A5X review by german online magazine HARDWARELUXX

Berlin, July 19, 2012

ADAM’s second smallest member of the AX family, the A5X, has recently been reviewed by german online magazine HARDWARELUXX. Please read some passages of that review below.

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Adam A5X – on duty

[…] It took only a few testing tunes to realize that ADAM’s own proprietary X-ART tweeter, which the A5X is fitted with, offers a lot for what’s usual in this price range aka the studio entry level. The high frequencies appear slightly emphasized in a pleasant way which applies for the midrange as well. Taken as a whole the A5X produces a very transparent sound image which can help in the process of revealing recording mistakes, especially in smaller home/project setups. Of course this very lucent and highly resolving imaging is a lot of fun with just listening to music, too. Dire Straits’ ‘Your latest trick’ convinced us in detail and transparency, we were even able to spot instruments that were playing in the background. […]

In the face of the compact driver dimensions of the woofer the A5X manages to deliver an amazingly voluminous bass, which was a pleasant surprise to us. It’s understood that real deep bass is limited so for bass heavy electronic music you should install an additional subwoofer. The larger A7X/A8X will be much better for that task but are in a different price range, obviously.

The sound stage is very well represented to our taste. Our model in review faciliates a very wide stage with Katie Meluas ‘Secret Symphony’ by arranging the individual instruments spatially. Some instruments seem to be almost in reach, some sound from far away – the range layering of individual instruments was done very well.

In the multimedia surrounding our candidate presents itself very differently to usual systems, of course. While 2.1 systems catch attention by exibiting forceful bass the Adam A5X knows to amaze with far more detail. In our reference movie ‘Transformers’ all facetes were reproduced very authentically: Every falling rock, no matter how small, was illustrated acoustically. Especially the spatial information was convincingly presented which allowed a dense atmosphere to be created even though we’d watched the movie countless times before.

The fundament required for explosions can only attributed partly to our volunteer. […] Bombastic sound is not going to be promised anyway as this pair of speakers is rather to be found in studios after all, where a balanced sound is preferred. On the other hand the A5X offers a stunning bass compared to its size and hence the limits what’s physically feasible.

At game play during ‘Counter-Strike: Source’ our candidate excelled with a well presented sound stage which makes it considerably superior to usual satellite/subwoofer combos. So we were able to spot enemies and evaluate distances easily. Locating things that were happening in the back was hardly possible though with a 2.0 sound system, obviously.

Adam A5X – conclusion

The reviewed monitors by Berlin-based company Adam show impressively that it can be worth it for the home user to think outside the box when it comes to PC speakers. […]

Contrary to common PC systems the Adam A5X does not offer a cable remote control or something similar. The front panel offers a volume knob and an on/off switch instead. This feature makes those monitors in no way inferior to PC loudspeakers regarding operability and distinguishes them from other nearfield monitors. […]

Finally it can be said what Adam Audio offers with the A5X is soundwise one level above common PC solutions and that’s why the price of 650 Euro for the stereo pair is definitely going to be ok.

Kevin Holtmeier, hardwareluxx.de, May 28, 2012

For the full review (in german) please click here.