Monitors: What's best, Dynaudio or Adam's?

Monitors:  What's best, Dynaudio or Adam's?

The mid to low range of Dynaudio and Adam speakers have proved themselves to be two of the most popular brands among Psytrance producers in recent years.

Easy to see why, as they are a good balance between revealing detail, pleasing sound and price.

So here's a question that I keep hearing lately: What are the best monitors Dynaudio or Adam's?

 

Dynaudios BM6a
 

Before we get onto that, let me say that room treatment is vital.

If you're making bass heavy modern electronic dance music - which you are - then bass traps are a *must* if you want to have any kind of ability to accurately judge what is actually happening in your mix's bottom end.

I know that it's not what you want to hear but that's how it is.

You'll save yourself a *lot* of time and aggravation by building yourself a bunch of bass traps and mounting them across the corners of your room. You literally can't have too many bass traps, the more you add the flatter will be the room's LF response. Which will cut out all that guesswork. You know what I'm talking about...

Couple that with a couple of first reflection point absorbers placed at the first reflection points and the stereo image will suddenly become much sharper and 3 dimensional. (assuming correctly positioned monitors)

This combined will make whichever current monitors you have suddenly sound twice as good.

You may even find that you don't have to buy a new set of monitors at all because you'll be able to judge instrument balance, pan placements, fx and reverb levels, and most importantly bass levels accurately.
 

Adam A3x

O.k assuming the above as read, back to the question of Adam vs Dynaudio

My main monitors are Dynaudio BM6a I also have a set of little Adam A3x bought when they first came out to use as a secondary reference.

Both are excellent monitors. And having recently finished mixing a tune on the A3x's I find that I can mix tunes on either set with no problem.

Interestingly to me, even though the A3x LF -3db cutoff point is 60hz, after one initial cross reference to the Dyn's at the start of the tune to assess and tweak the level of sub on both kick and bass (independantly and then together), mixing the rest of a tune was no problem. The fact the woofer does not also have to produce the sub bass frequencies appeared to allow better bass transient response on the woofer driver - very useful when tweaking bassine envelopes and fine tweaking relative kick and bass levels.

The BM6a's sound nicer to my ears, with more front to back depth and a wider and very pleasing 3d stereo image. (Bm6as go plenty low enough for Trance btw, unless you have a large room and like to monitor at excessive volumes)

The Adam's are perhaps a little less pleasant to listen to by comparison to the BM6s but still pleasant. I certainly wouldn't characterize them as "fatiguing."

Imaging is very good, pinsharp in fact.

The so called "sweet spot" I found to be definitely narrower than on the A3x than the BM6a's - even with a lot of position and monitor stand jiggling the A3x were more fussy about positioning.

However I've been pleasantly surprised to find that the Adam's reveal even small e.q. tweaks in the midrange and high end with surprising detail. Reviewing a mix that I'd been working on previously, the A3x quickly drew my attention to where I got a bit carried away with mid boosts on one or two parts.

When using a Transient Shaper to give a little more definition to the transient of the an off hi-hat (which I liked the sound of and that fitted into the mix nicely, except for the fact that it had been flattened by previous compression) the tweeters revealed adjustments to the front end of the sample clearly, enabling me to tweak it up precisely to fit the mix. Though the subject of whether I should have chosen another sample to begin with is debateable, it should gives you some idea of the accuracy.

I'm pretty impressed with the ribbon tweeters on Adam A3x, it's the same tweeter on the whole new Adam AX series of monitors.

If I was looking at a new set of monitors today, I'd be checking out the A7x and A8x or possibly the A5x or with a small sub.


>i have read on gearsluts it s a design flaw , lot of the new adams make woofer noise <

Gearsluts post


Yeah I saw that thread. The A3x when driven hard also make an audible port noise.

However, I have never yet heard a pair of speakers which had front firing reflex ports that *didn't* have port noise when driven hard. (or part my hair!)

Dyn's have a rear facing reflex port as do Genelecs which helps mask port noise but has the small disadvantage that it's becomes necessary to keep them further away from the rear wall when positioning.

I don't drive the A3x's that hard, so port noise not a problem for me. But overall I think a rear port is a better design.

Given that the port noise is the caused by sub bass frequencies, coupling the A5x with a small sub like the Sub7 would remove the port noise as the sattelites would be High-Pass filtered at 85hz. Also, freeing up the woofer drivers from having to perform sub-bass duties may give them an even better transient response.

I won't be selling the Bm6a's just yet but if the A3x are anything to go by, the rest of new Adams Ax range are excellent monitors and definitely worth considering for Psytrance production.


Billy Cosmosis

Cosmosis Music Webshop: http://cosmosis.bandcamp.com/