Back to Hales (Transcendence 5)
While in college I saved up my Walmart garden center wage earnings for my first pair of real hifi speakers from Insight Audio in the Dallas area. Their demo of the Hales Revelation speakers blew me away. About twenty years later they were replaced with a pair of JBLs. Flash forward 7 years and lot of room acoustics work I currently own two pairs of speakers and was not looking for a third. TMR recently put up for sale a pair of Transcendence 5s. I impulse purchased them they same evening I saw them listed. I just got them this morning and made room for them. The grills are in perfect condition, which is very unusual. Overall they are in great condition for their age. TMR does a great job about being upfront on condition.
I set them up with my ML 532H, Bricasti M3 and Purist cables. They sound awesome. They walk that Hales line of clarity/tautness and body so well. The sound is very big. The HF is not as good as my more expensive speakers. Improvement to my electronics chain could help some, I'm sure. I am very excited to return to the brand with a pair of the "good ones" I could not afford back when they sold new so wanted to post this.
I worked with Larry Reagan at Audio Insights and we both worked at Audio Professionals previous to that in Dallas. Larry joined Paul after closing Audio Insights store and they were partners up until about 4 or 5 years ago if memory serves me correctly. I started out with Hales Signature Two's (still my favorite of his designs) and still have them, though they have suffered for being in attic storage for the past 25 years...... |
Hales fans unite! Great to see you found your way back to Hales and it’s working out. My personal preference is Hales with push pull tube amplifiers.
I’m a big fan of Hales and I still own some of the loudspeakers.
I remember it was a long time ago at a CES show where Paul introduced the transcendence eight speakers .
I remember passing by the room and hearing particularly realistic, big band sound coming from the room so I walked in and there were the big T8s playing some big band jazz. I was struck by the timbral realism. So clean clear and grain free, but not bleached, but full of instrumental colour. They were perhaps the most impressive sound I heard at the show.
That led me to seek them out, and I found a dealer in my city. And sure enough I heard that same amazing sound.
Not too long after that, I ended up with Hales T5s and absolutely loved them. Still among the accurate timbre I’ve heard, and they sound staged and damaged like mad. Those SEAS drivers were Magic and the Hales put to rest and prejudice I had against metal dome tweeters being harsh or bright or mechanical sounding. Paul was a wizard.
Eventually, I had to sell them, and I sold them to a friend who really liked them as well.
Several years later, after Hales had folded, I decided to renovate my two channel listening room to also do duty as a Home theatre set up with the surround sound. I tried all sorts of different loudspeakers and combinations but eventually I happened upon a used pair of Transcendence 1 monitors.
They sounded absolutely gorgeous and brought back that Hales sound that I had so much enjoyed. And they worked beautifully as L/R speakers for the home theatre as well.
Then I looked into a real unicorn speaker - a used Hales Transcendence Cinema Center channel. This thing is a big beast, and used SEAS drivers that matched the rest of the Transcendence line. Here’s a photo (though this is not my particular unit):
https://i.postimg.cc/7ZKxkg5h/IMG-3962.jpg
The speaker matched beautifully with Hales T1s, and the Hales Transcendence speakers produced the smoothest, most easy to listen to, most timbrally beautiful sound I’ve heard in a home theatre system. I still use those in my set up and and would never part with them.
For a while my T1 monitors did double duty for both Home theatre and my two channel listening. I had two sets of speaker leads… one where they usually be hooked up to the Home theatre receiver. But the other speaker cables hooked them up to my two channel system - Conrad Johnson tube amplifiers that kind of thing.
And then I would just pull the speakers out on their stands into the room to the two channel listening position .
Eventually, I got back into bigger floor standing speakers for two channel . Thiel and now Joseph audio. Interestingly the Joseph Perspectives have the updated SEAS drivers and the Joseph and Hales speakers sound very much alike - that recognizable ultra smooth grain free purity from both of them.
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Thank you for sharing that. You all (Audio Insights) were gracious with me in the demo and sales process. You even sold to me a used Classe Seventy. I was a small time customer for the audio world, but for me that was a lot of money.
@prof I did not know there a center channel. You used CJ tube amps on the T5s? Given stereophile's impedance/phase results I have only considered solid state. |
One reason I bought the premier 12 mono blocks is that they would allow me to use tubes with plenty of speakers otherwise would be paired with solid state amplifiers.
That includes big power hungry Thiels as well as other speakers normally thought to “need” solid state.
I’ve never heard the Hales sound better than on the CJs. They had a luscious mid range and plenty of punch. But I’m sure there’s a number of tube amplifier they would work with (also depending on how loud you need them to play I guess).
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