DLS Reference RW10

Ten inch subwoofer with thick rubber gasket, Polypropylene cone and concave dust dome bearing the DLS logo. The chassis is pressed steel with a handsome purple coating. This coating is the same as applied to the extensive plastic shield mounted around the magnet. The back and side vents of the subwoofer have inserts of acoustically transparent grille type material/foam and this is presumably to keep dirt from entering the voice coil gap. The speaker is a single coil two Ohm nominal load, (Re 1.9 Ohms) thus making it ideal for drawing all the power possible from a medium sized monoblock amplifier. The terminals are the squeeze type and are Nickel plated. The design looks handsome from behind and the speaker would look beautiful in a windowed type installation. It was supplied for review with a profoundly inert sealed MDF cabinet made by Acoustic Wood, complete with a length of Chord speaker cable, ready fitted internally to a Neutrik Speakon gas tight connector. It was also supplied with the corresponding wire to connect to the amplifier. The manual is a one sheet affair, you get an English and a Swedish copy. It contains good basic information and recommends a sealed enclosure and suggests the speaker would be best for ‘tight bass suitable for the audiophiles listening to classical music, jazz and soft rock.’ A sticker is included.
– Frequency response: 25Hz to 2kHz
– Power Handling: 250w RMS (500w max)
– Polypropylene cone
– Pressed Steel chassis
– Large rubber gasket
– 2 Ohm voice coil
– Nickel plated 4mm squeeze post terminals
– Voice Coil Diameter: 2 inch (50mm)
– Mounting depth 150mm
– 47 Oz magnet
– Efficiency: 86.5dB 1w/1M
– Voice coil inductance @ 1kHz: 0.89mH
– Xmax: +9mm
– Fms: 28.8Hz
Review by Adam Rayner
I absolutely love all things Swedish. Volvo, SAAB, Smorgasbord and pickled and smoked fish, like cheap Gravad Lax in IKEA’s restaurant, yum! Some Swedes enjoy a smoked eel whilst happily inebriated at a muddy arena watching five V8-engined tractors with 20,000 bhp pulling lumps of concrete through mud while the commentator hollers, ‘FULLLLL PUUULLLLL!’
The other real strong Swedish stripe for me is excellence in production of loudspeaker tranducers.
In DLS’ case, these go up to a very high level indeed. I recall meeting a ridiculously beautiful couple in Las Vegas at the CES one year. Their Audi A4 had been shipped from Finland to Las Vegas as it had won European Champion two years running in the then still quite young EMMA sound off format. It was a benchmark reference of stereo excellence for me for many years. (Now largely replaced by Mark Turner’s old BMW in the sonic memory files.) The amplifiers were DLS as well, which proves the unusual exception to the rule that god-like makers of speakers will tend to be me-too operators if they get into amplifiers and vice-versa for amplifier makers. Morel don’t make car amps and AudioWave don’t make speakers.
The subwoofer here is, I gather, from only part-way up the slippery and costly pole towards audiophillia, yet is a bit of a legend in its own lunchtime because of competitors who are doing amazingly well with them. Anthony Smythe won the 2008 EMMA Advanced Unlimited Championship in Europe. Andy Blanch also uses one and he’s Advanced Five Channel league leader and fancied for UK champion.
The ten inch in particular is small enough, with a small enough sealed enclosure requirement to make it possible to install in the front of the car. Thus, crossover points can be higher and some of the weight and snap to leading edges of bigger notes can then come from the woofer as well without pulling the image back into the boot.
I hooked the speaker into its box, enjoying the simple circle of rubbery gasketing. Old fashioned as hell versus all the panoply of prettily-machined stuff out there using diamond cut Aluminium as a substitute for close tolerance speaker engineering. This was easy to seal against the face of the box�s neatly routered-out baffle. It was then connected to an amplifier that�d make the distributor blench. I have a Massive Audio DB3000 amplifier here and at two Ohms it can output some 1500 watts. He asked me not to use it.
So I allowed the JBL GTO24001 resident reference bass amp to stay in the rig, which truth to tell was pure sloth and every bit as stupid. It’s rated at 2,400 watts at the two Ohm load the subwoofer shows. However, like all things, headroom helps and position three was chosen for the amp gain.
Just so you know: RULE ONE ‘There are only three possible settings for a gain gain control.’ 1. All the Way on. 2. All the way off. 3. Somewhere in between.
Like Jeremy Clarkson with the Bentley on Top Gear, I could have blown a tyre up but this subwoofer and the Bentley alike are engineered for excellence rather than hooliganism. But I did want to know how the sub coped with big peaks as this is crucial to high end performance and I didn’t want any hint of the amp running out of effort.
I did find the limit to output early on, so as to work out a sensible headroom and thus relative level with the satellite speakers. All of which is about the gain setting on the amp. The same Focal Spirit of Sound #6 disc was used yet again. It’s crucial to use a good recording that you know inside out.
Straight away I could tell it was nice and tight. It tracked the melody and it held taut under difficult passages. It makes a rich and textured bass and I can see how a high crossover point and front mounting would be a killer pure SQ route. I did find it lacked a little scale and wondered about the bigger one but then a twelve is inherently that much harder to control and they sent the ten on purpose.
You have to put it in perspective with the mental reference, which is the Morel Ultimo 12. That’s more than thrice the price and uses exotic materials, whereas this is a better than average pretty-finish pressed steel sub. It’s still a hefty price tag for all its cosmetic appeal so the buyer of this will be a lover of quality who would if they could but can’t afford to indulge their whim with the likes of the Morel or a higher-end DLS.
It’ll happily use a slice over its rated power and again, I think is rated not to appeal to boomers but to follow a Bentley-esque specification of ‘Sufficient’ as to power.
I liked it a lot and found myself doing the same old procedure of gouching out and just really enjoying the music, listening past places I normally would as I dipped into different tracks. This is the oldest indicator of pure enjoyment and after so many years doesn’t happen as often as you�d think. I’d love to spend weeks really getting to know a driver and this one in particular states plainly that right out of the box it needs a running-in period of fifteen to twenty hours. This could take a month for a light user.
But I didn’t need to play it for long before its quality shone through. A tad polite and restrained, it offers great linearity in that it doesn’t get better or worse as you play louder or less. Some cheaply made woofers will only really do their thing once given a spanking (usually high SPL high power things) but the Reference RW10 has a well designed suspension and works very well at low and higher volume, too.
So not cheap and you will need a good amp to run it best and it won’t be useful for angry moments but a real bargain for SQ hounds who would otherwise be spending much more.
Sound Quality 9.0
Build Quality 9.0
Power Handling 7.0
Efficiency 8.0
Value For Money 8.0
Overall rating 8.2