larger M30. It disappears and the imaging feels better. Bass on the M30 is not the most accurate. The P3 being sealed is quite easy to integrate with a good sub. I like the bass also better with the P3+sub combo. Something to consider for anyone looking at buying the expensive Harbeth M30. Of course if your room is quite large the P3 won't work.
Also interesting was how the P3 and Spendor both reacted to the higher end SS higher power Luxman amp. I have run the P3 and Spendor at various points of time with decent 70-100w amps from Jolida, Naim and Rega. The P3 with the Luxman 509 especially became almost unrecognizable for more dynamic music - I dare say I really enjoyed rock and electronic music on a Harbeth (obviously not as much as with active Genelecs and ATCs or PSB/Paradigm). I might just retain the P3, JL Audio sub and Luxman combo for longer and see if I can live with it making my M30s redundant.
The Spendor 3/5 are considerably cheaper than the P3 in India. I find their resolution and detail to be slightly better than the P3ESR. The 3/5 also sounds a bit more dynamic. However on timbre, tone, vocal quality, imaging I prefer the P3ESR. The P3 is also a bit more forgiving to older or poor recordings though the Spendor is not bad on this count too. Considering the price though (and the rather insane prices of Harbeth in India) the 3/5 is a great deal. I also find the 3/5 works better with tube and hybrid amps. The P3 definitely sounds the best with a 100-150W SS beefy amp.
Both are excellent for low volume night time listening. ATCs though excellent for instance are terrible for this specific use case. Another thing to keep in mind for someone looking to move up from entry level speakers and happens to live in an apartment with small/medium rooms and neighbours nearby.
