How to choose studio monitors

Start with the room, not the brochure

The most common monitor mistake is buying one size too big. A larger woofer moves more air, and more air means more low end for your room to mishandle. In an untreated bedroom an 8-inch woofer does not give you more bass — it gives you a different bass note in every corner. The room always wins. Buy for the room you have, not the one you plan to build.

Rough sizing: within arm's reach on a desk, 3-to-4-inch woofers. Around a metre away, five inches. A seven-inch earns its keep from about 1.5 m back in a room with some space around the speakers. Eight inches wants real listening distance and absorption on the walls — which is why the Adam T8V is the wrong buy for a desk in a 3 × 3 m bedroom, however good it looks on paper.

Nearfield or midfield

Nearfields are built to sit 1–1.5 m from your ears, close enough that the direct sound reaches you before the room does. That describes almost every home and project studio, and it is where the T5V, T7V, A4V and A7V live. Midfields — the dual-woofer A77H and the A8H — are for sitting two metres or more back in a treated control room. If you are not sure which you need, you need nearfields. Midfields in a small room are an expensive way to listen to your walls.

Per piece or per pair

Read the listing before checkout. Adam's T and A monitors are sold per piece: one T7V in the cart is one speaker, so order two for stereo. The A8H goes further — it is handed, sold as an A-side and a B-side, and you buy one of each. The Adam D3V and the Edifier desktop sets — MR3, MR4 and MR5 — ship as complete pairs. One speaker arriving where two were expected is the worst parcel a shop can send, so we flag this on every product page. Check anyway.

Ports and placement

The T-series vents at the rear, so it wants free air behind it — 30 cm to the wall as a working minimum, more if you can manage it. The A4V and A7V port at the front and forgive a tighter squeeze. Whatever you buy: tweeters at ear height, both speakers and your head in a rough equilateral triangle, and the same distance to each side wall. The horizontal A44H exists for desks where an upright cabinet would block the screen. Placement costs nothing and is worth more than any upgrade you can pay for.

When a sub earns its place

A sub is the last purchase, not the first. If your mixes already boom, a sub will amplify the problem — fix placement and add absorption before spending anything. It earns its place when the mains genuinely run out: checking club or film low end on 5-inch monitors, for instance. The quiet trick is that a small pair plus a sub often beats a big pair in a small room, because the sub can go where the room behaves rather than where the stereo triangle demands. The T10S partners the T-series; the Sub 8 suits an A4V rig, and the Sub 10 Mk2 carries an A7V room. Cross over around 80 Hz and give the sub's position a full evening of moving and listening.

Three honest setups

• The desk: the Adam D3V pair takes USB-C straight from a laptop and is the cleanest small-desk answer we stock. For less money the Edifier MR4 does the same job with fewer refinements and no shame. The step up is two T5V fed by an interface such as the Arturia MiniFuse 2 — worth it once the desk gives you close to a metre of listening distance. Stop there — a desk does not reward more woofer.
• The small room (10–20 m²): two T7V, placed with care, will not be the weak link for years. Two A7V buy a clear step in low-end control if the budget allows. Add a T10S later, and only once placement is settled.
• The serious room: two A7V plus a Sub 10 Mk2, or a pair of A77H if you sit two metres back. The handed A8H is the ceiling of what we shelve, and it deserves a treated room — in anything less, spend the difference on acoustics instead.

Bring us your room dimensions and listening distance and we will tell you which of these fits — and, just as usefully, which to skip.