Dayglow,
My first encounters with Hales were the T-8s at my local dealer, years ago, and I was always transfixed by how "right" they sounded in terms of tonality.
Way back at CES2000 I was trying to discern which system sounded the most "real." I'd come from watching shows of live musicians, unamplified, in the off-time. And during the show I'd judge how convincing it sounded from outside the room - "could that be live music, and if not what's different about it?" I'd pay attention to the voices of people in the room with voices coming through the system to note what the reproduction was missing from real life sound, etc. Not surprisingly, just about every system came up quite short, one of the most prominent failings IMO being a "one note" quality to the timbre of voices and instruments through each sound system - each seemed to put real sound through it's own blanching process, and then reproduce it with a single tone - the speaker's sonic signature. I pretty much despaired of finding any system no matter how expensive that could reproduce the gorgeous rainbow of timbres I was hearing in real life.
Then right at the end I heard some startlingly convincing big band playing in a room. I stood outside and marveled at how convincing it was tonally. Walking inside, there were the Hales T-8s playing the music! (Loud! With little strain). I played some selections on the T-8s and was really astonished at how many convincing timbral colors were coming from those speakers. Vocals in particular had easily the most consonant reproduction, comparing remarkably well with voices of people in the room in terms of the sense of organic quality, ease, and "human" timbral tone.
It made quite an impression on me :-)
I later ended up with Hales T-5s for quite a while, and they did indeed impress me much like the T-8s, though nothing quite does it like the T-8s. Sadly, I don't have the room for T-8s.
The other thing Hales did for me was put to bed this idea of metal drivers sounding metallic or harsh or fatiguing.
Paul Hales was a wizard at rendering lush, grain-free, unfatiguing sound from those metal drivers. I still use Hales Transcendence monitors for both home theater and some music listening, and as someone with very sensitive ears I find them to be the smoothest, most ear-fatigue-free speakers I know of.
I know most T-8 owners get the upgrade itch like any other audiophile, but almost all of them seem to have immense troubles finding anything else that is such a complete package in terms of clarity, timbral realism, soundstaging, dynamics and smooth sound.
