Listen Up!

PERLISTEN AUDIO R5T LOUDSPEAKER AND D15S SUBWOOFER

- Thomas J. Norton

EVEN THE most veteran A/V enthusiast is unlikely to have heard of Perlisten (short for Perceptual Listening) Audio, but that situation should soon change. Founded by a group of audio industry veterans, the company was formally launched in 2021. For a new speaker outfit, the number of Perlisten models is astonishingly long and encompasses towers, standmounts, center and surround speakers, in-walls, and subwoofers, all of them engineered in the U.S. and manufactured in China.

Perlisten Audio's offerings comprise two major ranges, the S-series and the R-series, with the flagship tower of the higher-end S-series, the S7t, currently topping out at $20,000/pair. The R-series isn't quite that hypoxia-inducing but still hits a maximum of $10,000/pair for the R7t. Perlisten's standmounts in both ranges (plus surrounds and two in-wall models) are a bit less pricey but still hardly impulse buys. There's also a full range of subwoofers, capped by the massive, dual 15-inch, 202-pound (!) D215s ($9,000).

For this review we requested the smallest R-series tower, the R5t ($7,000/ pair), and a single D15s subwoofer ($5,000). The R5c center ($3,000) and dedicated surrounds were not available at the time of our request and so aren't tested here. As a side note, the R5c employs a driver complement similar to that on the R5t, but with the woofers horizontally flanking the tweeter in a typical center-channel configuration. Since those woofers operate up to 1.1kHz, I'd audition the R5c prior to making a purchase decision to ensure that the horizontally configured woofers don't result in audible anomalies (comb-filtering) for listeners seated off-center. (Editor's note: Perlisten Audio provides detailed measurements of the R5c on its website that indicate even energy +/-20 degrees off-axis, along with similarly impressive power response.)

DESIGN