If the cost of the Ascendos above bought on palpitations, you’d best sit down for the winners of this category, for the Perlisten R-Series speaker package will set you back £26.6k at the time of review – inspiration followed perspiration we reckon.

Consisting of speakers from the company’s Reference Series stable, the system on test comprised the R7t towers (£8,800 per pair), the R5c centre (£2,800), the R4b standmount speakers used as surrounds (£4,000) and a pair of R212s subwoofers (£5,500 each), placing it very much at the aspirational end of most folks’ wishlist.

While there’s more than one way to skin a goose, when it comes to designing loudspeakers the quality and attention to detail invested in delivering a preferred approach is just as important as the approach itself.

Hailing from Verona, Perlisten’s speakers are designed and engineered in the USA and then made in China. The company is the brainchild of CEO/Founder Daniel Roemer and CSO/Partner Lars Johansen, both bringing decades of experience from across audio, engineering and manufacturing industries.

A quick glance at Perlisten’s loudspeaker line-up tells you the brand’s DPC, or ‘Directivity Pattern Control’ array, is very much part of its raison d’être. It refers to the tweeter and midrange assembly, consisting of a dome tweeter at its centre vertically flanked by upper and lower midrange domes of equal size. These are elegantly placed into a curved waveguide, all of which sits at the centre of each speaker.

 … loudspeaker performance does not get much better than this

However, for this you get a stupendous performance offering extremely similar subjective and objective performance to Ascendo’s flagship Signature range. Whilst the R-series might yield some technical standing to its even more expensive S-Series stablemates, it’s here that diminishing returns kick in aggressively and the R-series should be regarded as high-performing, beautifully engineered speakers that, in our opinion, are the more prudent buy for all but the most well-heeled of audiophiles or those with very large rooms.

The R7ts, in particular, are incredibly capable with their THX Dominus certified output and, at their price point, we’ve yet to hear a better speaker.

A less reflective black satin finish would be nice and you might be able to save some cash by dropping one of the subs but put quite simply: loudspeaker performance does not get much better than this, with the exceptional design and outstanding sonic performance of the R-series speakers settings a new benchmark for us at this price point.