TESTED: Harbeth HLP-3ES2 Loudspeaker

The Best Mini-Monitor?

Within a few minutes of firing up Harbeth’s HLP-3ES2 mini-monitor, I smiled and thought, “I know this sound. It’s every bit as good as I remember.” For several years in the nineties, I used a pair of the original HL-P3s in my film work. Replacing LS3/5as, they displayed far more neutral tonal balance, greater timbral accuracy, much lower coloration, better bass, and wider range. When I had just finished a project with several months to go before the next and no place for the speakers to go except storage, I finally gave in to a musician friend who, after carefully auditioning several small speakers (including LS3/5as), had been begging me to sell them to him. Come the next project, Harbeth was in the process of changing U.S. distribution. I never did get around to replacing the P3s.

Meanwhile, since 1999 I’ve reviewed three Spendor mini-monitors and Stirling Broadcast’s resurrected LS3/5a (in Issues 119, 143, 166, and 182). As this might suggest, I’ve had something of a longstanding romance with mini-monitors, especially when used in the applications for which they were originally intended: high‑accuracy reproducers in settings too small to accommodate larger speakers, spaces that typically cannot support low bass and where very loud playback isn’t required. But I wouldn’t choose them as main speakers for normal and larger listening rooms because their limitations become more difficult or impossible to overlook. And since optimal performance requires stand-mounting away from boundaries, their small size doesn’t really even save all that much space. Still, there’s something about the sheer impossibility of the problem and the ingenuity of the various solutions that appeals to me.

Designed by Harbeth’s owner Alan Shaw and introduced in 1990, the HL-P3 and its successors were by no means the first mini-monitors in the wake of the LS3/5a. But I believe they were the first to build directly upon the BBC research that went into the LS3/5a and upon the 3/5a itself, right down to lifting one of its hat‑tricks, a little boost in the upper bass to suggest more bottom‑end than is actually there.

Slightly larger than the LS3/5a, the ES2 is otherwise similar, being a sealed two‑way with SEAS drivers instead of KEFs. This is, in fact, the second revision of the original P3, the first being the ES, the differences mainly in the crossover, treatments for the cone edges, and a rounded cabinet‑edge in the ES2. Impedance is complex, but nominally 6 ohms (treat it as 4 with tube amplifiers). Sensitivity remains a low 83dB, recommended minimum power 25 watts—a mite optimistic for a normal‑sized room. In my plus‑2600‑cubic‑foot space, I managed to make a high‑current 110Wpc amplifier clip before the speaker gave out (this may have owed partly to the ES2’s complex impedance). For most of the evaluations I used the reference McIntosh MC‑402 (400Wpc) and Quad 909 (140Wpc). Think a good 50 watts minimum and don’t be afraid to use 100.