Overview and Build Quality
ADAM (Advance Dynamic Audio Monitors) is a Berlin based manufacturer of a variety of loudspeakers for both pro audio and home applications. All of their speakers employ the ART (Accelerating Ribbon Technology) transducer, which is an unfolded tweeter design that doesn't have the piston like movement that the majority of speakers incorporate. Instead, when an audio signal is applied, a pleated membrane moves air 4 times faster and much more efficiently than traditional transducers. ADAM says that this results in "unprecedented clarity and pristine transient reproduction." ADAM isn't the only company taking this route, but in a mainstream studio monitor it's a pretty unique feature - one that we looked forward to checking out.
The ADAM A7 ( $1149/ pr ) is a two way near-field studio monitor with the aforementioned ART tweeter and a 6.5 in. carbon "sandwich" mid/bass driver. This is all powered by two 50-watt (80W peak) amplifiers, one per driver. Housed in an attractive black cabinet that weighs 18 lbs and measures 13in. high x 7.5in wide x 11in deep, the top front edges are beveled back (chamfered) to reduce surface reflections from the tweeter. This gives the monitor a very rugged, but classy look. The circular power rocker switch is located on the front panel along with an input gain control that logarithmically brings up the volume to maximum gain.
The rear panel sports balanced XLR and unbalanced RCA inputs, a standard removable power cable receptacle, and 3 recessed control pots for tuning the speakers to your room. One is a tweeter control that boosts or cuts the tweeter output up to 4db and the other 2 are shelving filters that offer +/- 6 db at >6K and <150Hz. These controls are important in a studio monitor as they can compensate for the acoustics of the room as well as proximity to a wall, which results in accentuated low frequency response (commonly referred to as "boundary gain").
Experiencing the A7
I first heard the A7's in Mark Hill's small project studio on the outskirts of Nashville. I was mixing a record that I was producing and found that I was really enjoying going to hear the mixes at night in that room, on those speakers. I mostly chalked up the experience to the exceptional mixing of engineer Richie Biggs, to general good vibes, and the really cool project that I was working on. After finishing the record, I decided I needed to bring some A7's into my day-to-day workspace and see what it was that made it such a great overall listening event.
Having moved from Alesis M1 active monitors to Mackie HR 624's in the past few years, I've grown accustomed to not trusting my decisions regarding low end (how much is really there?) and dealing with grating high frequencies as well. I usually chalk it up to my room or my engineering, as I'm primarily an instrumentalist forced into audio engineering by this wild new world of the modern music business. But I've also been doing this for over 20 years, and I know what I want to hear. I unboxed the A7's and set them up vertically, found the sweet spot in the triangle and pulled up a guitar track that I was working on. Immediately I found myself forgetting about what I lack in the Mr. Wizard department and pretty much just enjoyed what I was playing. I record a lot of acoustic guitar in my room and I know my mics and mic preamps pretty well by now. I generally record guitars as flat as possible as to leave the most room for interpretation up to my mix engineers. Sometimes this doesn't lead to the most pleasant listening experience while recording. But right away I noticed that even in dropped tunings the guitar sound on the A7's was really beautiful, the low end focused and gorgeous, the mids speaking well throughout, and the high end, well...
Is this what the A.R.T. transducer is all about? Wow. The high frequencies on these speakers are just fantastic. There's none of the harshness that I've gotten used to when wrestling with my Gibson J-45 sound, just a really nice open and sparkly top end that I'm always hoping to stumble upon.
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.