Audiophilepure

This is a subwoofer that can grow over time with the unusual in-its-class ability to daisy-chain multiple units. It’s powerful yet agile. It is petite yet plays big. It makes music better and cinema more watchable. It can be hidden behind a sofa or in a corner, hardly being noticed in the arena of Domestic Acceptance Factor.

Who is its intended audience? While the first audience will likely be at an RBH dealer with some of the company’s bookshelf speakers, it would be a mistake to limit the audience to just that demographic. Anyone who has speakers that need help delivering bass to near 20 Hz and doesn’t want a large box spoiling one’s décor would find a friend in the RBH S-12HPS. It’s well engineered with a build quality that promises a music and movie enhancer with a shelf life measured in decades, not years. The RBH S-12HPS should be on the short list for anyone looking for a compact, powerful, and musical subwoofer.

The subwoofer’s rear panel has a special slot designated for MartinLogan’s SWT-X wireless transmitter kit. The kit consists of a transmitter that looks like a large AppleTV with stereo RCA inputs. If you want to use the sub with a receiver’s LFE (Low Frequency Effects) output, then you use the right input, which is labeled accordingly.

The receiver looks like an L-shaped USB stick. The USB connector plugs perfectly into the designated slot on the back of the Dynamo 1100X that’s labeled, “Wireless Module Connection.” The module sits flush into the back of the sub. It takes up zero additional footprint. There’s an apse-shaped notch allowing you to pull the module out easily if you need to.

Now, with that all sorted out, how did these bad boys actually sound? Pretty darned good, all things considered. I combined the big SVS Speakers with a variety of amps, including my dual mono Benchmark AHB2 amps, my big Anthem STR power amp, bi-amplified using four channels of my AXIOM ADA-1000 5-channel amp, and a pair of XA60.8 Class A Monoblock power amps from Pass Labs. The speakers seemed to revel in the gobs of available power on tap from each combination. I’d be hard-pressed to pick an amplifier pairing from this lot that I liked best or that I thought subjectively sounded “superior.” If you put the preverbal “gun-to-my-head,” though, I would say the Pass Labs amps had a certain level of smoothness and just the right appealing level of warmth to their sound that mated especially well with these speakers. All the other amps were clean, transparent, and also sounded excellent in use, no question about it. However, using the Benchmark preamp, Pass Labs amps, and SVS speaker chain just had that little extra special something that made it “all systems GO!” Some out there might scoff at the notion of the SVS speakers being worthy of the Pass Labs amps, but I beg to differ.

https://www.hifinews.com/content/perlisten-d15s-active-subwoofer

This ability to augment what’s there across all genres of music, without upsetting the balance of the system, is this subwoofer’s calling card. In unison with the B&W speakers, and with careful setting of the level, the D15s slotted slickly into place. There was no sense of colour to its sound, just solidity and effortless extension, so that both the deep drums and low piano notes of Michael Giacchino’s theme to The Batman [Water Tower Music; 48kHz/24-bit] appeared bigger, but naturally so. Then, once the piece segued from foreboding introduction to more optimistic tones, the subwoofer threw its weight into the swelling strings without muddying the sweet detail higher up the audio band.

So, what we have here is a sub that combines hair-raising power and slam with speed, delicacy, and control – and even if your taste in music doesn’t benefit much from the former, it will from the latter. Whether it was The Doors’ ‘The Changeling’ [L.A. Woman, Warner/Rhino, 192kHz/24-bit], with its propulsive blues groove and staccato keyboards, or Club For Five’s ethereal 2009 cover of Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’ [WM Finland; 44.1kHz/16-bit], the D15s always elevated my enjoyment.

THX Dominus is the next step in the certification from THX in terms of objective performance in a loudspeaker (a subwoofer is a loudspeaker, something we tend to forget). In objective terms, a THX Dominus certification means the speaker in question can deliver SPL levels of up to 120 dB in rooms of up to 6,500 cubic feet. This is more than double the 3,000 cubic foot requirement that THX Ultra has, and it demands that a subwoofer has some serious firepower. The fact that Perlisten was able to achieve Dominus status with a single 15-inch driver is remarkable. The listening sessions bring the subjectivity of good sound to the objectivity of good science built into this subwoofer. Being the greedy bass soul that I am, the thought of “what would a pair of D215s do in our theater room if a single D15s is bringing home such power?” Each D215s brings dual 15-inch drivers to the party, and the thought of having a quad pack of these drivers trying to dismantle our theater room is a fun concept, to say the least!