Harbeth Newsletter: No. 5, February 2008

[harbethpr]

Attached is the latest Harbeth Newsletter. There's a report on the launch of the new Monitor 40.1 at the CES/THE show in January and as you will read, we have a brand new graphics style for the Harbeth internet site. It's a complete redesign and will be released in the next few days! What we wanted to achieve is a more personal feel. More elegant and easier to navigate. We persuaded Alan that he really had to be more visible. It's his company and he is the designer; I insisted that he should take a higher profile.

Also, the History section has been restored. Alan has been researching and writing this for the last few months: it's almost complete up to about 1960. We hope that you find it interesting and informative. It explains so much about why we do things our own particular way. The old proven (but expensive) ways are often the best ways I have found!

There may be one or two teething issues with the new site that have slipped past us. As always we'd be interested in your feedback and will do our best to resolve any little errors or omissions as soon as we can.

[eelekim]

Thank you for the revamped website! It looks good and is surely more informative. I've especially found the History section very interesting. I look forward to more to come. However, there are some strange pseudo-links (e.g. "soundstage" in the 40.1 page. Clicking the words doesn't bring us to anywhere... Also, can the left columns of sub-sections be separated that the whole page doesn't have to be reloaded whenever I click the column items.

mike

[A.S.]

The red text was in fact uncorrected spelling mistakes - now fixed. As for the navigation column on the left of the page, what you are asking for is that to be held in a page frame. Actually, 'page frames' are an early method of web page creation that fell out of favour several years ago. Page frames confused web browsers and search engines and were abandoned by all professional web designers. They also look terrible.

The new Harbeth web site is technically very sophisticated in the way it is structured. Every word, every link, every picture is pulled instantaneously from a database underneath the site and served up to your web browser. To your browser and your eyes, the pages look as they ever did: complete and colourful. But actually, disconnected from the underlying database they would look like a spreadsheet, with cells that point to the data. All the data is on our server - what you pull to your PC is only what you need, according to the pages you visit, on demand. This is why the product Registration section dovetails so neatly with the database itself. This php structure is the very best way of building a professional web site, but it has taken a year to do so. Over time we have many refinements and extensions planned.

There is one huge advantage of this method: flexibility. To change anything on any page merely requires us to edit the pointer or the database item, and this can be done from any PC anywhere on earth without specialist web creation software. In fact, thanks to jet lag which kept me awake, I wrote about half of the BBC History section on-line in my hotel room in Las Vegas using my Firefox web browser and no other tools.

If you are not using Firefox you should be.

[Soundbyte]

Hey....
My "humble" hifi & SHL-5 OFC 30th Anniversary speakers are featured in the Harbeth Feb 2008 newsletter. Feel honored as there are thousands of beautiful systems and photos and mine is selected in the newsletter! Thank you.

Cheers....
SoundByte.

Attached is the latest Harbeth Newsletter. There's a report on the launch of the new Monitor 40.1 at the CES/THE show in January and as you will read, we have a brand new graphics style for the Harbeth internet site. It's a complete redesign and will be released in the next few days! What we wanted to achieve is a more personal feel. More elegant and easier to navigate. We persuaded Alan that he really had to be more visible. It's his company and he is the designer; I insisted that he should take a higher profile.

Also, the History section has been restored. Alan has been researching and writing this for the last few months: it's almost complete up to about 1960. We hope that you find it interesting and informative. It explains so much about why we do things our own particular way. The old proven (but expensive) ways are often the best ways I have found!

There may be one or two teething issues with the new site that have slipped past us. As always we'd be interested in your feedback and will do our best to resolve any little errors or omissions as soon as we can.

[David Vair]

Dear A.S.,

I am very encouraged to learn that a 23 watt DNM amplifier was able to drive the new 40.1 speakers (and to such capability that they became the talked about speakers of the show). Personally, I have tube mono-block amplifiers that use a push/pull 300B output stage for about 25+ watts. Jeff Day of 6moons audio webzine says he drives his Super HL5s with 15--30 watt amplifiers satisfactorily.

My question is whether or not one of these models (the 40.1 or Super HL5) would be easier to drive and a better match for my amplifiers? Or, is there another model in the line that I haven't considered, which you would recommend even more? Any direction here, would be greatly appreciated.

Appreciatively,
David Vair

[A.S.]

The answer is correctly placed here