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Audio designers may differ in their specific design approaches, but the best of them have in common a real passion for their craft. I certainly found this when I visited the Hales Design Group factory in Huntington Beach, California. Although still in his early 30s, Paul Hales has been involved in the design and manufacture of high-quality loudspeakers for almost a decade—first with the Hales Audio partnership, then with his own company, Hales Design Group. When he was just 23, an age when most people are still trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives, Paul had a speaker…
Hales: We revealed the product and the company to the world in January '89. The System Two was a small speaker, but it spawned the System Two Signature, a more refined version that was reviewed by Robert Harley in Stereophile. It put the company on the map.
It's quite funny: my partner and I had gone to the 1987 CES to check it out, to see what it was all about and learn a little bit about the industry. We had elaborate room-treatment panels we had made ourselves, and we had display racks and things, and I think two days before the show started we had the room all set up. We were all…
Deutsch: At some point you developed the molded-concrete, baffle design.
Hales: That's right. When the first Hales Design Group product came out in 1995, we had researched several different baffle materials for two reasons: I wanted to increase the rigidity and thickness of the front baffle, which is the most critical panel of a loudspeaker enclosure, and I was also looking for something we could mold that wouldn't require the large contours to be machined. So we looked into various resins— sand-filled resins, different cements, concrete, and various formulations of those different…
The other big thing in the Revelation series is the way the speakers are manufactured. The manufacturing of the Revelation Three cabinet is extremely intelligent from the method point of view. I don't know that you can make a 40"-tall, 1"-thick MDF box with lacquered wood veneer for any less than we make ours for. One example is that the front panel and the back panel are exactly the same. The hole that the crossover panel mounts into on the back is the same as the hole in the front that the woofer fires into. So when we're making the enclosures, instead of having a setup for two different…
Hales: Well, there's a certain technical performance that I'm shooting for. If I can't achieve a certain amplitude-response characteristic on the first try, then I've got to go back and determine why, what's my limitation, and make whatever modification is necessary.
Deutsch: Do you mean on-axis frequency response?
Hales: Yes. The off-axis frequency response is also hugely important, but, generally speaking, the first thing I do is get the on-axis frequency response correct. I have enough experience now that, with given drivers and given baffles and box geometry, I can anticipate…
Deutsch: And it just happened that way?
Hales: Well, it didn't just happen that way. With each design, I pick up new tools and new equipment and new understanding. We were able to start with a really accurate optimum transfer function. We'd go into the listening room with the prototype, which was, from a purely objective standpoint, pretty spectacular: seamless, extended, smooth, tonally good—and just a little bit boring. I said, "Larry, watch this." I sat down and made one last little change. I'm talking tenths of a dB here—I'm not talking about completely changing the shape of transfer…
Deutsch: How much do you rely on measurements?
Hales: I rely on measurements a lot. I probably use subjective and objective evaluation almost equally; in both the lab and the listening room, I know what I'm shooting for. And now I'm even starting to understand what the sound I'm shooting for looks like in the lab. So I can get even closer to the sound in the lab than I used to get.
Deutsch: You were telling me that there's an expensive tweeter you're very fond of, but it doesn't measure as well as some of the less expensive tweeters.
Hales: Absolutely. Some really cheap…
I'm beginning to understand why some people enjoy writing about crazy tweaks like electron counseling and magic listening trousers: When an idea is that new, it brings with it the chance for some gifted but heretofore unappreciated journalist to rise through the ranks and describe it to an anxious world. By contrast, when a defeated and baggy old establishment writer sets out to describe a CD player or amplifier, the product is surely the millionth such thing to come down the pike, and before long the readers complain: We used to like you, but you don't try very hard to excite us anymore.…
Sidebar: Prickle Alert!
The last time I wrote about digital music technology in Stereophile—my equipment report on the dCS Delius D/A converter and Verdi La Scala transport in our January 2005 issue—I wasn't prepared for the negative response I received from some quarters. Not that I was surprised or even terribly dismayed by the drubbing I took for my opinion of the musical performance of DSD—I'm very impressed with it, other people aren't, and that's all well and good—but I was astounded when a couple of very agitated fellows accused me of being an apologist, of all things, for…
The Bose 901 has created more of a stir in audio circles than any other loudspeaker we can think of, with the possible exception of the original Acoustic Research system. Much of the 901's popularity is attributable to Julian Hirsch's rave report in Stereo Review, and there is no doubt but that Amar Bose's compellingly convincing ads had their effect, too. But these things alone could hardly account for the 901's popularity.
Perhaps the most important single factor in the 901's sales is its awesomely spacious sound, which makes other systems in a showroom sound a bit trivial, as if the…