Also going to say goodbye to the R65 in favor of going with established, reviewed, and “industry-tested” monitor brands, for better or worse. Adam's Trademark X-ART Ribbon TweetersThe A5X incorporates one of Adam's instantly recognizable folded-ribbon tweeters. When these three materials are combined together, the result is an ultra-lightweight yet extremely rigid material that provides excellent transient responses. A lot of people praise Genelecs but they are expensive and this model, which is already stretching my budget, is a 5". inch voice coil, and this is teamed with an amplifier having twice the power of that in the original A7.

The compact but powerful A4V is best suited to smaller studio environments, while the A7V continues the success story of ADAM Audio’s most famous monitor, the A7X.

In my own studio, which measures 16 by 11 feet, the A7s are probably a better choice than the A5s and obviously have a touch more bass extension, but I'd certainly be able to work on the A5s without any problem. Finally tried the A7X, just a bit more bass presence than the A5Xs but no noticeable improvement in mid nor treble. I have IsoAcoustics stands, but those rubber feet on the Genelecs look like they need something proprietary… Genelec sell stands for them but they are expensive and also they don’t appear to do any decoupling between the speaker and the surface like the IsoAcoustics. This material with minimum weight and maximum rigidity prevents break up resonances, resulting in an outstanding dynamic behaviour and impeccable sound characteristics. The A5s really are quite revealing, largely due to that unique tweeter — so if anything in the mix sounds a bit off-colour, they'll tell you, as good monitors should.

Comprising five models, the A4V, A7V, A44H, A77H and A8H are the right fit for an array of professional and home studios—as well as broadcast, fixed-installation, 3D, immersive, and home audio environments. I focused on the A range which seemed to offer the decisive , razor sharp "Adam" sound, and fell within budget. Why would a port even be doing cancellation at a frequency that's like 3 to 4 octaves higher than the port tuning frequency.The control panel at the rear no longer shares space with a protruding heatsink, and the screwdriver‑adjustable rotary switches have discrete settings rather than being based on conventional pots, so each setting can be made much more precisely. The company initially made its mark with the ART ribbon tweeter, its refinement of the Air Motion Transformer (AMT) designed in the 1960s by Oskar Heil.

To complement the new tweeter, the seven‑inch bass/mid driver has also been re‑engineered, now featuring a larger, 1. The figure for THD (Total Harmonic Distortion), when operating at a level of 90dB at 1m for frequencies below 100Hz, is less than 0.All models of the AX-Series feature two discrete amplifiers: an A/B amplifier that functions very quickly within its broad frequency range drives the X-ART tweeter. The A5Xs do sound very similar tonally to the KEFs which surprised me a little; I guess the KEFs are pretty well balanced! To my ears, these speakers sound remarkably free of strange and misleading resonances down to 80hz or even lower. To adjust the low frequencies, there's a shelving filter that operates below 300Hz and should provide adequate adjustment to compensate for speaker placement.