Hales Design (Paul hales first company) weren't just nice looking speakers, but pretty good ones too, nicely engineered with good components. Pity this little californian firm disapppeard quickly. Paul Hales has done a hazardous and unfortunate deal in selling both the company and the brand name to Wadia's owners. Soon after, Wadia went off the market, driving Hales Design speakers in its collapsing. Too bad for Paul Hales and for muisc lovers who, like me, appreciate serious speaker design, far away from audiophile hype.
Yep, I definitely remember, I was in the middle of reviewing the Hales T5s when the company went under!
I spent something like a year trying to contact them saying “ How do I get these back to you?” until I was finally told basically “keep them, the company no longer exists.”
Which is how I ended up with a pair of T5s, inadvertently. But I thought they were awesome.
Much later on when I was putting together my Home Theatre system I knew the Hales sound is what I was looking for, and that they had made some stand mounted versions of the transcendence line - T1s. They were as rare as hen’s teeth on the used market because so few were made before the company shut down.
I ended up getting in touch with Paul Hales about them and it turned out he had a pair that he occasionally used in his office, and was willing to sell them to me. So that’s how I ended up with my first pair of T1s.
I had talked to Paul about how I was attracted to his loudspeakers because they seem to be particularly good at reproducing the timber of voices and instruments in a way that struck me as right and realistic. He said that was essentially his own obsession when he had been designing loudspeakers, so no surprise. But I also mentioned that if I could fault them for anything it was In the realm of dynamics. Just a bit on the polite side.
He agreed, said he felt the same way about those designs, which is why he was moving on to investigating designs based on re-creating more realistic dynamics. so he was starting to do stuff looked more like professional monitors, with horns, etc. And I seemed to remember his next business tended to cater more to that type of market - dynamic capability was desired or required.
I’ve never heard any of his speakers since Hales originally folded. But I would never get rid of my Hale’s centre channel. That’s for sure. It manages to sound at once tonally realistic, relaxed and not biting or artificial at all, especially with voices, and yet maintains discrimination even at low volumes, so dialogue is easy to hear without having to crank things up.
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