ARTist 3 review by cnet.com

Reviews
adam-artist3-active-hifi-monitor-review-cnet

Berlin, May 15, 2012

In a new review, freelance author and ‘audiophiliac’ Steve Guttenberg took another chance to describe our smallest multimedia speaker – the ARTist 3 – once again with words of praise, this time for cnet.com. Some excerpts of that review can be found below.

A new high in desktop speaker sound quality?
Adam Audio ARTist 3 speakers’ radical tweeter design takes the sound to another level.

[…]

The ARTist 3 is the company’s smallest speaker, it has a 4-inch carbon-fiber woofer and an X-ART tweeter; it’s a bi-amped design, so each speaker has two 25-watt Class A/B amps, one for the woofer and a separate one for the tweeter. The speaker is available in high-gloss black and white finishes. Connectivity options include RCA, XLR, and a USB 1.1 port (for the speaker’s onboard 48-kHz/16-bit DAC) on the back panel, plus a 3.5mm jack input up front. The rear panel has a tweeter level control, and a slotted bass port near the top of the rear panel. I used the ARTist 3 with a Halide DAC HD with my Mac Mini computer, but it could also be used as a hi-fi speaker.

The clarity of these speakers is remarkable, so when I play recordings I made myself, I hear not only the sound of the singers and players, I hear the room they were performing in. That sort of quiet resolution of fine detail sets the ARTist 3 apart from merely good desktop speakers. Large-scale dynamic punch is well above average for a small speaker. Bass definition is exceptional, so you can easily distinguish between bass guitars’ low notes and bass drums’ beats. Deep bass is in short supply; small speakers with 4-inch woofers never really shake the room, so if you love bass, add a subwoofer.

The ARTist 3 shares a similar design concept with the Emotiva airmotiv4 speaker (which features a similar tweeter), but when I compared the two speakers side-by-side, it was no contest. The Emotiva is still a superb $400 (a pair) speaker, but the Adam is a significantly clearer and better-sounding speaker. It’s also twice as expensive, and if you can afford to spend $800 for a set of desktop monitors, the Adam ARTist 3 is absolutely worth it.

Steve Guttenberg, cnet.com / May 9, 2012

Click here to read the full review.