FWIW I have owned a pair of ADAM A7 active speakers for 10 years. I used them originally as desktop speakers fed from a BENCHMARK DAC 1 HDR in my home office. My son now has them in his home recording studio fed from a BENCHMARK DAC 2 and an Apogee Duet.
Never missed a beat in all that time - great sound and excellent reliability.
I haven't heard the TV5V but based on my own experience with Adam speakers, and my trust in Amir's reviews, you could comfortably match them with a Topping D50s or E30s (say) or a second hand Benchmark (if you want support US industry). Connect via USB to your home computer or Raspberry Pi and you would have a complete "transparent" desk top / small room system that would provide immense joy to any music lover for between US$600-$1,000.
This puts into perspective the nonsense that you have to spend huge amounts of money (as promoted by some hifi magazines and forum sites) to achieve hi-fidelity.
More on this topic from Archimago's latest blog:
Over the years, I think we've covered a lot of material here and while there's more to say and do, as a "more objective" audiophile, there's also a limit to how much I actually care once some answers have been found to satisfy my curiosity. This is perhaps one area of difference between an "objectivist" from the pure "subjectivist". Unlike magazines that seem to tout "best sounding amplifier ever" in perpetuity, the objective audiophile I think recognizes that at some point, this is simply not possible and in fact rather silly; there is such a thing as "more than good enough"... I know, the "high end" audiophile industry will be unhappy with this assessment! After all, how can one imagine that they might not be able to keep using the "best sound" argument as a selling point for the next generation of products?!
Around 2013, with the advent of the transition to asynchronous USB DACs, we have been able to follow the improvements in jitter performance. With the advent of inexpensive SBCs like the Odroid and Raspberry Pi, we have followed the evolution of high quality streaming and recognized that the digital source really doesn't affect sound quality significantly with good DACs. We have followed the hype of Pono and discussed the questionable need for "hi-res audio". We have looked at the (IMO) scams of audiophilia like MQA, talked about the decades of snake oil, examined Synergistic stuff, and silly software like JPlay. Along the way, we've explored the more pedestrian topics like whether lossless formats sound the same, evaluated cables (both analogue and digital variants, argued with silliness), the minimal differences USB hubs made, discussed ethernet switches, explained about "bits are bits", and countless musings related to the audiophile press and their typical irrationality plus expressed the philosophy of achieving high fidelity and how we can approach it as hardware enthusiasts. We've looked at the microscopic impulse responses, understood what digital errors sound like and I think stopped worrying about jitter. We've discussed DSP room correction, evaluated server-side software (like Roon and computer-related stuff), and even done a few other blind tests along the way! Hey, we've even "infiltrated" audio shows hereand there with commentary as a "more objectivist", visited dealerships locally, in North America, and abroad.
After 8 years of running this blog, personally, I'm glad to have collected a heck of a lot more knowledge and experience, and worried a lot less about the minutiae that actually make no difference by exploring the principles rather than holding on to beliefs and following suggestions because someone (Golden Ear? Audiophile High Priest?) said so. I hope you've benefitted from these thoughts and measurement results as well. For the most neurotic among us (myself included), I hope you're much less anxious about the "high-fidelity" hobby and finding yourself well along the way to being liberated from many of the unsubstantiated beliefs so readily promoted as "truths" over the decades.
