Dear Friends,
I am finally getting my Harbeth P3esr this week and will be purely used for music listening. The sources will be Automatic Turntable, Yamaha WXC-50 , Arcam CDS50 CD Player and Topping D50s but I am confused with which IA to use ? Please suggest if Arcam S20 or Marantz PM8006 will make sense or any other IA which I can consider...
Music - Mostly Old / New Bollywood Songs and Ghazals
Marantz PM8006 is currently available at 77K
Arcam S20 is at 1,05,000
Please suggest....
Regards
Rajiv Kumar
Not sure if it helps but I will share my experience with how my P3esr pairs with the various amps I have tried it with in descending order of how good the synergy was-
Accuphase e480 - excellent rich textured yet transparent sound, very good tonality, power opens up the p3esr bass
Luxman 509 - similar to Accuphase but more dynamic, slightly leaner tonality, bass is slightly worse, wider soundstage.
Leben CS300xs - Beats the above two by a slight margin on tonality and richness of vocals, correctness of instrument timbre and works very well for low volume/night listening for acoustic, vocal based despite the low sensitivity of the p3. Obviously cannot match excellent class AB SS amps on bass slam, dynamics, volume SPL, etc.
Hegel H300/H390 - Very good control on the bass, the P3s work well without a sub in a small room with the Hegel. Tonality is above average. Good soundstage. I found minimal difference between the 300 and 390 with the P3. This was very surprising to me. With ATCs there was a noticeable difference.
YBA Audio Refinement Complete - Extremely engaging tubish sound. Cannot hold up to the ones above it in the list but very very good considering the price and vintage nature of the amp.
Lyngdorf 2170 - Brief audition without room correction engaged, so take it for what it is. Very clean sounding. A bit sterile though. The sound did not engage me.
Jolida 1501 - Good for non criticallistening and for the price, but less transparency and resolution than amps higher on the list and bass has less authority.
Trigon Excceed - Nothing bad but similar to the much cheaper Jolida amp
Nain Uniti Atom and Naim Super Nait 2 - This is likely strong personal preference. I did not like what the Naim units did to the Harbeth sound. Many people seem to like this combination of Naim and Harbeth.
By no means is this anything other than a highly personal statement of preference so the standard caveat applies - the room, the rest of your chain, personal taste play a huge factor so auditioning for yourself if possible in your own room is the best option.
Of course, there will be many other combinations that I haven't heard that work equally great or better with the P3
.
Do update on this thread if you find something that you end up loving.
