It all started when I asked if the bass driver was sourced from SB Acoustics because the cone had the familiar patchwork pattern which I had seen before on SB Acoustic’s woofers. “No” was the answer and that led to a lengthy explanation on how Perlisten makes its speakers from the ground up.
According to Dan Roemer, Perlisten’s Chief Design Officer, the cone material is TexTreme, a thin-ply carbon fibre made by a Swedish company. “We used TexTreme in our woofers and mid-range drivers before SB Acoustics did,” he said.
He also explained that the beryllium domes in its tweeters are sourced from Materion, an American company. Perlisten then assembles the tweeters in-house.
When I pointed out that the components in the crossovers had the Perlisten label, Dan explained that they were also made in-house.
“The only thing in the speakers that are not made by Perlisten are the IsoAcoustic isolators for the speakers which are specially made to our requirements,” he added.
Dan was at Centre Circle Audio & Visual in Taman Tun Dr Ismail on Friday with his colleague Lars Johansen, the Chief Sales Officer of Perlisten. Both of them are also co-founders of the company which is only three years old.
They were here to launch the Limited Edition (only 50 available) version of the S7t floorstander. They also took the opportunity to explain the technology and aspirations of the young company which has already picked up several awards for its outstanding products.
An interesting technology that Perlisten has invented is what it calls Directivity Pattern Control (DPC) array which features a 28mm beryllium dome tweeter flanked by two 28mm dome midrange drivers made from TexTreme. This design allows the crossover to be an octave lower than typical domes. And the waveguide lens disperses the sound very widely so that the sweet spot is not narrow at all.
Another interesting technology is the push-pull design of its sub-woofers. It’s somewhat like the Isobaric bass loading system but Perlisten uses a normal carbon-fibre coned driver facing the front like a normal sub-woofer, but there is another woofer on the bottom plate. The second woofer is reversed with the back facing downwards but is wired to fire in phase with the front woofer. The box is sealed. This push-pull design is said to lower second-order distortion by 10-12 dB.
Perlisten’s sub-woofers are also unique in that all models have the same low-frequency response which can go to as low as 14 Hz and the difference is in how loud they can play. And, yes, the sub-woofers’ Class D amps are also made in-house.
Centre Circle has set up a stereo demo system using SPL amps and HiFi Rose streamer. Drop by when you are free. — Posted by Lam Seng Fatt
