Group test: Standmount speakers £500-£1,000

Rubbing hands with anticipation, we were looking forward to this outstanding bunch of group test participants. Two with heavily-touted pro-sound credentials, another with a long-standing British pedigree, plus an attractive Danish dark horse.

The speakers were tested in an acoustically neutral, non-parallel medium-sized room using the latest Moon CD player, the CD 5.3 RS both retailing at £3,150 each. Unsurprisingly the Moon CD player has unimpeachable staging and delicacy and the amplifier is designed to carry this through with no little grip and grunt. I am still compiling excuses about keeping it a week longer, followed by another week longer etcetera. Moon's website is www.simaudio.com.

Speakers and equipment was linked with Atlas Mavros Cabling - www.atlascables.com. We used their three metre speaker cable and one metre Pseudo-balanced RCA interconnects retailing at £1,355 and £750 respectively.

All speakers were given some pink noise to detect any room anomalies using an Audio Control spectrum analyser. Sounds used for the listening test included mono and stereo tracks of the same speech and music recorded by a one pair of microphones.

Everybody will have their own contemporary and/or classical music discs to test the low frequency response - a question which will always be asked of standmount speakers. Some of my picks include Grace Jones' Slave To The Rhythm (intro) and Blender on Yello's album, Baby. Also recommended for imagery and high energy - if you can find it - is Dock Of The Bay from the album Lincoln Mayorga & Distinguished Colleagues, Vol. 3.

Overview Price: £999 More info: ADAM Size: 300(h) x 170(w) x 260(d) mm Weight: 6kg Drivers: 1x 127mm mid/bass, A.R.T. ribbon tweeter* Frequency response: 45Hz - 35kHz Impedance: 4 Ohms Power handling: 100 Watts peak Sensitivity: 86dB/Watt Special feature: Accelerated Ribbon Technology ADAM Audio HM1 The HM1 is noticeably smaller than the other monitors tested here and was unusually finished in silver. Most of the uptake however, is expected to be for the piano black version. ADAM is a German company that started in the domestic audio area but after creating interest in the professional studio area with a wide range of products, has introduced some similar products tailored for the domestic audio market (HM1 stands for Home Monitor 1, by the way). It is the only monitor in the group with an unconventional tweeter. It's a ribbon-style unit, common to all ADAM full-range speaker arrays, has a folded construction which imparts a 'squeezing' action to the air. This multiplies the air speed four times faster than the folds are moving. The makers claim accuracy and airiness are the main strengths of the tweeter design and this is beyond doubt. The first few notes of music to flow from the ribbon possessed an effortless defining of familiar high frequency notes which make many of the usual domes and cones seem like also-rans. A feeling of accuracy, flatness of response and lack of distortion was evident - an excellent starter for extended periods of listening. Showing its Pro credentials, the HM1 has an adjustable tweeter level between flat and plus/minus 1.5dB. This allows adjustability to balance against the warmth of sound induced by mounting it a little closer to walls and corners to raise the bass levels. Corner-mounting the HM1s with and without an extra 1.5dB of gain on the tweeters produced a satisfyingly room-filling bass and although the tweeter demonstrates excellent high frequency reproduction on the flat setting, its essentially benign rendition will allow most listeners to enjoy the higher output too.

Verdict Plus points Effortlessly well-defined upper frequencies, excellent imagery with width and depth. Bass roll-off suits a room setting where speakers are close to walls. Minus points Difficult to find - perhaps the unsurprising lack of lower-register bass? Bi-wire terminals connected only moderately-well by short cables. Not a problem if they are bi-wired or bi-amplified

Overview Price: £700 More info: Jamo Size: 380(h) x 225(w) x 341(d) mm Weight: 9.9kg Drivers: 1x 180mm mid/bass, 25mm DTT* tweeter Frequency response: 45Hz - 24kHz Impedance: 6 Ohms Power handling: 250 Watts peak Sensitivity: 87dB/Watt Special feature: Decoupled Tweeter Technology

There's plenty of innovative engineering built into the Jamo monitor, its specification includes a decoupled tweeter which, by prodding the surround, can be felt as well as seen. By decoupling the tweeter from the rest of the loudspeaker, vibrations transmitted from the front baffle to the tweeter are claimed to be reduced by more than 20dB. The tweeter surround itself is a carefully-engineered wave guide shaped to enhance the off-axis performance, as is the woofer design which uses a phase plug.

For my taste the C803 is a good-looking speaker from all angles and I particularly like the black piano-gloss finish tops. If it had been priced at the same level as the rest, it wouldn't have seemed out of place.

The 803 definitely lives up to claims of good off-axis performance with a particularly wide sound stage which translates not only in off-axis satisfaction but also imparts an excellent spatial feel. The Jamo has easily the most forward mid-bass response and generally has a bouncy, eager-to-please character possibly adding up to the best 'audience friendly' transmission, as opposed to the lone serious listener sitting in the sweet spot.