I owned the Hales T5s for quite a while. They are a fabulous speaker and IMO competitive with plenty of new speakers. In fact I find them better than many new speaker in terms of timbrel beauty and accuracy.Few speakers sound so "right" across the frequency range - smooth, super clear and ultra clean, more grain and etch-free than even most speakers today. And absolutely killer imaging and soundstaging.
But of course being an audiophile I got the "itch" and have moved on through several speakers since.
If you want to know why I moved on, my only real nits to pick with the Hales were:
1. A slight lack of density and palpability and punchiness to the midrange.
2. This is real picky, but a very slight lack of texture, a very slightly smoothed sound. Super detailed to be sure, but some other speakers produce the bow of a stringed instrument with a sort of "right there in the room" texture, where the Hales is slightly smoother. (But timbrally beautifully accurate).
I ultimately found that Thiel speakers scratched the itch I had with the Hales. I've owned the Thiel 3.7 and 2.7. The Thiels, maybe due to their time/phase coherence (hard to know), had an image focus and density of sound that I was missing from the Hales. They also had more of that in-the-room texture to instruments being played - bongos, string instruments etc. They also had an amazingly true sense of timbral accuracy.
But as everything's a compromise, even the thiels don't quite do the sense of tonal accuracy I often felt from the Hales. I know this because I still own Hales speakers. I have Hales Transcendence T1 monitors and the Transcendence Center Channel for my home theater, and which I occasionally still use for listening to music. They have a rightness that's hard to match.
However I DID end up finding a match for the Hales in that regard from another speaker company: Joseph Audio. I bought a pair of their Perspective speakers. They use the similar SEAS drivers like the Hales and they have a very obvious family sound with the Hales - that same super grain-free clarity and purity. But they sound a bit more refined, updated, with a bit more realistic texture.
BTW, I also auditioned the Magico A3 and I personally would take the T5s over the Magico. But that's a really personal take. The Magico are a slightly more advanced sounding speaker in terms of detail and clarity. Just a bit more. But for me they didn't produce the timbral beauty of the Hales (or my Thiels or Joseph speakers).
It's been forever since I heard Vandersteen speakers, but since they are time/phase coherent, maybe you'd find their sound does something the Hales don't quite do as I did with Thiel.
But I've sampled most of the popular or audiophile-favorite speakers out there that might competed with the T5s, and don't kick them out of bed just imagining newer speakers are better.
(Oh, another speaker I owned that comes to mind are the MBL 121 omni monitors. They were quite Hales-like in their timbral characteristics, but with world-leading detail and dimensionality).