Perlisten R18s THX Dominus 18" Sealed Subwoofer Review: Home Theater Perfection

Martin Henninger, Sound & Vision: "Look, I get that there's a ton of subwoofers out there. And some of them are probably pretty good. But the Perlisten R18s is in a league of its own."

“The Perlisten R18s is in a league of it’s own”

Review

Mark Henninger

Perlisten R18s THX Dominus 18″ Sealed Subwoofer Review: Home Theater Perfection

THE VERDICT

Look, I get that there’s a ton of subwoofers out there. And some of them are probably pretty good. But the Perlisten R18s is in a league of its own. This thing is an absolute beast. But it’s not just about raw power. The R18s is also incredibly musical. It blends seamlessly with your main speakers and transforms just about any speaker system into a full-range one.

I love deep bass and have spent exceptional amounts of time and money over three-plus decades pursuing its clean, accurate reproduction. I bought my first pair of subwoofers over thirty years ago. At AVS Forum, where the DIY section was a hotbed of bass addicts in the pre-Facebook group era, I discovered the joys of infrasonic bass reproduced at levels you can feel. It was a brave new world and no subwoofers available to consumers seemed able to perform the tricks that the DIY monsters delivered.

Fast forward to today and subwoofers are a booming category. Advances in amplification, driver design and DSP processing deliver subs that dig every deeper with less distortion. The holy grail of bass for me is a sub that can play totally cleanly right down to the teens (Hz) and when in the infrasonic realm to make no audible noise. No mechanical noise, no audible harmonic distortion. Just clean bass at the frequency required and at the output levels needed. And while it requires multiple subs to match the crazy DIY systems that served as my reference—for example, sixteen 18-inch subs in one room—after spending a couple months with the Perlisten R18s I know it is a subwoofer that can play in the same league, but is also plug-and-play, attractive and easy to use…

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