Recording - August 2018 - 31

recommend against corner placement,
as one of the radiators will be firing
straight at the wall.
Controls on the top of the Right
speaker include a 3-way roller switch
for Theatre/Hi-Fi/Reference mode, a
volume roller with center detent for unity
gain, and Power and Bluetooth Pair
switches. The green power LED turns
red when the RM5 goes into low-power
Sleep mode, and the Pair button lights
up blue when connected.
Putting the RM5 speakers on their
stands after unboxing involves attaching
hardware to the rear surface, so you'll
need to prepare ahead of time by
laying down a soft cloth or towel and
placing the speakers on them with their
drivers down (they'll be protected by
the front-face waveguides). Also, be
careful not to hurt the radiators when
picking them up.
Attaching the stands to the rear panels
of the speakers requires a set of screws
and an included Allen key, but take note
that there are extra screws that are
slightly longer, that you mustn't mix up
with the rest of the screws. If you attach
the stands directly to the speakers using
the shorter screws, they will be up-angled
at 3º, which works well for desktop setups and shorter stands. If you want them
to fire straight forward, you must insert
a metal spacer between each stand and
speaker, using the longer screws to hold
them in place. These speakers won't
work with conventional speaker isolation
stands, and I'd be cautious about trying
to balance them on Sorbothane domes;
they want to sit flat on their stands so
their weight is borne stably.

ART claims only 3 dB down at 45 Hz
with these monitors, which would make
them suitable for critical mixing of any
music that wasn't reliant on subwooferfriendly ultra-low bass. My listening sessions bear this out; there's a lot of bass
to be had, and it's clear and solid. You
can't quite believe what you're hearing
at first, but the radiators do their job
beautifully. You can hear details in low
piano notes, 5-string bass, TR-808 kick,
and other low-end sources, with good
articulation up into the low mids.
The highs are clear and very present; the
ring-radiator tweeter throws a lot of high
end, and if it's cranked up it can really sizzle. The mids are interesting, because the
RM5 tends to present certain sources like
lead guitar and vocals in a very "forward"
way, lifting them up out of the mix. It took
me some time to figure out how to mix in a
way that had the mids gel with the rest of
the frequency spectrum, but that effort was
a good investment, considering that my
mixes didn't come out shrieky or boomy
on even large monitor systems. I found the
overall listening experience comfortable at
low to medium SPL, and got some guilty
pleasure at rattling the walls with the RM5
when they were really cranked up.

Final thoughts

These speakers are impressive, especially coming from a company not known
for monitors. They have power aplenty, a really solid and detailed listening
soundstage, and once you get them on
their stands they're easy to place and set
working. All in all, an impressive debut
from ART, and a speaker you're going to
want to check out for yourself.

In use

I set up the speakers at Recording's
office studio, using the Full Space and
Reference settings. Hi-Fi yields a "smiley face" curve, and Theatre has a
huge bass/mid boom that's great for
superhero movies but not something
you'll want to mix with. I worked with
them for a few weeks, listening to my
reference library tracks and doing editing and mixing with them, driving them
with my trusty Schiit Audio Modi 2 D/A
and Magni 3 amplifier with a sample
rate of 44.1 kHz and either 16 or 24
bits of audio resolution.

PRICE: $499/pair
MORE FROM:
ART, www.artproaudio.com
RECORDING August 2018

http://www.earthworksaudio.com/dm20 http://www.artproaudio.com

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