A month or so ago I had a phone call from a friend of mine who was going to buy a CD player for his dad. He wanted a few suggestions for good budget machines, so I gave him some ideas and the phone number of our local Hi-Fi dealer. As it happened, I ended up dropping the machine off at his parents house, where his somewhat bemused father wired it up to his 35 year old, home made amplifier and loudspeakers. It sounded fine. As we discussed the system he said he was particularly happy with the remote control - "This is technological improvement!... but I can't see that loudspeakers have moved on at all. They're still just bits of paper flapping around in wooden boxes."

As I was driving home, I considered what he had said. Here we are, approaching the millennium, with state of the art single ended triode amplification (designed circa 1930) and... well, bits of paper flapping around in wooden boxes. Sure, we may use different materials such as carbon fibre, plastics or whatever, but, rather like the internal combustion engine, it has been refinement rather than radical re-design that has taken place in the last few decades.

These thoughts were still in the back of my mind as I unpacked the Hales Transcendence Three's (although somewhat clouded by the fog of pain from my back that was reminding me to consider a fork lift truck instead of a hatchback the next time a new vehicle was on the agenda). The packaging itself (and the weight of the cabinets) was typical of what I discovered later, to be an inherent feature of the manufacture of the product itself - functional, with incredible attention to detail.

Once unpacked, the first thing to strike you about the appearance of the Transcendence Three is that the cabinet is a parallelogram, as you look from the side both the front and rear panels slope backwards. Reactions from those who saw them ranged from 'very elegant' through to 'awkward' and included opinions on how much beer would have to be consumed before they appeared normal or straight. The grille really is a masterpiece of construction - a welded steel frame with a distinctive raised diagonal across the front - I mean, how much can you do with a loudspeaker grille to make it look interesting? - this one does.

At this stage I would like to put on record that the attention to detail, and constructional quality of this product is second to none. There is absolutely nothing tacky or second rate about these loudspeakers, right down to the instruction manual. Normally these are consigned to the garage along with the cartons but this one could probably achieve epic status as a publication in its own right. Apart from well written advice on ancillaries, cables and the like, there are pages of tables enabling you to calculate room resonances and standing waves. There is also what amounts to a plea not to judge these speakers until they have been run in for 100 hours. I was warned...

Removing the grilles (which is achieved by sliding them upwards) reveals a beautifully contoured, four inch thick front baffle, with three vertically aligned units. The tweeter, which is a metal domed unit with what looks like strong Vita origins, and a mid range unit are mounted on a sub--baffle. The mid range is a 5" unit from Seas, with a magnesium cone and copper phase plug. The sub-baffle is in turn bolted to the main baffle which is in two sections, the lower one carrying the bass unit, which is mounted from the rear.

I must admit to being mildly disappointed by the sight of the 8" bass unit. There's nothing wrong with it - far from it. It looks to be a well made unit with very long excursion capability but... OK, suppose my occasional tendency to megalomania wanted something a little more butch in a speaker of this size and weight. All right, no I didn't. No. I have grown out of that. Really. Oh, and by the way it's proprietary to Hales - so I've probably just upset Paul Hales and he'll never forgive me!

Moving swiftly on . . .The rear panel reveals two sets of binding posts, one for the bass, the other for mid and top. Linking for single cable use is by means of nice copper bussbars. Connections more or less have to be made by spade as bare wires are impossible with the links in place and there is no provision for 4mm plugs.

The crossover networks are described as fourth order Linkwitz-Riley transfer function (read: complicated) with selected components. Internal cabling is Cardas. I have no reason to believe that they are any less well constructed internally than they are on the outside.

Before using the Transcendence Three's in my main listening room they were run in (out of phase) for 3 days and nights, with music and white noise at an average level that couldn't be heard at the other end of the house. It wasn't enough. Throwing a loud-speaker into an optimised system is one move that any reviewer should he wary of. Occasionally a product will shine straight away but more often than not the system will have to be altered to allow the review product to show its true colours. In this case there was no doubt that changes were necessary.

Used with my normal system (see my profile) it seemed that there was a lot of work to be done. To begin with, the optimum positioning was worked out using the calculations in the manual. To my surprise this placed them fairly close to what long experience has shown to the best position for most speakers in my room. I adjusted them inch by inch before installing the beautifully machined cones provided, whereupon the cabinets became extremely stable.

My first impressions were of a wide bandwidth loud-speaker with incredible amounts of detail and a slight metallic ring at the top end. Fortunately this diminished with further use, but never entirely disappeared. Sometimes the odd vocal line would excite it but by and large, as they continued running in, it became less obtrusive. Likewise the mid range performance opened up and the sound became more balanced, but the one area that I was passionately hoping would improve, that of musical coherence, showed little or no difference.

Time for some changes. Bi-wiring seemed ton be the first alteration inn lime. Using another length of Chord Co. 'Odyssey' the tonal balance changed a little bit overall I felt it to be a retrograde step in terms of musical communication - I stuck with single cable.

Up until now, the Primary valve power amps had been driving the Hales. Two things were painfully obvious. First was that the speakers could happily soak up all of the 250 watts plus per channel that they could provide, and secondly that the bass units were wildly out of control at higher levels.

Enter the Mark Levinson No20's -a pair of which just happened to be passing through my house at the time. These well respected monsters were in many ways just what was needed and altered the sound quite considerably. Gone was the uncontrolled, fat bass; the mid range shone through and things were considerably happier. It still frightened me how much power these loudspeakers demanded but I felt that the resulting sound was probably nearer to the designer's intentions.

I have been buying loads of inexpensive Naxos CD's recently including smaller orchestral works such as Bliss Music for Strings (Naxos 8.553383) and Elgar String Quartets (Naxos 8.553737). Listening to music like this, the Transcendence Three's excelled. The sound was seductive, focused and well presented, with good imaging and depth. Time and time again I would sit down to do some paperwork and the system refused to let me concentrate - it demanded my attention. Apart from the occasional metallic edge, the integration of the sound coupled with the amazing detail was awesome, and I genuinely heard things in familiar recordings that I had never heard before.

Listening to more modern music in the Drum & Bass / Trip Hop vein, it was clear that the Levinson amps were exerting a vice like grip on the bass units, and that higher levels were possible without distress: but it was almost as if the very refinement that made listening to romantic strings such a pleasure was holding back more energetic music. The temptation was to turn the volume up to generate some excitement, but it plainly made no difference. In fact, a major point in their favour was that, despite the voracious requirement for powerful amplification, these speakers delivered most of what they had to give at remarkably low levels.

Music such as John Martyn was reproduced with tantalising detail but it was as if the separate strands of the performance didn't gel together. Thus the speakers behaved almost like a sound engineer's tool; dissecting the music so that you could hear each individual instrument in front of you, but somehow failing to integrate them hack into the song. In Hi-Fi terms, the Hales are a marvel, but musically I felt unmoved. I'd end up spending hours listening to a guitar player's technique, but never listened to the song itself. Sadly the Levinson's had to go. They had proved a far happier coupling with the Hales than the Primary's had, and I was considering my next move when the editor came round for a listen, and suggested an alternative. A silly alternative. The Gryphon Antileon - 100 watts per channel of class A power amplifier with matching balanced preamplifier. Silly because the power amp probably weighs more than I do -but at least it has handles on it, which I don't. Yet. Interestingly I also had no need to light a fire in my house despite the chilly November evenings.

The Gryphon combination was wonderful - it provided the grunt and control necessary to satisfy the Hales at the bottom end, with a delicate and open mid range reminiscent of the Primary valve amps. It also gave me an opportunity to try some different cables, such as an Audioquest combination, although I ultimately preferred the quick and clean results of my usual PTFE I Silver wires. But I was still not happy. My listening area was cluttered with very expensive Hi-Fi equipment which was singularly failing to give me the enjoyment I know I can get from music. It all became so frustrating that I had to change the one item that had so far remained constant... the room!

Against mine and my osteopath's better judgement, I moved the Transcendence Three's into a different environment, hoping that a changed acoustic might bring them to life. Even this made no difference. The same fundamental problem remained. I could not get a sense of musical enjoyment from them. They remained technically impressive but emotionally uninspiring. They also present some-thing of a dichotomy The choice of amplifier is very limited because the demand is for a heavy-weight beast to drive them, conversely they need a small, fast and detailed unit to make the most of their incredible definition in the mid range. In my experience these rarely come together in the same package..

The dictionary definitions of transcendence include 'To rise above', 'To surpass', or, to 'lie beyond the limit of'. The trouble is that I'm not sure what the Transcendence Three is surpassing. True, in hi-fi terms it is one of the best loudspeaker systems I have lived with, and one which has reproduced recorded information that I have never heard before. If you subscribe to the detail uber alles approach, and want a system that is capable of ruthlessly exposing the differences between vinyl and CD, whilst effortlessly dissecting recordings into their component parts, then look no further than these extraordinary speakers. Unfortunately to me, it rarely feels as it the music is essentially reassembled. If I was wearing my sound engineer's hat then I'd probably he ecstatic, but as a domestic speaker I found the Hales tantalising, and ultimately frustrating.

When the time came for the Hales Transcendence Three's to be packed away I was still in awe of their technological refinement, but I just couldn't help feeling that there are older and simpler units, of flapping paper and wooden box construction, which are musically more satisfying.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Type; Three-way, sealed box loudspeaker Drivers; 1" Aluminum Dome Tweeter; 5" Magnesium Cone Midrange; 8' Polypropylene Woofer
Sensitivity; 87dB/watt
Impedance; Nominal 4ohm
Load; Awkward
Frequency Response; 35Hz - 26kHz ± 1dB
In Room Bandwidth; 25Hz - 28kHz
Dimensions (h,w,d); 924mm x 254mm x 297mm
Weight; 86.5lbs each.
Finishes; Sapele, Light Oak, Black, Natural, Cherry, Stained Cherry, Pau Ferro.
Price; £4050 - £4685 depending on finish.

Recommended Amplifier Power; 100watts+

Distributor
Zentek Ltd.
Tel. (44)(0) 1892-616383
Fax. (44)(0) 1892-547004

Manufacturer
Hales Design Group
Net. www.halesdesigngroup.com

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