GTC review by Home Theater magazine

Berlin, January 3, 2012

The very first review of our GTC series comes from Home Theater magazine. Editor Michael Fremer has thoroughly reviewed a 5.1 GTC system consisting of three GTC77, two GTC55 and one GTC subwoofer which made it straight into the magazine’s Top Picks. Please read some passages of the review below.

Smooth, Spectacular Sonics
Nothing beats having three identical speakers arrayed across the front of your room – even if their performance is less than stellar. But when you have three identical, big, nearly full-range (rated 38 hertz to 50 kHz) speakers that sport the aforementioned X-ART tweeters, the resulting seamless and expansive front sonic picture is sensational. Sometimes nothing sounds worse than driver technologies that clash within the same box. Often if you pair the sonic particulars of a ribbon tweeter, for example, with a cone woofer, it produces obvious discontinuity. However Adam accomplished this, it’s managed to seamlessly blend the X-ART tweeter with the coned midrange and woofer. […]

The three GTC77s produced a wall of sound Phil Spector would appreciate. Add the two GTC55s, which feature the same airy tweeter and a smaller version of the coned drivers as midwoofers in a dual-ported enclosure, and you have a system that can produce an enormous, three-dimensional sonic picture. If you close your eyes and try to locate any of the speakers, it’s an almost impossible task. Finally, add the subwoofer, which – because of the main speakers’ excellent low-frequency extension – you can easily dial in, and you have a true full-range system that can effortlessly play loud in a fairly large room. I found that it also does so at a whisper without deviating from its airy, open, and effortless personality. […]

But the center GTC77’s sonic performance was as free of coloration on voices as I’ve heard from a center-channel speaker. […] In addition, the GTC77 can whisper or scream and never loses its timbral character or impressive dynamic abilities at both the micro and macro levels. At high SPLs, dynamic compression was never evident. […]

Bountiful Bottom
The system’s low-frequency performance was also among the best I’ve heard, if not the best. If you consider the subwoofer’s modest size and price, that was surprising. The subwoofer produced massive, palpable, dynamically unrestricted, pulsating waves of tuneful, low-frequency, musical energy, along with depth charge–type, room-pressurizing, chest-pressing deep bass on sound effects. The unsubstantiated bursts of unidentifiable bass you get from lesser systems – bass you can hear but not feel, or bass that lacks transient attack – never entered into this system’s low-frequency performance on either music or sound effects. The system’s low-frequency performance on Wish You Were Here was muscular and musically transparent and exhibited nimble rhythm and pacing.

I used the 5.1-channel remix of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust to test the system’s snappiness. The drums on this recording don’t have much bottom-end heft, but they always had great transient pop. The GTC77 system didn’t disappoint here, either. The drums, particularly the snare, snapped to attention, while the kick drum remained slightly undernourished, as it should. Bowie’s voice was well focused, three dimensional, and well articulated. […]

Conclusion
When I was assigned this review, I’d never heard of Adam Audio. The speakers aren’t much to look at, nor are they meant to be seen. But on first listen, even after a quick setup, it was immediately obvious that this system was special. It didn’t take much effort to tweak it into sonic and spatial perfection, either, thanks in great part to the tweeter’s smooth, open wide-band performance, as well as having three identical, nearly full-range speakers across the front of the room. […]

This system can play very loud and never seemed to run out of dynamic headroom or become stressed in my listening room. In fact, the higher the SPLs, the more exciting it became, with no sonic penalty to pay. It costs a grand total of $6,850 – cheap by high-end standards for this kind of experience, and that’s because every dollar spent buys you performance, not visual grace.

If you’re looking for a system to hide behind black cloth, don’t buy one until you listen to this one. If you can deal with relatively large, not particularly attractive black boxes in a more conventional home setting, you ought to have a listen, too. My Eve won’t let me keep the GTC77 system in our living room, but she’s as eager as I am to audition one of Adam’s living-room-friendly ones as soon as possible. If it performs as well as this one did, it will be here to stay.

Michael Fremer, Home Theater Magazine (www.hometheater.com), December 2011

The original review at full length can be found here on the magazine’s website.