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Hi Analogous,
We have moved to this house recently and I have not had enough time to AB test them properly in the same room.But still my opinion below,
Both are very different sounding setups.
Croft -Harbeth is softer and natural with a beautiful and natural tone to midrange instruments/vocals with a wet bass.
The genelecs are powerful with deep and somewhat dry bass down to around 35 Hz without the subs.(I use the centre channel only for movies,sub is used for music occassionally).The genelecs have a wide soundstage and wide sweet spot.Having said that I think the harbeths image better. Harbeths with croft are non fatiguing, but still have the resolution and all the details which is special and difficult to achieve in my opinion.The Genelecs are a little bit on the cold side with a bit more resolution than the harbeth-croft. The Harbeths -croft is more refined sounding setup with a calmer presentation(does not suit some music genres).The Genelecs can play anything from soft music to hard with authority and perfection.
One thing to note is, the Genelecs are driven by the preouts of an AVR(Yamaha RX-V6A) , that is it , no expensive front end to support it.I did ask others including
@chander who use Genelecs, and they all agreed that the front end changes makes not much difference to the sound .One guy who uses 8050b (same model as mine) ,recommended Lyndorf amplifier with room correction to bring any differences.This is where Harbeths differ, they are very picky on the front end gear and amplification.They become a different animal based on the front end /amplification.Give them power , and they get snappier and fast with a huge sound stage.Give them something like croft, they give you the 3 D stage with depth. However ,Harbeths are not very picky on the source material, you can still enjoy bad recordings or say spotify/youtube etc..Ofcource they reward you for good source material.But interestingly, the Genelecs respond well to Source material, say Quobuzz will sound highend whereas Youtube will sound like another AVR based HT setup.
I think I have described the traits of both setups. Now coming to personal preference.
I prefer the Harbeth-Croft combination because of the Natural and life like(humans in the room) presentation.The Genelec presentation is a bit exaggerated to my ears(not sounding natural as Harbeths, say for example if you hear a violin or an voice on the Harbeths , you some how feel it is close to real.where as with Genelecs,it seems exaggerated if that makes sense).This is totally subjective and also might depend on other factors like the room and electronics.Also I am not a very experienced listener, so I might be wrong too.
I actually got the Genelecs for replacing Harbeths and to have a single setup that do justice for both music and movies.I even had the Harbeths for sale at one time and withdrawn . I have ended up keeping both setups for now. One of them might still go (to release some funds). I just need a little more time to decide.Will have to try them in the same room and spent some time.
In my opinion, if you are budget constrained, Genelecs or other studio monitors without any doubt.If you can afford good amplification, source etc, Harbeths(unless you can find a cheap hidden gem for the Harbeths.).In my case, if I compare the cost of both setups, genelecs are almost half the cost of my Harbeth setup.Does harbeth-croft perform two times better than Genelecs, ofcourse no. For another person, Genelecs could be far superior than the Hartbeth -Croft combo as well depending on his personal preferences.
Moral of the story: Pick your own poison or keep both.
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, so tidied up)
