Loudspeakers

With its cabinet design and DPC array inspired by the S7t [HFN Apr '22] albeit with a reduced internal volume, simpler drivers and crossover, the trade-offs between the £16k S7t and this 'half-price' R7t are worth exploring. Measured on the silk dome tweeter's axis, the Perlisten R7t's response shows a more pronounced midrange dish [Graph 1, below], but is actually no less uniform than the S7t with errors of ±2.3dB and ±2.4dB, even if pair matching is a poorer 2.2dB, principally from 8-20kHz. Sensitivity may also be lower than the S7t's 91.5dB but it's still bang-on Perlisten's claimed 90dB at 90.5dB/1kHz and 89.8dB/500Hz-8kHz. Furthermore, the softer treble dome avoids the high-Q resonance of the S7t's tweeter without sacrificing extension (33kHz/–6dB re. 10kHz) or distortion (0.4%/10kHz re. 90dB SPL). However, there are breakup modes visible in the CSD waterfall at 3-4.5kHz [see Graph 2] and as slight ripples in the response of one speaker [black trace]. These did not occur in the S7t and are presumably from one of the inner bass/mid drivers.

Two downward-firing resonators (unplugged here) exhaust through slots near the cabinet's base at ~25Hz, supplementing the 47Hz-250Hz/–6dB bandwidth of the outermost woofers and 57Hz-570Hz of the innermost drivers, realising a diffraction-corrected bass extension of 45Hz (–6dB re. 200Hz). Again, this performance comes at the expense of a tough amplifier load: the R7t has fractionally lower minima of 2.7ohm/28Hz (and is sub-4ohm/65Hz-525Hz) albeit with slightly less extreme +37°/–42° swings in phase angle than seen in the S7t, but its minimum EPDR of 1.4ohm/4.7kHz and 1.54ohm/490ohm is no cakewalk. PM