Subwoofer Reviews

Performance
Features
Build Quality
Value

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Exceptional Bass Performance
High-Quality Construction
Versatile and User-Friendly
Elevates Overall System Performance
Minus
No Built-in Room Correction
Price Point is high (but still a great value)

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 speaker 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 teen 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.

The character of bass from a sub that is truly clean and free of distortion is a whole different world from typical entry-level subs. I have heard some audiophiles complain that "subs sound like subs, not speakers" and frankly that can be a fair critique. A lot of subs have some sort of perceptible tone, a coloration to the sound. You don't want that. Other subs run into trouble as they reach their physical limits, with ported models making chuffing sounds, and underpowered subs suffering from dynamic compression or even clipping.

When it comes to subwoofer design, the mantra is "there's no replacement for displacement" which is the fancy way to say you need to move a lot of air. Now that does not necessarily mean you need a huge enclosure, but it does mean a sub's driver (or drivers) have to combine a large surface area and significant excursion to produce that displacement. You can get a lot of displacement from a smaller enclosure if the subwoofer employs a powerful motor and amplifier to counter the inherent resistance of a sealed box. That's where having a 1.2 kilowatt amplifier comes in handy, allowing the R18s to play the deepest bass notes with ease.

Back during that AVS Forum era, I was creating electronic music under the name Dub King and posting it on Soundcloud. Some members wanted music, or even just sound effect tracks, that they could use to test or demo their subwoofer systems. Tracks that intentionally contained huge amounts of deep bass. Needless to say I thought this was an awesome challenge that I embraced immediately. It was quite the rabbit hole and that's how I wound up buying a dual 18-inch pro audio subwoofer, it was so large that I used to have parties and groups of people would use it as a stage to dance on. There was no going back! But it was a music sub, it did not do infrasonic. And my point is that infrasonic prowess soon became a top priority.

Features and Specifications
The Perlisten R18s is a gorgeous giant black cube. Although for an 18" sub, it is actually quite compact. If you have had subwoofers in your life and you see this sub, you'll know what I mean right away. It just looks right. Powerful. Minimalist. Perfectionist. It creates anticipation with its mere presence. And then you listen and just like that, it transports you to different worlds. It triggers bouts of uncontrollable, repeatable goosebumps. It fulfills dreams and fantasies. OK maybe I am going too far, but that is sort of how it feels: Like waiting 30+ fears for a sub like this was worth it, patience paying off.

This sealed sub is powered by a 1.2-kilowatt amplifier for its 18-inch driver. It offers three EQ modes, one of which delivers the THX Dominus certified output levels. The sub features a touchscreen interface on the top panel, allowing for easy setup or adjustment, as well as confirmation of settings, even without the app.

On the rear panel you'll find an RCA and an XLR input, a 12V tripper, and a USB port (for updates). There are no controls back there, you use the top-mounted control panel for that.

Caveats
I live in a high-rise loft in the middle of a city. It is impossible to perform proper subwoofer measurements aside from close-mic measurement of the driver, and looking and the charts I get from using a measurement system (REW) or room correction (Dirac, Audyssey). I am not calculating the peak output or maximum distortion or power draw. If that is what you seek I hope you find a review that offers it to you.

The physics of a sub offer little in terms of leeway for magic. The mechanics involved is sufficiently quantifiable that subwoofer modeling and simulation yields predictable results. A properly designed sub balances the internal volume, driver displacement (excursion and surface area), motor strength and amplifier power, usually with the help of DSP that keeps everything well behaved and linear and allows for in-sub adjustments that can be beneficial on their own or in conjunction with room correction. To that end, the R18s offers all that I have described, along with a THX EQ mode and Dominus certification that effectively promises it will deliver what the specifications and the mechanical brawn of this sub promise.

Setup
Unpacking was relatively easy considering the sub's size. Setup is a pleasure because you do not have to fiddle with anything behind the sub, you can use the app or the touchscreen. Because the subwoofer is going into my living room and not a dedicated home theater, there are only a few select spots where it fits nicely. Optimal placement based on repeated measurements and placement, or crawling around, or anything else like that which presumes the subwoofer gets priority over practicality, is not my approach. Instead, I put the subwoofer where it fits—against the front wall, to the left of the system—and I deal with compensating for the room's effects on frequency response with EQ and room correction.

I used both Audyssey MultEQ X to tailor the bass to my room when using the Denon A1H AVR as the front end. Either way, I'm happy with the results. The main thing to know is this sub does not have built-in room correction, it relies on the source components for that. Given how premium AVRs and pre/pros all come with advanced room correction built-in, this is a logical decision.

Here's a little secret about room correction systems. Each time you take a series of measurements, you get a slightly different correction, a slightly different sound, even when you're using the same system. If you measure five different times with Audyssey and switch between them, you'll see five slightly different frequency responses, and you'll hear five slightly different corrections. And the same thing happens in Dirac. And I would even dare say that sometimes you might have one of those corrections in Audyssey that sounds most like one of the corrections from Dirac. There's just a little bit of random chance, exactly how you place the microphone, each time you moved it, kind of a variability to taking room correction measurements.

And so I'm not going to say that room correction one system sounded better than the other. I'm going to say that there's always a sizable benefit to smoothing out the in-room response of a subwoofer, which inevitably is significantly impacted by the room itself, because subwoofers work entirely within the frequency range below the shorter transition frequency, where the room becomes the most significant element when it comes to bass frequency response. But you can also do this with simple parametric EQ and some test tones, room correction adds sophistication to the process but the bottom line is no subwoofer—no matter how flat it measures anechoically—is going to play flat when it is inside of a room.

I just want to take a moment to say that subwoofer setup is one of the most critical tasks in getting a sound system to really perform exceptionally. That subwoofer integration is what opens up the world of full-range sound reproduction, which frankly is what's needed to create an uncanny sense of realism with music, movies, video games, whatever have you. Bass really is the foundation of believability in multimedia entertainment.

Now here's the thing. A great sub will enhance any system. So I decided to go ultra-minimalist and hooked up a pair of Kanto Ren active speakers. These are at $699/pair product with HDMI ARC input and a subwoofer output that activates bass management (this allowing the speakers to play louder because they do not have to play low). There is no room correction or EQ here, just adjusting the sub so it sounds right when paired with some affordable active bookshelf speakers on stands. Home theater purists, please do not get angry... I found this combination to be incredibly compelling.

Listening
This magical subwoofer transformed any and all the high-quality speakers I auditioned with it connected into true full-range powerhouses. The sub is so clean, it always sounds like an extension of the speakers, and never like a box on the floor huffing and puffing to dig deep, like so many other subs. Its poise and power create a sense of awe. No other audio component I have reviewed so instantly transformed the rest of the system, elevating the fidelity to levels you'd rightly associate with the very best sounding stereo systems in the world. And nowhere was this clearer than when I was using my TV as the streaming source, the Kantos as my speakers, and the mighty Perlisten to take care of all the bass the speakers could not handle.

Bottom line: The sub makes the system. Yes it's great to have a five-figure AVR-based Atmos rig singing and dancing, but goddam it is mind blowing what a killer sub can do for a modest-sized and priced pair of active speakers. Only a serious expletive can do it justice: The Perlisten R18s is the shit!

Music
Disc Wars from Tron: Legacy is one of the all-time great bass tracks. You would not even know this to be the case if you'd only ever heard it on a less capable system system, even one with a 12-inch or 15-inch sub. You can see the sub working incredibly hard to add the gravitas demanded by the composition, which blends synthesizers and a real orchestra and takes no prisoners.

It blew my mind that I could trigger goosebumps on demand with the R18S and Disc Wars. It's a purely involuntary reaction, and with audio it's a sign that a level of realism is being achieved that your brain has decided requires an instinctual response, rather than intellectual. I can also feel the pressurization of the room, which lends an additional sense of realism without being overbearing and sounding subwoofer-like. The bottom line is that goosebumps are a rare occurrence, whether at audio shows, at dealer showrooms, or in my home when reviewing gear. When a system is capable of producing goosebumps pretty much on demand, I take notice!

I remember the first time I heard Rutter's Pie Jesu as performed by the Turtle Creek Coral. It features a pipe organ that hits 20 Hz a couple of times, and 16 Hz at one point. If things go right, that 16 Hz note inspires awe. It underscores the whole performance, but if there's any distortion, or it gets skipped by a system that can't handle it, the impact is lost. Here, it hits just right, you feel the deepest notes that are so clean they are almost inaudible.

There's some crazy bass in the Coil track "Her Friends the Wolves" from the album Stolen and Contaminated Songs. If we could time travel back about 32 years, you'd find me putting together my first serious stereo system with dual subwoofers, and chasing after the goal of reproducing the bass in that track with verisimilitude. What was once an elusive goal in deep bass reproduction—nailing the tone and texture of the dry, subterranean growl that kicks in several minutes into the track. It remained a challenge to get right in the decades that followed, but getting it right is trivially easy with the R18s.

Movies
The difference a great sub makes for movies is immense. It adds visceral realism, sound effects take on texture, your sense of touch enters the equation, not just hearing. Want to truly be shocked by a cinematic explosion? It's when you feel the sound that you instinctively jump out of your seat. Want to get goosebumps during a horror movie? Best to render those infrasonic sounds with visceral authority.

Of course, huge subwoofers have always been associated with home theater, and that is because subwoofers themselves first burst into the mainstream consciousness through commercial cinema when the movie Earthquake came out in 1974. For decades, deep bass has been part of the movie maker's toolkit and analysis of soundtracks has shown that a surprising number of titles feature meaningful infrasonic content that if reproduced properly adds to the sense of being in the movie.

With the R18s we have a sub that plays clean, loud, and deep with effortless ease. The result is that movie effects take on a visceral realism lesser subs cannot deliver. Proof of its capability was easy to come by, just a matter of queuing some classic demo scenes and pressing play.

This review stretched out over several months, so I wound up watching a lot of movies with it. Recent titles include Gladiator II, Venom The Last Dance, The Wild Robot, Deadpool & Wolverine, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Alien Romulus, Saturday Night, Transformers One, Piece by Piece, and Bad Boys: Ride or Die. Those titles alone are enough to cover the full repertoire of cinematic bass, from explosions to bass sweeps to sound effect that use "feelable" bass to add texture to something more subtle, like a car door closing.

With the R18s, Perlisten has achieved a Goldilocks ideal of high output and low distortion. I cannot stress enough how important this is. With deep bass, it is often the case that listeners mistake audible distortion for bass. This is because it is what they are sued to. That distortion may be pleasing to some, but it is what audiophiles complain about when they say a speaker system "sounds like it has a subwoofer." If the deep bass is truly clean, then there is no way to tell where it comes from, and it registers as real.

Room Correction Results
I lack the ability to perform anechoic measurements, so the only data I have to share are some basic measurements from Audyssey. One set of measurements were made using THX mode and the other using the Large Room EQ mode. The main reason for doing this is to affirm Perlisten is one of those companies that provides accurate specifications for its product. Spoiler alert: it is!

Per my clustered measurements, in Large Room mode, -6dB was pegged at about 17Hz and the -10dB point was approximately 13Hz. By comparison, Perlisten specs state -10dB is 14Hz while -6dB is 16 Hz. We're splitting hairs! THX mode gives up a bit of extension for output, -10dB was around 17 Hz, -6dB was 20 Hz. Perlisten's published numbers are 16 Hz and 20 Hz. Almost exactly the same. Bottom line, the specs are spot-on accurate relative to real-world performance, so you know you are getting what you paid for.

Conclusion
I can only conclude that when Perlisten designed the R18s, it understood that there was a gap in the premium sealed subwoofer market in need of filling. That a machine combining the displacement offered by an 18-inch driver, the refinement of an audiophile-quality true high-end hi-fi design from a company focused on measurable, provable high fidelity, plus the relatively compact nature of sealed subwoofers, which allows for impressive bass extension and delivers the significant displacement needed to achieve it, these things come together in a superb subwoofer that, in my view, hits a Goldilocks price point, a Goldilocks performance point, at a Goldilocks size. It is a clear Sound & Vision Top Choice selection for a premium sealed subwoofer, but it also gets the unofficial triple-Goldilocks award for really nailing what a premium sealed subwoofer should offer.