I was at the Sound Society HiFi show here in CPH DK last weekend and had the fortune to listen to both the r5t and the s7t Limited Edition.
What stood out to me, besides overall very very good sound, was the stereo perspective. It was unusually wide and precise. It was similar for the 2 set of speakers and I would therefor assume it is down to the concept of the tweeter/mid array. (it was probably down to the room/setup/where I was sitting but I actually liked the sound from the much cheaper r5t over the super expensive s7t Limited Edition)
But what drivers do they use?
Firstly Perlisten seems to be a very professional company, who know what they are doing and are going about in a scientific way, with good concepts, development using a lot of measurement and strong implementation.
Perlisten does not just use stock OEM drivers for sure, but let’s see if we can maybe deduct who actually produced the drivers for them.
If we start with the woofers, these are all 6.5 inch types throughout their portfolio. In the S-series the driver is stated as 180 mm and in the R-series they are stated as 165 mm, but it you look closely you’ll find that the S-series uses a full round driver chasis, where the R-series uses a truncated chassis, meaning that there is a bit cut off on two sides to make the overall driver more compact in one direction. The basket and the magnet resembles something Wavecor uses. Wavecor has a nice lineup of drivers in this size both with a round shape and a truncated shape which is also used in some of Perlisten’s speakers.
If you take a look at one of the 6.5 drivers from Wavecor here you’ll see that the round version has a diameter of 182 mm and the truncated version is 165.5 mm. … I’d say it is so close that you can say it’s just a choice of wording in the Perlisten marketing material.
Take a look at the driver in the s7t:
Compare this to the Wavecor WF182BD4, I would say there is more than a little resemblance
The cone is obviously different, and I would think Perlisten gets these made somewhere else.
For the woofers in the S series using Textreme carbon, which you will also find used in e.g. SB Acoustics newest Satori MW16TX-8.
Truncated vs. Round
For the tweeter and mid section, I have not been able to find any similar drivers. These drivers seem to be really developed for/by Perlisten. The difference between the drivers in the different series seems only to be the diaphragms, being soft cloth (soft dome) in the R series, and both Berylium and TexTreme in the S series.
There is no doubt that some of the magic in these speakers come from the unusual mid-tweeter concept, the DPC array. And it is really nice to actually see a new approach here, which is also patent pending.
Yes looking at the datasheet but also measurements done on eg. the r7t, it is obvious they know what they are doing and the directivity control is excellent. Good dir control you also find with horns like used by JBL, but the sound of the Perlisten was much more relaxed, but still as clear. (Had a good listen to a set of 4309 also at the show).
I asked about the XOver used and got the same story as can be read on Stereophile https://www.stereophile.com/content/perlisten-s7t-loudspeaker that all 3 domes are crossed over at ca 1.1 kHz and that the outer ones are rolled off over 4-5 kHz.
It is obvious that the waveguide for the mid tweeter controls the horizontal directivity for the higher frequencies and the top and bottom tweeter gives control of vertical dispersion, and I think as important the extra excursion to XOver at just over 1.1 kHz.
Take a look at this video from Erin’s Audio Corner,, which provides a lot of good insight to the inner workings. 14.31 min into the video Erin shows measurements of the individual drivers. Here it is easy to see the relatively small frequency band the two outer drivers handle.
As Erin states in the video the response is super smooth and linear, and also the directivity is excellent. This can also be seen on SPINorama where you’ll find good measurements of directionality.
There are some similarities to the brand new Genelec 8381A Main Monitor, where 4 domes are placed at the 4 corners of a large waveguide. Maybe this would actually be a next step up, placing a 1 inch tweeter in say a 6.5 inch waveguide, and placing 4 additional 1 inch tweeters in each corner!
By the way taking a bit of tour through different speakers on SPINorama it is easy to compare both frequency response and directivity. Speakers which really stand out as super well engineered are Perlisten, GGNTKT, KEF, Kii and Dutch&Dutch and a few others.
The XOvers seems very well built and quite complex.
I can say that they played very loud in a large room, without really sounding to stressed, so good SPL capability.
There is no pseudo science about Perlisten
As for the tweeter and midrange concept, I’m a little doubtful if it wouldn’t be as good a solution to have a normal round waveguide with the same overall diameter, and with just one tweeter. This of course requires a tweeter which can move as much air as the 3 ones used here. This is down to linear excurtion called Xmax. Most dome tweeters have an Xmax of around 0.2 mm to 0.5 mm peak-peak, but some e.g. SB acoustics SB26ADC is up at 1.2 mm. I would guess the tweeters used by Perlisten actually do have quite good Xmax, so to have the same possibilities as the DPC array you would need a rather special tweeter
And as always I cant say for sure if the woofer drivers are made by Wavecor or not, it’s a guess on my behalf, and this information is only here to maybe give some inspirations if you are building speakers yourself. Let’s go du some DIY speaker building