REL S/812 > review in TAS
The pursuit of the bottom octave in sound reproduction looms as a sort of final frontier for many enthusiasts. It’s a task that’s generally accomplished in one of two ways—by purchasing a completely new set of loudspeakers (ouch!), or by adding a subwoofer (or, as is the case here, a pair of them) to fill the deep-bass vacuum in your current system. The second option is also a daunting prospect. Expensive and acoustically challenging, the lowest octaves (loosely defined as 20–40Hz) demands power and requires space. Yet in spite of the challenges and potential pitfalls, I know of few audiophiles who do not aspire to experience music in all its glory—and nothing short of a full-spectrum system can really offer that.
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Bottom Line
In sonic performance, S/812 hit the bottom-line benchmarks that I’ve come to expect of REL’s top-drawer subs. Frequency extension was rock stable and linear, plummeting like a pile driver into the low twenty-cycle range with nary a complaint, box resonance, squeak, or rattle. Even at assault-force levels, I wasn’t able to trigger the spurious resonances or overhang artifacts that tend to cloud the ambient picture. Traditionally, subwoofers—bass-reflex or sealed-box—may be characterized as fast or slow, tight or loose, depending on the configuration. The big passive radiator of the S/812 straddles both worlds. There’s an emphasis on speed and control, but the sub doesn’t clamp down on decay cues or attenuate resonances.
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A friendly warning: A pair of S/812 changes the personality, the emotional output, of a system. Further, to a substantial degree it changes your relationship with familiar recordings. And prepare to feel a little deflated when you remove it from the system. It’s like air being released from a balloon—the ripe fullness of ambient energy and atmosphere diminishes; the outlines of the soundstage draw inward; reverberant decay doesn’t sustain as long; and the sense of encountering the furthest corners of an auditorium is reduced. Remove the REL and well-articulated images became harder, more individualistic, but less of a cohesive part of the organic musical event.
The REL S/812 unambiguously established not only that it’s got game, but also that in extension, sheer output, and righteous slam it’s got that game down pat. However, putting these benchmarks aside for the moment, it’s the seamless system integration and nuanced transparency that distinguishes REL from many of its rivals. It became one with the character and voice of my main speakers in a way that made me feel I’d simply upgraded them to the next larger and more deeply extended model. My advice? Audition the S/812 at your peril. A single one will spoil you. But a pair of S/812s? They’ll spoil you for anything less.
- Neil Gader, September 2020
Link to product: REL S/812
Link to review: The Absolute Sound