The ADAM S2Vs are compact, upmarket 2 way monitors. They are extremely capable performers and might well be the solution a specific problem I’ve been trying to find an answer to.
Last year I discovered the joys of a standing desk. I’ve always preferred to stand while mixing. It’s probably a hangover from my live sound days. The problem with standing in a studio which is set up for sitting is that you crouch. Not just to reach the gear but also to position your head in the right place for the monitors. If you’re listening to a pair of mains at a distance then this isn’t an issue but even for those who have them, in my experience you’re on nearfilelds at least as much as you’re on mains.
Where I”m going with this is that I am very much of the opinion that where a speaker is in relation to you is at least as important as what it is and if like me you are adopting the use of a sit/stand desk then having your monitors move with you between the sitting and standing orientation is really important.
When I tested the ADAM S3V last year I found a really, really nice pair of monitors. In terms of performance there was simply nothing to criticise. It was a case of do you like them and can you afford them? The only reason someone in the market would choose not to buy them is because they preferred something else,. Actually there is one other reason - if S3s were too big for them.
The S3 monitors are about as big as a nearfield can get before it isn’t really a nearfield anymore. I had them on my tallest stands and in this position, due to the extra height afforded by the vertical format, the tweeter was around ear level for me when standing. Mixing with these while standing was a great experience, however it was clear that the whole setup wouldn’t work if I were to actually live with them and my sit stand desk as they didn’t move with me. What I needed was the quality and accuracy of the big, high quality monitors but in a smaller form factor which was small enough to mount on my motorised desk and have them move with me between sitting and standing.
S2V - Same Quality In A Smaller Package
Enter the S2V, a compact 2-way monitors which looks like it will provide everything the the S3V does apart from some SPL and some bottom end. Might this be the solution I’m looking for for high quality sit/stand monitoring?
When I tested the S3V I commented on the solidity of the construction, I would normally be happy to say that the S2V shares the same very sturdy S series cabinet construction but in this case I, actually looking for something not too heavy. At 11kg/24lb each these are about as heavy as I’d be happy to go with on my desk. I have a pair of Neumann KH310s which I’m currently not using, preferring to go with my ancient Genelec 1029a’s because they are so small and ideal for mounting on a pair of clamp-on Trojan speaker stands. I love this solution as the clamp on stands mean that my monitors are ideally placed and don’t take up any desk space at all. The S2Vs are that bit too heavy for these stands. Pity. Close but not quite. All is not lost though as a pair of Isoacoustics ISO 155 desktop stands would solve this issued only impinge on my desk space a little.
So practical matters out of the way, what about these monitors?
A solid, high quality 2 way ported active monitor. A 7” bass driver and a folded ribbon tweeter with a DSP crossover between them at 3KHz. Max SPL at 1m is 120dB and the frequency response is 35Hz-50KHz with no tolerances quoted. Currently listed at $1750 each at a well known national US retailer.
That’s the short version. Reading that, my questions would be do they sound nice? (spoiler - yes), does the ribbon tweeter sound weird (no) and as a convert to the joys of 3 way monitors, how is the midrange through that crossover?
The midrange performance is a real high point for these monitors. I checked back to see where the crossovers were for the S3V and the midrange driver crosses over to the HF at the same frequency of 3KHz. The performance of those through the midrange was great so it looks like what has changed here is the combination of a 9” bass driver crossing over to a DCH midrange driver at 200Hz on the S3V has been replaced by a single 7” driver covering everything from 35Hz to 3KHz. To cover all of that to 120dB SPL is a challenge.
A Lot To Ask Of A Single Driver
The bass/mid driver on the S2V is an ELE design, standing for extended linear excursion. The issue with getting a lot of bass energy out of a relatively small driver is that as a driver moves backwards and forwards it displaces a given volume of air. A big driver doesn’t have to move as far as a small driver to displace the same volume. Think of the bore and stroke of an engine cylinder and you’ll get the idea. Long excursion (moving in and out a long way) isn’t easy to do well. There are a few reasons for this. A big one is that to displace the same volume of air (i.e. be as loud as) a bigger driver at a given frequency the smaller driver has to move faster. Another issue is that the effect of the springiness of the air inside a partially sealed box like this behaves differently going in compared to pushing out, a source of distortion.
I would expect how well this smaller driver performs over most of 10 octaves to be the thing on which this speaker has to deliver. This is a task which would have been very difficult to achieve years ago. Computer modelling of speaker performance during prototyping combined with the advantages of class D amplification and use of DSP for crossovers has made possible levels of performance which were previously at the edge of possibility but physics is still physics. Can I get compact, full range monitoring which fits my preferred way of working, alternating between sitting and standing with a motorised desk?
The ELE driver is constructed of Hexacomb which is a sandwich material of Nomex honeycomb sandwiched between layers of Kevlar. The honeycomb core is light and the Kevlar is rigid, making it an excellent material for a loudspeaker cone. Another key feature of this design is the mechanical suspension which is tensioned in such a way as to control the excursion at high output levels by damping it. High excursion drivers need a powerful motor to drive them but just like a car, they need good brakes too. The damping from this tensioned suspension helps keep things under control. Putting a powerful driver in a relatively small box can also lead to thermal issues and the chunky chassis is anodised with a black finish to encourage absorption of heat, allowing it to act as a more efficient heatsink for the driver.
The HF driver and aluminium waveguide is, as far as I can tell identical to that found in the S3 models. If you haven’t tried folded ribbons before you definitely should. They are extremely efficient compared to piston drivers but the sound, while distinctive is hard to describe. HF extension is unquestionably there to frequencies most of us no longer have to concern ourselves with. The specs say 50KHz and I have no reason to doubt them. The thing which is different is a subtle difference in the way transients are presented. There’s detail and a hard to define “difference”. The best advice I can give is to say get in front of a pair and you’ll hear it. It’s different and it’s very usable - in a good way!
The amplifiers are a combination of a 300W class D and for the bass/mid driver and a 50W class AB amp for the HF. 350W for a relatively small nearfield is a lot of power. In use these never give the impression of being anything other than very under control. The back panel includes analog in XLR and AES3 in and out also on XLR. A USB connection is provided for software control using the S Control remote software and there is a small OLED and a control encoder. I experimented with the software when I looked at the S3V so I’ll pass over that and the DSP setting was left at Pure (i.e.flat) for the duration. The DSP is of course very much still in use although the filtering isn’t being used for any kind of voicing or tuning of the speakers to the room. The crossover is powered by the DSP. Digital filters being convenient, inexpensive and more accurate than using their analogue counterparts.
So How Do The S2V Sound?
In a word, great. Starting off on my test tracks playlist from Tidal my first impressions were of the pin-sharp, enveloping stereo that I remember from the Dynaudio Core 7s. These are a good comparison being high quality, ported 2 way DSP driven monitors with a 7” bass driver. The big difference there is that the Dynaudios have a soft dome tweeter with a clever “Hexis” device behind the tweeter. They sounded really excellent but at the time I was drawn to the 3 way Core 47 over the 2 way Core 7 because it really benefited from the addition of a midrange driver. Listening to the S2V I’m not convinced I miss the midrange driver of the S3V. This compact 2 way doesn’t need it. Starting mixing I do become aware that while the bottom end is well controlled and generous for its size, it doesn’t reach the depths of the much bigger S3V - it wouldn’t. What is there is good but the really low stuff can’t be expected to present itself in the same way as it will from a much bigger unit. A great test for this is to put the excellent Thump, a free plugin from Metric Halo, on a kick and start winding in some deep sub. With the S2Vs I did start to feel I was not in a position to really know what I was dialling in.
So for all but the very bottom octave these are great monitors. As long as the bass a monitor can put out is accurate, it’s absolutely fine 90% of the time. After all this is how mixing on nearly all nearfileds works. But what about that lovely feeling of limitless bass extension you get when using bigger monitors? Can you have that and still have monitors small enough to move up and down with a motorised sit/stand desk? This sounds like the perfect opportunity to introduce a subwoofer…
ADAM Sub12
ADAM also delivered a Sub12. A generously proportioned active subwoofer with a front firing 12” paper coned driver, the cabinet is ported on the underneath and the back panel provides very straightforward, analogue control. It’s priced at a shade under $2000 at the same well known US retailer. The outputs from your interface are connected to the sub and a pair of outputs pass the signal on the the monitors either with or without an 85Hz high pass filter engaged. The low pass frequency to the sub is adjustable via a knob but is detented at 85Hz to match the HPF. Level is adjustable via a pot on the back.
The Sub12 is more than capable for the size of room I’m currently in. I’m expecting to be moving to a new, bigger and more permanent studio space in the near future but this sub, described as suitable for near or midfield applications, is capable of more level than I need (115db SPL @1m) and extends down to 22Hz (-3dB). Of course subwoofers introduce as many issues as they solve. When dealing with frequencies as low as this in small to medium sized rooms, unless they have impractical amounts of bass trapping, room modes and standing waves are going to dominate the experience. Placing a sub is also an inexact science because even if there were a location in your room where the sub could go where it performs equally well across all frequencies (there isn’t) it would more than likely be somewhere if couldn’t be for practical reasons.
Because I occasionally need to recalibrate the motors on my desk, which involves taking the desk down to its minimum height I couldn’t have a sub a tall as this anywhere under my desk. Trying a corner placement I found the standing waves to be less disastrous than they were with it located anywhere between the speakers (massive null at 40Hz in the centre of the room…). The corner was the only location which was going to work for practical reasons so there it stayed. Having continuously variable level on the sub meant I could dial it back, and it needed dialling back a lot once it was in the corner. Something which would make this sub much more useful, not just during setup but in in day to day use, would be a footswitch mute facility. Setting the level and ABing against the tops would be welcome, and with a long enough lead on the foot switch is would be possible from the listening position. It would of course be just as useful when mixing, being able to momentarily cut the sub.
Once installed, in spite of the issues with my room a sub inevitably brings to the fore, I’d still rather have it than not, and treated with care a sub can be a genuinely useful addition to a stereo monitoring system. Just as long as you’re not tempted to just crank it up and grin at all that bass. If you do your mixes will be thin and weedy as soon as you take them anywhere else, unless of course they also happen to have their sub turned up too loud too!
The next step is to run Sonarworks in the standing position and again in the sitting position and to have both available as presets so I can change correction along with my desk height. Another benefit to mixing standing up is that you are more mobile and listening from different points in the room goes some way to evening out the bumps and troughs those of us working in rooms lacking the deep bass trapping necessary to even out the bottom end. If you’ve never tried mixing stand-in up I recommend you do, and if you do see if you can get your monitors at the right height too - it’s worth the effort.
Are The S2V and Sub 12 The Answer?
So do the S2V and Sub 12 answer the need I had identified for a compact full range monitor system compatible with my sit/stand work environment? In a word, yes. The S2Vs have identified to me that much as I like the ergonomic aspects of the clamp on stands I’ve been using, they aren’t suitable for anything other than the lightest of monitors but in spite of this, with sturdier stands the S2Vs are an excellent solution when used with a suitable sub. the Sub12 is actually larger than I would choose for my situation. I think the Sub10 Mk2 would probably suit me better. Having rather overlooked the 2.1 sub and satellites approach for years, this change in my working practices has made me revisit this area and I’ve found that, given the appropriate budget there are some great choices out there. There are alternatives which are worth a look too but it’s hard to think of a reason the S2Vs shouldn’t be on anyone’s list who is looking for compact, full range quality monitoring.