Adam T8V Studio Monitor Review

[temps]

That is a lot of treble energy for an in-room response though. My guess would be the on-axis response would be elevated to produce an in-room response like that. Would you be able to gate the measurement, by any chance?

I can try, but I took a quick look - it doesn't look like I would need to gate this measurement? The room is treated so the impulse is fairly clean.

Gated to 5 ms vs 500ms

for a different comparison, Adam vs LYD 7 spectogram. Not sure which format of spectogram is more useful though, would appreciate some tips here. But this one seemed to correlate most strongly with what I was hearing.

 

[andreasmaaan]

I can try, but I took a quick look - it doesn't look like I would need to gate this measurement? The room is treated so the impulse is fairly clean.

Gated to 5 ms vs 500ms
View attachment 90214

Not sure what to make of that! The tweeter rolls off almost 20dB in the top 1.5 octaves. Are you measuring on-axis to the tweeter? That’s the kind of response I’d expect vertically off-axis of an AMT tweeter.

 

[andreasmaaan]

Then, what is the main reason for rear port's wall clearance?

To avoid effectively increasing the volume of air inside the port and thereby lowering the system’s tuning frequency.

 

[q3cpma]

To avoid effectively increasing the volume of air inside the port and thereby lowering the system’s tuning frequency.

Huh, never thought about it like this. Not sure I exactly understand how the air outside the port could start to resonate as if part of the port itself, but it makes sense anyway.

 

[SineWave]

I had the Adam T5V and JBL 305P (I think MI, not MII...this was 2 1/2 years ago). I had them both at home, at the same time for a month to decided which ones to keep.

I tried really hard to tell the difference between the two. Either my ears are not that good anymore or these 2 actually do sound very much the same. (But going up to the next level in the Adam chain, I definitely heard a big change). I could hardly hear any difference and if I did when I thought I did, it wasn't enough to make a difference. I wish I could remember so I could describe the exact difference. I think the JBLs may have sounded just a tiny bit grainy in comparison, but that was only for certain songs. Female vocals might have sounded just a little smoother with the Adams.

In the end, I chose the Adams. The Adams had RCA connectors built into the rear but with the JBLs I'd need to use adapters. Adams also "look" a little nicer to me. I would actually be fine with either one on all aspects, but decided to get something not as common. Even though the JBL 305P are the better value ($300 vs $400 for a pair)

 

[daftcombo]

But going up to the next level in the Adam chain, I definitely heard a big change

Which model?

 

[andreasmaaan]

Huh, never thought about it like this. Not sure I exactly understand how the air outside the port could start to resonate as if part of the port itself, but it makes sense anyway.

Actually, some designs incorporate an intentional version of this effect, e.g. Wharfedale Diamond 220:

 

[escape2]

Actually, some designs incorporate an intentional version of this effect, e.g. Wharfedale Diamond 220:

Interestingly enough, they've abandoned this bottom-firing design and went back to the typical rear-ported design in their most recent Diamond line. Maybe it wasn't all that great?

 

[andreasmaaan]

Interestingly enough, they've abandoned this bottom-firing design and went back to the typical rear-ported design in their most recent Diamond line. Maybe it wasn't all that great?

It would certainly result in greater turbulence than a cylindrical opening of equivalent surface area. I suspect the reason they did it on the 220 was because the length of port required was too great to allow the port to be placed on the front or rear wall. Presumably they either increased the enclosure's internal volume or decreased the port's surface area in subsequent models (or used a higher tuning frequency).

 

[amirm]

On space from the wall, in my listening tests the closest corner was 1 to 2 inches (2 to 5 cm) from the wall. But because I had the speaker angled a lot, the other corner was much farther from the wall. I played the bass notes and held my hand next to the port. Past about 2 inches, you basically can't feel the air pumping. So I think that is the gap you need which is not too hard given the fact that the power and XLR cable stick out that much.

 

[amirm]

An issue I have with front firing ports is that I feel the air hitting my face due to temp difference and that can be annoying/distracting.

 

[temps]

Not sure what to make of that! The tweeter rolls off almost 20dB in the top 1.5 octaves. Are you measuring on-axis to the tweeter? That’s the kind of response I’d expect vertically off-axis of an AMT tweeter.

Me too, but that was pretty much in line. Maybe a fraction of an inch outside it. The biggest reason for ditching them was the outrageously tiny sweet spot.. my Martin Logan's have a bigger listening area than the A5s did.

I did have some better measurements but there was always that fall off above 10k. The real trouble area was pretty much everything between 2-8 though. Very harsh.

 

[BYRTT]

Hi @amirm is it normal to see such a crossover dip, when it's a DSP crossover used?

Could we imagine that is cost of mids are produced by a 8 inch diameter that means more than normal beaming and distance of center to center, below graphs are what Amir analyzed for vertical patterns but to declutter the picture restricted the presentation view to half space.

 

[SineWave]

Which model?

A5X

I see how I may not have been clear by "up to the next level in the chain". I meant by up to the next series, not up in physical size within the same series.

 

[andreasmaaan]

Me too, but that was pretty much in line. Maybe a fraction of an inch outside it. The biggest reason for ditching them was the outrageously tiny sweet spot.. my Martin Logan's have a bigger listening area than the A5s did.

I did have some better measurements but there was always that fall off above 10k. The real trouble area was pretty much everything between 2-8 though. Very harsh.

Not very encouraging in a studio monitor lol. Those tiny AMT tweeters are prone to quite high distortion. I wonder if this is what you were hearing?

 

[andreasmaaan]

Hi @amirm is it normal to see such a crossover dip, when it's a DSP crossover used?

The off-axis dip around the XO point can't be cured by DSP. It's a function of the crossover frequency, slope, and centre-to-centre distance between the drivers.

For a given XO frequency and C2C distance, the magnitude and (in particular) bandwidth of the dip can be reduced by using higher-order filters, which is certainly cheaper/easier to do with DSP. However, beyond a certain limit there are other trade-offs involved (increased group delay and/or ringing).

Or are you talking about the on-axis dip at the crossover point? This is certainly something I would expect DSP equalisation to remedy. Perhaps Adam was going for a house tuning here. It is a bit surprising IMO.

 

[ROOSKIE]

The 308 is always priced at $199, I always find them on sale for that price. That is a whole $100 cheaper on the Adam's. Tempting indeed

Also of note in USA is the Holiday shopping "season" is spiked with JBL deals. The 308's were often $149 each and were $99 each at one point. Anticipate similar pricing this year.

 

[awdelft]

Thanks for this review, the t8v cought my eyes a few weeks ago.
Maybe it is worth mentioning that the class-d modules shown on the adams site are icepower.
If they are in the t8v that would not be bad.

 

[mshenay]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Adam T8V active monitors (speaker). It was kindly sent to me by the company a few months ago. I was surprised at the very low cost of these speakers at US $299 (each) considering that they are DSP speakers with dual amplification.

This is one giant of a monitor, certainly far larger than other speakers in this price range:

View attachment 90112

One great thing about these speakers is that they generate essentially no tweeter hiss. This is a common problem in many budget monitors and is something that when you become sensitive to it, you hear it more when not much is playing.

The back panel shows something unusual for the class:
View attachment 90113

See it? It is the RCA input. It is very rare to see such on a studio monitor. Only computer powered speakers have these, not pro monitors. This makes it easier to integrate for hi-fi applications.

Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.

I performed over 800 measurement which resulted in error rate of less than 1% throughout the range.

Temperature was 59 degrees F (yes, it is getting cold here). Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.

Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.

Reference axis was the tweeter center.

Adam T8V Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:

View attachment 90114

Starting on the left, it is nice to see almost flat response to 45 Hz. Response remains flat until about 2 kHz where we see a dip. And farther up in frequency we have a narrow notch around 4.6 kHz. The highs are a hair higher in amplitude on axis but listening window is flatter.

Early reflections indicate more of a dip in crossover region:

View attachment 90115

Predicted in-room response is for far field listening so may not apply if you sit very close to these monitors and put them on desks/meter bridges and such:

View attachment 90116

Measuring the drivers/port at close distance tells us mostly what they are doing:

View attachment 90117

That same notch is there at 4.6 kHz in the tweeter response (green). And its response has fair bit of variations.

Distortion is well controlled at 86 dBSPL but gets messy at 96 dBSPL:

View attachment 90118

View attachment 90119

Is the distortion tail end of woofer or early response of the tweeter? I can't tell.

Beamwidth is nicely controlled horizontally:

View attachment 90120

So moving left and right should not change their tonalities much.

Here is our horizontal and vertical directivity:

View attachment 90121

View attachment 90122

As you see, there is a hole in the response where the arrow points if you go below tweeter height. So be sure to place the speaker vertically where the tweeter is at or below your ear level or the crossover hole gets worse.

Playing detective, I looked at the 3-D response of the speaker at 4.6 kHz:

View attachment 90123

It seems the woofer is still whaling at that frequency as is the tweeter so perhaps that is causing the cancellation at that frequency.

Adam T8V Speaker Listening Tests
I simply don't have room for such a large speaker on my desk/workstation. Still, I managed to fit them in. Overall, I was very pleased with the sound. There is plenty of bass and tonality on the warm/balanced front. I tried to put an EQ in the crossover to pull that up a bit and while that increased detail some, it made them too bright so I just listened with no EQ.

I think I have some bass modes that are not normally activated by studio monitors since they don't go low enough. The T8V does and I thought that caused a bit of boominess which needs correction.

With the large 8 inch driver, I could play as loud as I wanted and in this regard, they are superior to just about any studio monitor I have tested in this situation. I did not detect any distortion at my 1 meter listening distance.

I let the T8V play for a while and the response is very easy to listen to with no hint of high frequency brightness.

Conclusions
Adam has managed to create the most optimal execution of an active monitor in this price range. I still can't believe they cost only $300 each. For hi-fi use, remember that you are getting amplification here and with little reminders of "oh, I think I need a sub." No the ground does not shake but the bass response is extended enough that you don't think you are listening to "little speakers."

Overall, I am happy to recommend the Adam T8V. If you were looking for a budget powered monitor with plenty of bass and good overall frequency response, your search is over.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Picked what was left of the Asian eggplants from the greenhouse:

View attachment 90124

I don't know why some of them are yellow. As far as I remember, they were all supposed to be purple. Maybe they cross pollinated with melons next to them!

As always appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Gawd I don't need to be thinking about speaker upgrades... but these might be on the list! After some wall panel and room treatment

 

[PeteL]

On space from the wall, in my listening tests the closest corner was 1 to 2 inches (2 to 5 cm) from the wall. But because I had the speaker angled a lot, the other corner was much farther from the wall. I played the bass notes and held my hand next to the port. Past about 2 inches, you basically can't feel the air pumping. So I think that is the gap you need which is not too hard given the fact that the power and XLR cable stick out that much.

In Adam's manual in the speaker positioning section of the T Serie, they state at page 8 "For the flattest bass response, each monitor should be placed at least 16 inches from the nearest wall". That's a figure more familiar to me for rear firing ports but I don't really have the rigorous metric to caracterise what is an optimal distance.