Adam Audio D3V Desktop Speakers Review

Video Review

First Impressions / Setting up

Adam Audio’s D3V desktop speakers are designed for producers, DJs or just serious listeners who want a high-end desktop speaker system that sounds great but has a bit of flexibility for different uses. In this hands-on review I’ll talk you through their features and tell you what we think of them here at the Digital DJ Tips DJ school.

Straight out of the box they are plastic but well made, quite weighty, and have an industrial and signature Adam Audio look to them, with the yellow ribbon tweeter that has become this company’s trademark present and correct. They’re average-sized for desktop speakers, and while smart, are overall a pretty conservative design. They’re available in black and white.

The front of each speaker also has a larger woofer under a grille, and – unusually – the speakers each have two closed flexible ports on the left and right of each unit to help accentuate the bass, which are pretty cool (they move in and out with the beat!).

On the front of the main speaker there is a single on/off knob which is also the volume control alongside a headphone socket (usually used for late-night listening when maybe you haven’t got the choice of playing through the speakers themselves).

The speakers come complete with slide on stands which pivot them perfectly up towards your ears when they’re on a desk, which is a smart move from Adam Audio, as this affects the sound quality immensely.

But they also come with 3/8″ speaker stand threads, plus foam stick-on pads should you wish to attach these to the underside of them in order to just stand them on a desk without angling them towards you (but with isolation nonetheless).

The power is via a 24-volt 2.5 amp socket with the power brick, adapter and mains cable provided in the box. The link between the speakers is a mini DIN cable.

Computer speaker-style design

These speakers are of the design where one speaker contains all the electronics, inputs, outputs and so on, and the other speaker is simply connected to it with one cable, in a primary/secondary set-up, as with many computer speakers. This means that if you are plugging external analogue audio into the speakers, both cables go into the left-hand speaker, rather than one channel to each speaker as with bigger monitors.

The analogue inputs are TRS balanced and can also take TS unbalanced, but there are no RCAs or XLRs, so you’ll need the right leads if you’re connecting, say, to RCA outputs from a small DJ controller.

Additionally – and importantly – the speakers can take a USB-C digital audio input using the supplied USB-C to USB-C cable to your computer or digital source.

DSP – only what you need

They have a DSP on board, and the controls are very simple, with a three-way rocker for speaker position (giving you the choices of whether the speakers are in a corner, against a wall or on stands), a second three-way switch where you can dial in whether you have a small desk or large desk (or no desk), and a third where you can tell the speaker whether, acoustically speaking, they are in a treated, untreated or “somewhere in the middle” room.

It’s nice because these changes are generally quite subtle, and honestly I think most of the time with systems that have complicated positioning and tweaking circuitry and set up, most of the gains could actually be made quite simply – that is to say, with simple tweaks like these.

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In Use

Dialling in your settings

Once you have connected the speakers to your sources, you turn them on with one push of the knob on the front. A single press of the button when switched on will quickly mute the speakers, and another single press will unmute them.

A multicoloured backlit Adam Audio icon on the front of the left-hand speaker then glows in one of two colours to tell you what the speakers are currently connected to. A cyan colour means they are connected to the USB-C input, but by pressing the knob on the front twice, it switches the input to analogue and the colour of the LED to green.

Three presses in succession swaps the speaker audio between the left and right units, which means you can set up the speaker with all the connections on whichever side of your desk makes sense and then just tap the main knob three times to get the left and right speakers dialled up – a cool idea.

My day-to-day experience with them

Here in the Digital DJ Tips school studio I have been using these at my production desk as my main production monitors, without an external sound card, just plugged directly into the computer. They are used for listening to and editing training videos and audio for mixes, but just for casual background music as well.

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In both cases, the audio is fantastic – trustworthy, clear, loud (louder than I could even need in a small studio), and with no distortion as they’re turned up.

In addition, though, I also keep a small DJ controller tucked away on the keyboard shelf on my desk that I can slide out whenever I wish, just for kicking back and playing tunes. These speakers can, of course, take an input for that at the same time, meaning no messing around with wiring if I just want to switch from work to play in an instant.

In this instance, it’s all about the bass – nobody wants to DJ through speakers that sound small. I’m happy to report they sound great – for their size. The bass side ports rock away, filling out the sound, and they never sound harsh or shrill either. Just don’t expect sub-bass (like say with a 2.1 computer speaker system) – you can’t change the laws of physics!

The convenience factor

I’m sure Adam Audio has realised there are a lot of people – whether music producers, DJs or just music lovers who want high-quality, flexible speakers that they can trust for professional purposes, and it certainly appeals to me – it’s strangely rather unusual in this kind of speaker to have both USB (digital) and analogue.

Which brings me to my only bugbear with these: I don’t understand why they haven’t included Bluetooth in them as well, which would make them the perfect all-rounder.

With Bluetooth you’d also be able to quickly dial tunes in from your phone or whatever and have the same speakers handle everything from DJing and home studio, desktop music production, through to computer tasks like editing mixtapes and tracks, through to just kicking back with any source wirelessly attached (I use my phone for podcasts, for instance).

Conclusion

Adam Audio’s D3Vs are the best speakers I’ve seen recently that tick pretty much all the boxes a DJ/producer might want from a portable desktop solution.

They sound great, they’re well built, and they’re cleverly designed with the bass ports and the stands to angle them completely where they need to be (ie pointing towards your ears). They’re also flexible both in how they can be set up and how the sound can be tweaked.

The addition of digital on top of the expected analogue inputs is the icing on the cake, and while Bluetooth would have made them perfect, it’s a small omission on a speaker that looks and sounds this good.

Here at Digital DJ Tips we often recommend consumer high-end computer speakers for DJs who need something small on the same desk where they have their laptop and DJ controller, for practice and general use. Get the right pair, and such speakers can sound good, and usually have analogue and digital inputs.

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But this is the first time in a while I’ve seen a pair with such features from a manufacturer usually known for respected production speakers, which means better audio quality and guaranteed no latency. And that’s to be welcomed. Above all, they do sound great for the money and the size of them.

So if this kind of speaker is something you’ve been looking for, and you can live without Bluetooth, complex DSP customisation, and sub bass, you should definitely audition them.