I’d love to get the A7V’s because I am sure they are a clear step up from the A7X’s a decade later, but they are, unfortunately, way outside of my budget. Why didn’t they make an A5V?! Those would have been perfect! The only trouble is I really wanted the ones in the raw finish 'cos I love that industrial look. Like an idiot I’m now toying with buying some and selling these on

resonant_space, I sit pretty close to my monitors at about 90cm, which makes me wonder if getting a set of smaller 5-inchers would help with getting a better blend from both speakers. The Genelec 8030C’s and the ADAM Audio A5X’s are very compact and I would be able to push them to the very edge of my desk and get an extra 10cm of distance between the drivers and my ears. Also, Genelec’s placement guides suggest that listening to 8030C’s at <1m distance is within the ok range. So yeah, I keep jumping between 5" and 7". I don’t really know how much the size really matters in the end considering my room, etc. I mean, is the bass extension of the 5" driver of the 8030C or the 5.5" driver of the A5X going to be that much different from the 7" driver of the (larger, more expensive, and less easily-available) A7X? Although the ASP8s are fun listening in their own way (and may have a greater appeal to some listeners) if I had to mix on just one set of monitors, I’d trust the smaller A5Xs more. StereolinkA very handy and exclusive feature found in the two smaller AX monitors is the Stereolink. This is accomplished by a pair of additional RCA connections that allow for a bypass of the second stereo channel to the other speaker. Mumdad, yours is another vote for the Genelecs! I was pretty set on going with the ADAMs but more and more people are recommending the 8030C’s. And yeah that raw finish is absolutely fire. I am lusting for it too…

Product range

Adam have gained a strong reputation for the quality and value for money of their larger reference monitors, but have they had to make any compromises in their smallest model? Developing new extended-range HF drivers is one thing, but they need to be driven by adequately powerful, low-distortion amplifiers that have a greater audio bandwidth than the driver itself. Adam's design team apparently explored existing Pulse Width Modulation amplifiers but found that the necessary low‑pass filter compromised the frequency response of the ribbon tweeter, so they developed their own Class A/B analogue circuit, which works up to 300kHz. Again, this may seem excessive but it helps to maintain phase linearity. Adam have also doubled the output power of the amplifiers. The Class A/B amp driving the X‑ART tweeter is now rated at 50 Watts, while the mid/bass cone driver is fed from a 100W PWM amplifier. Both amplifiers can handle peak levels 50 percent above their nominal rating. The crossover frequency is set at 2.5kHz.

These new‑generation Adam monitors incorporate an update to their original ART ribbon tweeter, and they've called the revised version the X‑ART tweeter (if they'd called it ART‑X, it would have recalled a certain generation of textured paint!). Its frequency response now extends up to 50kHz, but the design is also a little more efficient than its predecessor and so can generate higher maximum SPLs. Now, I don't think even your pet bat is going to get much benefit from the extra frequency range per se, but a wider frequency response generally means an even flatter phase response within the band you can hear, so it isn't just a case of 'more for the sake of the spec sheet'. After all, if everything in your audio system had a 20kHz bandwidth (‑3dB), by the time your signal had passed through all the different units in the chain, the final frequency response would be way down at 20kHz.Is it worth it to get monitors if producing in an untreated room or should I just continue with headphones?