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Perlisten D212 Subs (2) in the house.

Lots of interest in subwoofers these days so I decided to take the plunge.  My listening room is large 17’W x 32”D x 16’ vaulted ceilings with an open back wall into other rooms.  Current speakers Wilson Alexia 1, Classe Delta Mono’s, and VAC Signature 11a SE.  Originally was going to buy REL G1 mark 2 but decided to take a chance on the Perlisten as its newer tech and specs looked very good.  At first I thought speaker level connection was the way to go and it may be with a tube power amp rig.  The argument of passing through the “color” of your amp kinda made sense.  But I run very neutral solid state power amps and any power “amp” color still goes though the sub’s power amps which adds its own sound thus that argument made less sense to me and my system. I’m also lucky that my pre has two XLR outs for bi-amping. I am still breaking in these subs so I have decided to not try a detailed matching to my floor standers yet.  I will say this.  They are currently set at 80htz low pass with no other DSP adjustment.  The SQ is great!  They have a very articulate and fast bottom end that amazingly “pairs” well with my Wilsons with no tweaking. The soundstage has increased and there is a better foundation to the music.  Will provide further assessments after break-in.

128x128skinzy
ja_kub_sz's avatar
ja_kub_sz
273 posts
 

@james633 Don't knock the JBL's (kidding) I have the L100 75's for my physical media system paired with the E112's. I will never let those speakers go. Also have 4309's for our family room and love them also. Huge JBL fan, honestly my speaker crushes have been with JBL and Focal, but other always peaking my interests from time to time.

And my biggest revelation was with my office where I have the subs to the right and left of me halfway into the room (12'x12' room) the phase adjustment made worlds of difference and that "in to the room right and left placement" for subwoofers I'm sold on. Hope to build a dedicated listening room and move my main system there and have more liberty with speaker and subwoofer placement.

james633
1,047 posts
 

Ja_kub_sz

 

Nice looking setups for sure. I have never tried side placement of subs due to just having limited runs of wire. Maybe once I have the CR-1 I will move them around more as longer runs of balanced cables are more common than RCAs. 

kennyc
1,554 posts
 

@skinzy 

Thanks for posting.  I have Vimberg Mino D and was interested in “articulate” subwoofers to extend the bottom end and to support the rest of the lower audio band. Wilson and Magico subs were out of budget. JL Audio I was concerned with long term reliability from some (old?) reports.  The dual woofers setup to lower distortions in the D212 seems like a great idea.  

rwbadley's avatar
rwbadley
143 posts
 

I also have the Perlisten D12s. It has evolved into a very nice sub.

Initially it needed lots of break in as I couldn’t get enough gain out of it. But now is performing well. That driver when new is really tight and seemed quite closed in. It wouldn’t keep up with the Altec 604 due to the high efficiency of the speaker.
 

With the D12s hooked to the preamp, the Altec would be fairly loud at 9:00 on volume, but the Perlisten sub even set to the highest gain was not loud enough.  

Over time the sub seemed to loosen up and I have been able to turn the gain down to 9.5 or 10 (out of 12)

ja_kub_sz's avatar
ja_kub_sz
273 posts
 

@rwbadley absolutely agree... I have volume set to 10.5. Perlisten did reach out and want me to software down-date to 1.23, but it’s looking to me like a bad amp module in one subwoofer.

@kennyc so now having many subs, both JL and Perlisten and sadly both my JL and Perlisten now have gone bad on me (one sub in each pair)... My thoughts thus far.

Build quality JL

Woofer quality Perlisten

Bass presence and SPL force JL

Bass speed and articulation Perlisten

Features and functions Tie

Customer Service Perlisten

Reliability JL (from my own personal experience)

So essentially a tie, however I would venture to make the case that for me I’d go JL F-12 if I could do it all over again at this juncture. Maybe I’ll change my mind given more time and once both D12's are subs are up and working. But I'm happy to have yet another sub sound in my collection (future speaker pairing and such).

Overall I’m still of the opinion that these are very different subwoofers.

I would liken SVS to JL, and Perlisten more so to REL. Again not that any of these are the same but in a sense of which sound is closer to which.

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