The R10s is the 10 inch sealed subwoofer in the R-Series from Perlisten Audio, the more affordable line that sits beneath the company's D-Series. Perlisten currently lists eight R-Series subwoofers - the R8s, R10s, R12s, R15s, R18s, R18is and the dual-driver R210s and R212s - so the R10s is the second smallest box in that range. Its American list price is USD 2,495.
Key specs that matter
A single 250 mm woofer is fitted, and its glass fiber composite cone has a linear excursion of plus or minus 20.0 mm. Rated amplifier output is 750 W RMS. Measured with the THX EQ curve, output holds from 20 to 301 Hz within -6 dB and from 16 to 380 Hz within -10 dB. The Boost curve intended for larger spaces lowers those limits to 16 Hz and 14 Hz, while the Cut curve for small rooms raises them to 25 Hz and 19 Hz. Perlisten quotes 88 dB reference sensitivity with a 150 mV input measured at 1.0 m. The enclosure stands 388 mm high, 340 mm wide and 380 mm deep and weighs 21.0 kg, and it is finished in satin black, with grilles offered as an option.
Engineering and use context
Perlisten builds the R10s as an acoustic suspension box with no port. The driver motor carries aluminium shorting rings, the suspension relies on multi-layer Nomex spiders, and the voice coil is wound from lightweight aluminium wire. According to the published product data, the amplifier module is a 1.0 kW design that is deliberately throttled back to 750 W so that its output matches what this 10 inch driver can accept. Control duties are shared by a Texas Instruments DSP engine using 48-bit data paths together with a 32-bit ARM Cortex M4 processor that performs its calculations in double precision floating point. The owner adjusts everything either on a 2.4 inch LCD colour touchscreen on the cabinet or through the iOS and Android app, whose software stores three user presets for a 10-band parametric equaliser.
Pairing
Signal enters through a single balanced XLR socket or a single unbalanced RCA socket, each mirrored by an unbuffered output of the same type, so a second subwoofer can be fed from the first. When an AV receiver or processor already applies bass management, the internal low pass filter can be switched out. With a stereo preamplifier it can instead be placed anywhere from 30 to 160 Hz at slopes of 6, 12, 18 or 24 dB per octave. Phase adjusts continuously across 0 to 270 degrees, polarity switches between normal and inverted, and the unit can wake either on signal detection or by a 12 V trigger.
Alternatives
The smaller Perlisten R8s uses a 215 mm driver with plus or minus 28.0 mm excursion and a 500 W RMS amplifier in a 298 x 270 x 290 mm cabinet weighing 14.4 kg.