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Editors' Choice Award 2024 – The Absolute Sound Magazine
Editors' Choice Award 2022 – The Absolute Sound Magazine
Best Buy Award – Home Cinema Choice
Reference-like Performance with Style, Beauty, and Devastating Power
The all new S/812 powered subwoofer takes REL's medium chassis concept to reference-like levels of performance and does so with style, beauty, and devastating power. Exceling with both music and movies, it delivers incredible levels of all around performance. The S/812 provides a satisfying taste of what REL's reference model subwoofers offer, but at a fraction of the cost.
Award-Winning Performance
The Absolute Sound magazine honored the VREL S/812 with an Editors' Choice Award for 2024 and 2022.
"The heir to the extraordinary S/5, REL’s latest is not just a step forward but also a sonic leap into a different class. The bar has been raised on every feature that made its forbear an affordable reference. Yes, it retains the forward-firing 12″ woofer and companion 12″ downward-firing passive but adds carbon fiber backing for strength and accuracy."
"There are new sets of custom filters, while the power of its NextGen5 Class D amplifier has been bumped up to 800 watts. Thus, it plays deeper and faster with greater transparency and reproduces the dimensional outlines of a soundstage with a precision normally reserved for the headiest of flagships."
Best Buy Award
England's Home Cinema Choice handed the S/812 a Best Buy Award. "There are plenty of cheaper subs, and some can even go nearly as deep as the S/812, but they’re unable to mine such depths 
while remaining so composed," notes Steve Withers.
"Good bass shouldn’t dominate, it should be an integral part of your cinema soundstage, adding low-frequency impact where needed. This is what the REL S/812 achieves so well – it goes deep with control, shows effortless speed and agility, 
and can seamlessly blend with your other speakers to enhancing whatever you’re watching. It misses out on some feature finery, but hits hard where it counts."
Shattering Performance Barriers
The S/812 is a triumphant development that exceeded every expectation of the REL design team. Every aspect of the previous generation's inner workings were examined without regard to the critical and customer-driven success of what had come before. REL's engineers turned a fresh eye to power requirements, driver improvements, and specialty filters, upgrading each to extract all the extra performance possible. Along with this came the necessary cabinet refinements necessary to take full advantage of the other technological upgrades.
For the S/812, REL required far stronger deep bass output between 19-35 Hz, vastly improved home theater dynamics, and an even more open and spacious sound field for music and film. The design team turned to REL's NextGen5 amplifier – tuned to 800 watts, but with huge reserves of power beyond this. The team then added a light film of carbon fiber to the rear of the driver to handle the extra power, and developed two new sets of custom filters to extract the utmost in brute force and spaciousness. Finally, REL imbued the S/812 with the ability to be stacked in four-unit or six-unit line arrays, just like the company's reference models.
Upgrades to S/812's Bass Engine
In order for the S/812 to cope with the massive power upgrades, REL used its ContinuousCast™ Alloy Cone Driver. To permit its thin, aluminum cone to survive 800 watts and an incredibly long stroke, REL's engineers added an ultra-lightweight backing of pure carbon fiber, strategically placed over portions of the rear surface of the cone. This produces two benefits. It strengthens and stiffens the cone, and it also eliminates 'reversion;' the backwave inside the cabinet is now prevented from interfering with the main launch of bass into the room. The result is more accurate and far louder deep bass.
There's Nothing Passive About This Passive Radiator
The S/812's uniquely tuned passive radiator uses special suspensions, which provides an additional 30mm (1.2") of linear travel, to produce performance far beyond conventional subwoofers. This new SuperProgressive™ passive radiator produces extremely long travel allowing for very loud output, while retaining the variable stiffness of its suspension. This allows it to act like a sealed box compact 12” design at low volume and a high output 14” design at its limit.
A Power Amplifier on Steroids – 800 Watts and Counting
At 800 watts, the NextGen5 amplifier borrows from REL reference models and boasts huge reservoirs of power and current. This is a huge 45% increase in power compared to the 500 watts used in the previous version. (previous version was 500 watts) is needed to deliver both the The formidable power increase is a must for modern state-of-the-art home theater, as well as to produce the deepest bass in a high end two-channel hi-fi or AV system. This increase in power is necessitated by REL's development on the musical front of an all-new circuit termed PerfectFilter™ that balances both frequency extremes.
PerfectFilter performs two seemingly disparate qualities. It extends the strong, even response of the extreme low end of bass frequencies, while simultaneously opening up air and delicacy in the middle and high frequencies of one's system. Additionally, REL applied customized PureTheatre™ filters to allow the S/812 to deliver the most awe-inspiring home theater effects ever offered in a classic REL.
Serie S Line Array – Stacked for Ultimate Performance
In the real world, bass possess width, depth, and height. By stacking up to three subwoofer units per side into a Line Array (stereo or home theater main L-R speakers,) the proper perspective and height of sonic events are illuminated. This elevates reproduction from conventional stereo or theater to a floor-to-ceiling panoramic, full scale perspective of each sonic event. Reviewers are lining up to marvel at the transformation of music and film into the full-scale representation that REL Line Arrays uniquely deliver.
"Frankly Stunning"
"The REL stack added an openness and airiness to the synthesizer in Hans Zimmer's soundtrack from Interstellar. While two subwoofers easily reproduced the fundamental bass and moved a lot of air, as many subwoofers can, adding the REL six-pack to the Dreaming of the Crash cut was frankly stunning," observes Ken Redmond, The Tracking Angle, January 22, 2024.
"The first two minutes are filled with sounds of wind and thunder, and I could almost feel the wind in my listening room. The thunder sounded realistically distant and rolled deeply through the room. The buildup that started at about 2:40 was mesmerizing, and by the end of the cut, I had been transported to a place that had a solitary, desolate feeling."
Zero Compression Wireless Capability
Free yourself from the hassle and clutter of wired subwoofer connections by going wireless with your S/812. The option REL Airship system (sold separately) uses zero compression wireless technology for lightning-quick response and incredible overall performance.
