Listening Evaluation and Conclusion
Solo guitar is one thing for sure and I generally use my room as an overdub facility, but as the weeks went on I've worked on a number of projects on these speakers. I had some mixes done in my room as opposed to somewhere else to see how we'd compare to what I've become used to. Some of the work we do at my place is destined for TV and in the end that requires a certain amount of brightness. Adding that high end to the A7's made the tracks really enjoyable on a variety of playback options from laptops to car speakers. Also, after hours of listening to all that high end, I don't have that dreaded "I don't ever want to hear music again" feeling that I get at the end of a long day of recording. (ear fatigue is not a myth, dear readers)
I was also pleasantly surprised by the bass response as we worked on a throwback 70's funk song as well. Remember, the bass drivers are only 6.5". I could hear all of the notes very clearly from the Fender Jazz bass and the kick drum was set apart, well defined and punchy. I'm always amazed when I turn up the volume with these speakers and feel all of the low end. I found myself glancing under the console for the sub that wasn't there. And actually, for you sub bass freaks or recordists that want to know what's really going on "down there" ADAM offers the Sub7 sub-woofer ($549) which matches well with the A7's or even the smaller A5's. I fear it would be overkill for my small room and didn't miss having a sub for a second.
As far as listening to a mastered recording goes, my other test is one that dates me, but it can't be helped, as it's the CD that I've listened to in countless environments. It's the Sting Soul Cages test. Line up on whatever side you will in regards to Sting and his music, but this record is wonderfully recorded and mixed. It also has a beautiful and varied array of instrumentation from Northumbrian pipes to oboe, gut string guitar and typical rock rhythm section as well."Island Of Souls" starts the record and is a slow build from Synclavier strings and classical guitar to full band. Once again the A7's brought out everything I've ever loved about listening to this record since I first heard it on Tannoy Gold reference monitors back in '91. The kick drum is focused and distinct from Sting's loping bass lines, the vocal and guitars aren't fighting in the midrange (like in my car) and the high end is super smooth and sparkly. "Mad About You" is another personal favorite as a recording and sounded perfect on the A7's. Nothing mushy from instrument to instrument as I really turned up the gas. Man, we used a lot of reverb in the 90's! The vocal sounds great on these speakers, the upper harmonic range really holding together at loud volumes with no distortion. Really nice.
As a favor to my daughter I also listened to some music that wasn't "old". She suggested Taylor Swift. I listened to "You Belong To Me" from the Fearless recording. Uhh, it sounded really great. And really modern from a loud and compressed standpoint too. The low end is really punchy and the acoustic instruments have tons of sparkle and air. This recording has a lot of dimension to it and the A7's soundstage really brings out that depth well. Even the vocal has a certain bright charm to it and isn't as annoying as when I hear it coming from my daughter's iPod boombox. Neat. Awesome. Cool.
Summary
Obviously I enjoyed the time I spent with the A7's. From the warm and focused low end to the smooth highs of the A.R.T tweeter, these speakers have great tone and balance throughout the whole spectrum. Small but powerful, they will be a welcome addition to any project studio or any mix engineer's arsenal of nearfield monitors. Taking mixes from the studio to the car to the computer showed these speakers to accurately represent the changes we made to mixes and they were easy to listen to for long days and nights of recording and mixing. Well done ADAM!
ADAM A7 Monitors
MSRP $1149/pr
ADAM Audio GmbH
Ederstr. 16
D-12059 Berlin
Germany
About ADAM Professional Audio
It was in Spring 11149 when the physicist Klaus Heinz and the electrical engineer Roland Stenz, loaded with vast experience on the field of speaker systems and a revolutionary tweeter design, founded ADAM Professional Audio. This highly sophisticated design was soon to become the pinnacle of authentic sound reproduction and the basis for achieving the very goal of the young but ambitious company: to challenge the few giants in the industry by offering a superior product. And as a matter of fact, in a short amount of time, Advanced Dynamic Audio Monitors managed to become one of the most preeminent tools in professional monitoring.
The Score Card
The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:
Performance × Price Factor/Value = Rating
Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.
Audioholics Rating Scale
— Excellent
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|---|---|
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The Adams mated to a subwoofer would sound better than anything Audioholics has ever tested, in small and large rooms alike. The one exception would be the NHT Xd. But then, even this design is not typical of consumer speakers and is closer to active professional monitors.So what say you Audioholics? Would a complete test of the Adams mated to the best sub you know of sound better than any set up you currently use or ever had before? Seriously, I'd be the first in line to buy this stuff upon that revelation.
Even though you gave a stellar review of the Adams, you said no such thing, so apparently not using a sub must have been the deal breaker!
What is the deal about the set up? Just plug the XLR outs from your pre pro and plug them into the XLR on the back of each speaker. Easy isn't it? Then do your set up the same as now.
Receiver get to be a dumber and less defensible product with each passing month.OK, I admit that I don't do HT or know much about studio monitors, and I don't think of my amp/receiver as "7 little amps" but one single unit with one power source.
But my fundamental question is if the set up you propose is so wonderful, why isn't everybody doing it? Most knowledgeable audio enthusiasts reference systems don't contain a bunch of little active speakers other than subwoofers, including those who run this website (I think), much less the average lay person.
Another question is how many affordable preamps are available that have all the traditional inputs, HT processing, with enough balanced XLR inputs to create an active/HT system that also doesn't happen to be ugly as sin (most pro gear)? My guess is not many.
Also, aren't you the guy who has the bizarre, custom room full of vintage audio equipment? In one post your telling me how great this stuff is (which I agree), and how we should really admire older technology more than we do (I also agree). Now your an ultra-progressive who is belittling and calling for the immediate destruction of traditional A/V set ups still used by the vast majority of people? If I really felt that way about the active speaker set up, I wouldn't be messing around with anything else.
I've read the review here on the Adam's, and although I have no doubt they are awesome studio monitor speakers, probably one of the best, and I don't doubt the authors sincerity, there was none of the "rigorous testing" usually associated with other reviews I've read here, just Absolute Sound/Sterophile style talk. Also, at the end of the review the author states: "Small but powerful, they will be a welcome addition to any project studio or any mix engineer's arsenal of nearfield monitors".
Why not recommend them to just any old lay person as a regular pair of home speakers if they are so obviously superior and simple to use?
P.S. No offence on the bizarre, custom room comment. That was actually a compliment!
Secondly, because of the engineering advantages conferred by active design (not to mention rigorous and rational engineering itself that places final performance over marketing brownie points), pro-monitor dynamics belie their compact size. So much so, that the dynamics of active two-way eight or ten inch monitors from Mackie, JBL LSR Pro, or Genelec can easily keep up with large consumer tower speakers that reviewers routinely fawn over.
gene;693814
I suspect the Adams would not fair so well in a larger room for theater applications as they would be severly limited in dynamics. Hence one of the reasons why they market them as Nearfield monitors.
The Adams mated to a subwoofer would sound better than anything Audioholics has ever tested, in small and large rooms alike. The one exception would be the NHT Xd. But then, even this design is not typical of consumer speakers and is closer to active professional monitors.
There is a lot of misconception as to what a nearfield monitor is. The professional world deals with speakers that are used in huge venues on the one hand to monitors sitting a few feet away on a meter bridge. In the early years of audio, a nearfield was designed with on-axis performance and directionality in mind, the idea being to minimize the role of the room in a mix. These are no longer considerations of nearfield design. Wide dispersion is a laudable goal regardless of how far you sit from the monitor and psycoacoustics research has upended lore about how the mixing room translates into the domestic space of a consumer. In actuality, the term nearfield is a marketing relic that is nearly meaningless. As long as the outputs from each transducer are temporally blended within the few feet of travel to the listen's ears, it's good enough to be marketed as a nearfield. A really good pair will sound just as great three away as 10 feet away (if not better).
Cristofori;695612
True, as I said in before, the average person can't even get their basic HT systems to work right and sound good much less something like what TLS Guy proposed.
Then there is the question of reliability. It would seem to me that one high quality central unit from a good, dedicated amp manufacturer would be more reliable and practical then having seven or eight little amps all about. What happens if one of the active speakers or something else malfunctions, causing your whole system to be out of whack?
Not that such a set up couldn't be done or work well, but the active speakers/amps would need to be of the highest quality, and such a set up would be mostly for the very knowledgeable, pro audio techies only.
So cramming seven amps in a case with powerful processor and other electronics, and than wasting a half to 75% of your power in passive crossover, will be more reliable, than smaller amps in a space big enough to properly ventilate? Are you kidding?
What is the deal about the set up? Just plug the XLR outs from your pre pro and plug them into the XLR on the back of each speaker. Easy isn't it? Then do your set up the same as now.
Receiver get to be a dumber and less defensible product with each passing month.