ADAM Audio A4V Studio Monitor Review

So you just put the finishing touches on your new song’s final mix. You test it out in your AirPods, and it sounds phenomenal. But later in the day, you listen again in your car, and all the levels sound totally out of whack. What gives?

It sounds like you need a pair of accurate studio monitors to ensure your mixes translate well across all listening environments.

ADAM Audio’s A4V studio monitors provide precise sound reproduction, a wide frequency response, and exceptional adaptability to any studio or room environment.

That said, there’s a lot more to consider before buying a set of studio monitors. In this guide we’ll detail everything you need to know about the A4Vs so you can decide if they fit the bill for your setup.

ADAM Audio was kind enough to send me a pair of these monitors to test out myself in my home studio—so everything you read below comes from firsthand experience.

Let’s get into it.

Overview

The ADAM Audio A4V studio monitor is a high-performance, active speaker designed for a wide range of audio use cases—everything from mixing pop songs to balancing podcast audio. It’s built primarily for use in smaller studios and rooms with relatively short listening distances.

The A4V studio monitors are sold separately for $500 each. Each monitor comes with its own power cable, as well as a quickstart guide that will have you basking in high-fidelity audio in a matter of minutes.

Keep in mind, the ADAM Audio A4V is not your generic studio monitor. It stands out from the crowd with a variety of special features, discussed below.

Why I Like It

The A4V has a room adaptation feature which automatically adjusts the EQ of each monitor based on your studio’s acoustics in order to achieve the most accurate sound reproduction possible.

For having only a 4-inch woofer, the A4V provides a superb frequency response that extends all the way down to 52 Hz and up to 45 kHz.

The A4V has astounding projection capabilities, with a peak amplification power of 130 W.

XLR and RCA inputs allow you to connect the A4V to either balanced or unbalanced analog outputs from your interface.

Features & Benefits

A true music nerd like myself could talk for days about what really makes a studio monitor shine.

To spare you from that tediousness, I’ve decided to break down the features and benefits of the A4V into three separate categories (arguably the most important ones): acoustics, frequency response, and connectivity.

Acoustics

The reason why there’s an overwhelming number of studio monitors on the market is because there’s a similarly overwhelming number of studio sizes, room shapes, and listening distances. Generally speaking, studio monitors are designed with specific listening environments in mind, and it’s more than possible to make the wrong choice, bringing your mixing woes all the way back to square one.

That is, until the A4V comes into the picture. Sure, as I mentioned earlier, the A4V was designed for tighter studio spaces and shorter listening distances—but ADAM Audio’s cutting edge room correction feature makes the A4V one of the most versatile studio monitors available today.

Through a partnership with audio tech company Sonarworks, ADAM Audio has placed an intelligent digital signal processor (DSP) directly within each A4V monitor. The DSP receives sound information based on the acoustics of your specific room, and adjusts the sound coming out of each monitor to compensate for any irregularities that would otherwise affect the sound.

And you actually don’t have to do all that much yourself to make it happen. With a measurement microphone and some time on your hands, you can capture your room's response through Sonarworks’ SoundID app. Then you simply import the tuning into ADAM’s desktop application, Audio A Control.

After that, the software does the rest for you. You can sit back and enjoy utterly neutral sound reproduction—which, by the way, is a huge plus. Your room plays a huge role in the sound of your recordings and your playback, for better or for worse—so having technology that can compensate for this is almost guaranteed to level up your mixes.

ADAM Audio has published multiple guides on how to complete this process, like How to Calibrate A Series Monitors and Using Audio A Control with the A Series.

By a happy coincidence, I had to move my music setup to another, smaller room soon after I got my A4Vs set up. Needless to say, where other monitors would require time-consuming, manual calibration to compensate for the new room’s acoustics, I just used the SoundID app to submit the new room’s data, and the A4Vs did all the rest for me—I didn’t have to turn a single knob.

Frequency Response

Audio frequency is a measure of how high or low a particular sound is. An earthquake has an incredibly low frequency of around 20 Hz, whereas a dog whistle clocks in at around 20 kHz (equivalent to 20,000 Hz).

Wide frequency response is potentially the single most important feature for any set of studio monitors, as it ensures you’ll be able to hear every little detail of your songs—from the grittiest bass notes to the shiniest cymbal crashes.

The A4V studio monitor boasts a frequency response of 52 Hz–45 kHz, with only a -6 dB dropoff at the extremes. This means that the monitors are extremely accurate across the majority of this range, but they might lose a bit of volume and detail at the very low and very high ends, as the sounds approach 52 Hz or 45 kHz.

To give you an idea of just how good this frequency response is, consider cinema sound. The THX standard crossover frequency is 80 Hz, which means movie theaters generally redirect any sounds below 80 Hz to a dedicated subwoofer. So yeah, the A4V plunges nearly 30 Hz down into the standard subwoofer range.

I can attest to the A4V’s wide frequency response personally. I’d actually invested in a floor subwoofer for my own studio space about a week before ADAM Audio shipped me my care package—but after setting up the A4Vs, I couldn’t help but notice that my subwoofer actually became a bit redundant.

Of course, it can be nice to have a dedicated subwoofer if you’re doing things like mixing subsonic rumbles and other cinematic sounds. But if that’s not you, the A4V studio monitors can easily carry the low end of most music all on their own—and then some.

I dwell on the low end rather than the high end here because that’s typically the greater weakness for studio monitors (especially compact ones like the A4Vs)—but it’s worth mentioning that the A4Vs also have no trouble producing crystal clear highs, even well above the human ear’s limit of around 20 kHz.

All that to say, this super wide frequency response means that just a single pair of ADAM Audio A4Vs can easily meet the needs of the vast majority of audio engineers, musicians, and mixers—no other monitors or speakers necessary.

Connectivity

The A4V comes with both XLR and RCA inputs, which means these monitors will work fine with most preamps and audio interfaces.

The XLR input accepts balanced analog audio. This means that you have two connection options: 1) Connect it with a standard XLR cable from an XLR output on your interface, or 2) If your interface only has 1/4 inch outputs, connect it with a TRS 1/4 inch to male XLR cable.

The RCA input accepts unbalanced analog audio. In general, unbalanced audio is more susceptible to noise and interference over long connection distances, which is why most engineers prefer balanced audio. But if your interface doesn’t have balanced outputs, you’ll have to use the RCA inputs.

With both XLR and RCA connectivity, the A4V studio monitors are guaranteed to work with nearly all audio interfaces—even pretty old ones.

Alternatives & Things To Consider Before Buying

ADAM Audio is a reputable, Berlin-based brand that literally only produces studio monitors. In other words, they’re specialists.

If for whatever reason the A4V doesn’t check the boxes for you, here’s a direct comparison of the A4V with three other popular offerings from ADAM Audio that might suit your fancy.

Buy the A4V studio monitors if you’re familiar with music production and need an all-around studio monitor that’s compatible with a variety of different room sizes and shapes, at a reasonable price point.

Buy the T5V studio monitors if you’re new to music production and looking for an entry-level, budget friendly option that works in most home-studio environments.

Buy the A7V studio monitors if you’re an established mixer and want basically a higher-end version of the A4V, with a larger, 7” woofer and a frequency response that goes all the way down to 40 Hz.

Buy the S5V studio monitors if you work at a professional music studio and need an ultra high-end monitor with extreme amplification power, designed for large studios and the most demanding mixing requirements.

Finally, here are some final considerations to take into account before making a final decision on your studio monitors:

Purpose & use case: If you’re going to be producing your own music but outsourcing the mixing to someone else, you can make more compromises with the quality of your monitors than if you’re planning on mixing yourself.

Room acoustics & setup: Don’t drop $10,000 on studio monitors if you’re going to be mixing from your house. As you climb up the ladder and start getting into higher and higher-end studio monitors, the additional features and improvements in sound quality get smaller and smaller—eventually getting so small that you can only notice them in rooms that have been specifically designed for mixing. Again though, this is where the A4V really shines—based on my personal experience with the monitors, the automatic room correction feature can turn an average bedroom into a veritable mixing booth.

Budget & upgrade path: Typical advice here is to buy cheapos if you’re a newbie and upgrade to higher quality monitors once you get your bearings. But in my opinion, the A4Vs are an excellent choice for anyone—regardless of whether music is just your newest hobby or you’re in it for the long haul. And with monitors of this quality, you won’t have to worry about upgrading for a long time—if ever.

Conclusion

Studio monitors are designed to address a critical issue facing all music producers: ensuring your mixes translate accurately across various listening environments. The ADAM Audio A4V offers an especially advanced solution to this problem with its precise sound reproduction and room adaptability.

To recap, here’s why the A4V is an excellent choice:

Wide frequency response: With a range of 52 Hz to 45 kHz, the A4V delivers detailed audio across the entire spectrum, ensuring you hear every element of your mix with total clarity.

Room adaptation feature: The built-in DSP, in collaboration with Sonarworks, automatically adjusts the sound to suit your room’s acoustics, making it the closest thing to a one-size-fits-all solution.