Adam a7x with kpa

  • Hi Alex - I was looking at the A7X or the A5X as well. What size room are you looking to use these in? It might help if posters could add the approx room size theirs are being used in as well. Looking forward to hearing comments on this...
    Cheers :thumbup:

    Suhr Classic Pro, Fender deluxe Strat & Baja Tele, Gibson ES335, Ibanez S Prestige 2170FW, Eastman AR371CE, Variax JTV > KPA > Patch bay inc. Strymons (Mobius, Timeline, Blue Sky), H9 Max, TC Triple Delay, & POD HD500 > Adam A7Xs

  • Here's a rough diagram of my room dimensions. Im looking to turn it into a little bedroom studio which is why i want to invest in some good monitors. Ive heard great things about the Adam. I realise my room isnt perfect, probably not even close. The dimensions are in the diagram, my ceilings are about 7ft and the star - thats my desk :). My room has wooden floors and other than posters and some canvas paintings on the wall nothing much in the way of absorption. I would like to get some treatment but for the moment ill probably only have some Aurelex mopads to put the monitors on, possible some dedicated stands.


    Id like to get some thoughts on this and how best to choose a new monitor and implement it :)

  • My studio room is similar in size, except that it's rectangular.


    Auralex Mopads are a great invention! I've been using them since years and am very happy, I find they work great to kill unwanted resonances from the monitors' support. They of course work best (sonically speaking) when the support is for example a piece of furniture, but also work with traditional stands.
    You might already know this, but it's worth mentioning that Mopads won't help you to kill ambient resonances (due for example to a monitor put into a bookshelf or in a corner).


    As for room placement... Would it mess up things too much if you put your desk rotated 45° respect to the room plant, at the corner overhang (I'm referring to the intersection between the 2 m wall and the 2,6 m wall)? This might help reducing some direct stationary wave or phase cancellation. Another plus would be that your monitors would not stand directly against the walls.
    To avoid this, my desk is set so that I give my back to the wall, and the back of my Genelec 8030 face the centre of the room.


    HTH

  • I would urge you to get to a shop and listen to these speakers, I had some for a year or so and although I could get good sounding mixes in my room, they never translated anywhere else. this could have been the room but I went to my local dealer and tested them side-by-side against a pair of Mackies. Both myself and my band mate, who came along for a listen, preferred the Mackies hands down and I went with those. In fact I still need to sell the A7x's thinking about it :)


    They are no doubt great speakers but I get the feeling that they wont work for everyone.


    Spence

  • worth mentioning that Mopads won't help you to kill ambient resonances (due for example to a monitor put into a bookshelf or in a corner).


    Well currently my monitors are on a shelf along with my screen monitors. The shelf is attached to the wall via some brackets. Does this prevent the mopads from working as expected??



    Also, thanks for the placement suggestion. Probably isnt an option for me at this stage. I could move the desk to more or less any wall though. I read that you want the greatest distance to be in line with where the monitors are facing.


    Regarding monitor choice, the Genelecs you have are also on my radar. How do you find them, what made you go for those in this price range?? I agree with XpennoKPA that demoing them is ideal but my local guitar shop would have to order this kind of stuff in. Its not readily available for me to try and compare. I still think that essentially once you get used to a monitor system and with reference mixes i should be able to get a mix that should translate to any system well. Perhaps choosing monitors that are going to make the kemper sound the sweetest is against the grain here. I should probably focus purely on mixing and worry about getting the most out of the kemper when the various power amp and cabs become available.... :S

  • Well currently my monitors are on a shelf along with my screen monitors. The shelf is attached to the wall via some brackets. Does this prevent the mopads from working as expected??

    What I meant is that Mopads are great in damping the shelves' resonances, but not the ones induced by the room.
    If you plan to put your monitors a few inches far from the wall, you should both use mopads (because you use a shelf) and go in for a model which requires to be against a wall as well. This because the back wall will reinforce certain freqs, also depending on the distance of the ceiling and the side walls (for example, if one of the two monitors is closer to the side wall than the other one, the former will create more resonance in the low\low-mid region).


    I'd avoid for example a rear bass-reflex, unless the monitor is specifically designed to require a back wall.


    Well, if you plan to buy something specific for the KPA I agree with the idea of focusing on studio music production.
    While it's true that you shall anyway learn to know your monitors, it's not entirely true that hence any bad monitoring system would make the job: the less linear the response, the longer (and the trickier anyway) will be learning how they translate.


    For the pure KPA use, I'd take into consideration KPA-Solutions, Matrix and Atomic active speakers :)