Even though I like their 2-ways with subs more, they are one of the few companies where I can almost deal with a 3-way in one box.
"As Sonic understands it, Harbeth employs several principles in common with Mr Green in speaker design such as light construction, elegant engineering without over building, tuned construction instead of trying to kill vibrations which always remove music. Michael takes things one step further which is to move from fixed tuning to variable tuning so you can tune his speakers to suit your specific room and environment. Variable tuning is for some reason scary to people."
I can understand part of the fear factor for hobbyist, but much of it is based on "looks" and not sound. Look above at Hiend001's system, or below at one of my studios.
The home listener is inching their way closer, but this hobby has been so living-room-styled, that it has been sort of a reverse engineering proccess for them to go from something not really all that representative of how music sounds it's best, backward to the origin or places designed to produce music.
Tuning represents a higher level of learning, and some concept changes, which makes the hobbyist many times not think with their ears. For myself it's a no brainer, because I grew up in the studio and around odd looking instruments, but if you build a system to look more like an instrument a lot of people can't deal with that level of separation, disconnect from their living room look as opposed to a studio or hall.
They have been sold plug and play for so long, and the partial convertion acceptalble to the eye, enough to get them in the ball park, but the reasoning of sound first has not set in.
For example, how many guys do you hear talk about how carpet in a music room as a must on the floor, and yet look at how many studios and concert stages use carpet floors? None, or very darn few unless for a "deadening effect"! This is a good example of the audiophile disconnect to the producing and reproducing of music. The audiophile has writen their own book, and sadly that book leaves out much of the truth, injecting practices that are in direct opposition to the rest of the music world. Their best defense, saying the two are apples and oranges when this could be no further from the truth.
Truth is the rest of the music world "IS" tunable and the audiophile has not caught up to this truth yet.