Tokyo FM’s Studio IrisUpgrades to ADAM Audio S5H Main Monitors

The 7th floor of Tokyo FM’s glitzy main studio and office complex is home to Studio Iris, a specialist recording and mixing facility delivering first-class content to Tokyo FM and its 38 sister stations in the Japan FM network.

Producing a diverse range of material including radio dramas and TFM concert hall recordings, Studio Iris is under the oversight of Osamu Kawashima, its technical manager. Under his direction, the studio implemented a major overhaul of its technical inventory and capabilities that saw the studio moving to Audio over IP, implementing system redundancy and renewing its aging monitoring system, which was replaced by a pair of ADAM Audio S5H main monitors.

In choosing a successor to its existing speakers, the team around Mr Kawashima had a clear understanding of the characteristics the new speaker would need. “We had several conditions for our main monitor,” he recalls during a recent interview with ADAM Audio, “including the ability to faithfully reproduce the original signal, a big sweet spot, wide frequency coverage, wide stereo stage, good representation of depth, and compatibility with the near field monitor.”

As ADAM Audio’s flagship reference monitor speaker, the S5H was presented at the 2016 Inter BEE show, Japan’s top-tier exhibition for the broadcast industry. One show attendee was investigating options for a new monitoring solution for his studio. “The speaker had good power,” Mr Kawashima remembers. “I could feel how the sound is well balanced even at the show floor.”

“[…] the ADAM especially had an outstanding representation of depth which was not found with the other competitor brands. This is the reason we chose the S5H for our studio.”

But at this point, the S5H was only a strong contender. Mr Kawashima’s team then embarked on a rigorous testing and trial listening process. “We did a thorough speaker comparison session, and among the same sized monitors, the ADAM especially had an outstanding representation of depth which was not found with the other competitor brands. This is the reason we chose the S5H for our studio.”

The decision to upgrade their monitors was part of a wider rethinking of Studio Iris’ main acoustic space, with the team deciding to seize on an opportunity to improve the overall listening characteristics of the room. “I think there are two important points: to eliminate acoustic problems and to remove unnecessary noise generated by equipment,” Osamu Kawashima explains. “With the renewal this time, we have succeeded in storing all the rack gears in a separate room, and I think that the studio environment has improved considerably.”

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