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PS Audio History

It was the summer of 1974. Paul McGowan (the "I" in this story) was a disc jockey at a local FM rock and roll station and, Stan Warren was a waterbed installer and Audiophile, living in the same town. We two had yet to meet.

The radio station had commissioned me to design and build 'a good sounding phono preamplifier' for their studio, because they couldn't afford to purchase a new one from a broadcast supply house. I was cheap.

So, I designed such a thing, borrowing most of the circuit values out of an industry standard book known as 'The Op-Amp Designer's Cookbook'.

I used a pair of 9 volt transistor radio batteries for the preamp power supply, and housed the whole experimental mess in a cigar box. Then I auditioned the gadget on my bare bones stereo system (a Kenwood integrated amp and Phased Array loudspeakers) and I deemed the results 'pretty good.' But I really needed to have my cigar box preamp on a much better system in order to evaluate the sound.

One of the radio station's sponsors was Ball Waterbed Company, owned by the local High End audio guru, Norm Little. Norm had a tri-amped Audio Research system with two Vega 18' sub woofers, a set of Jantzen electrostats, a Rabco turntable, and usually a small amount of certain smokeable materials (it was the early 70's, after all). It seemed like a great place to try the little unit, so, cigar box in hand, I set off to Norm's house for the big test.

After partaking in some of life's finer pleasures, and listening to Norm's awesome stereo system (Stevie Wonder's 'Living for the City,' and Fleetwood Mac's 'Rumors' were the hot tickets at the time), I pulled out the cigar box wonder so it could be hooked up. 'You're not hooking that up to my system. Hell, it doesn't even have a plug! Take it to Stan's house. He likes that weird hobbyist stuff.' So I headed off to Stan's house.

Stan lived in a small two bedroom house in Orcutt, California with his wife Gwen. The entire living room had been taken over by a pair of Vega 17R's, and next to the couch was a stand-mounted Rabco ST-4 turntable. What struck me about the turntable was the way it was mounted: on wooden poles protruding through holes cut in the wooden floor, and anchored in the dirt beneath the house. Electronics were an SAE 31B power amplifier and a Dynaco PAT 4 preamplifier.

Stan had no problem attaching the cigar box wonder to his system and played it for quite some time. It sounded just fine, and I was prepared to present it to the radio station as a finished product.

About a week later, my wife Terri and I were sitting at home when there came a knock. It was Stan. He came in and, in a Stan sort of way, got right to the point at hand. 'Would you take $500 for half the new company?'

I replied, 'What new company?'

'The new one we're going to start to build the little phono preamplifier you brought over.'

'For radio stations?'

'No, for Audiophiles.'

'Who the hell are Audiophiles?'

And so, $500 looked awfully good at the time, and PS Audio was born.

Stan and I worked for nearly 6 months to develop the phono preamplifier into a viable product. Along the way, one of my cats knocked over a lamp and set my household on fire, completely burning the structure and everything in it to the ground. Stan showed up, and offered us the extra bedroom in his small home; the house became the PS headquarters.

Things went well in the design process until our unemployment checks ran out, and the two of us were forced to make a tough decision: get jobs or make PS Audio fly.

We took out an ad in Audio Magazine, and offered the phono preamplifier for $59.95 with a full

money back guarantee that was very simple: 'If you don't think this makes a tremendous improvement in the way your records sound, send it back for a full refund.' Out of nearly 2000 units shipped, we received back only a handful.

One gentlemen returned his PS phono preamplifier because it made his speakers seem to disappear. He was unhappy that he could no longer pinpoint left and right sources. Considering how much time we had spent trying to make speakers disappear, this gave us a good laugh.

Once the little phono preamplifier's concept and performance took hold in the marketplace, our customers began to ask, 'If you guys can make records sound so great, how about making a volume control for this thing?'

They were correct. The stand-alone phono preamplifier had no controls and had to be plugged into the auxiliary inputs of either a preamplifier or a receiver so that customers could bypass their internal phono preamplifier. They were still obliged to use their unit's volume control and line stage (the small amplification stage that usually follows the volume control in a preamplifier).

When Stan and I began our redesign we first used only a potentiometer (volume control) and nothing else. The phono preamp sounded great! We then struggled for months to design a line amplifier that sounded good, so that we could make a preamp (volume control and line stage). No luck.

We got close, but nothing sounded as good as not having a line stage. So, Stan suggested a switch. 'Let's give them a choice, line stage or no line stage.' Thus, the Linear Control Center (LCC) was born, the world's first preamp with a switchable line stage. We quickly discovered that most people had no idea what all this meant, so we came up with a number of names to help explain its function, including: Line stage in/out and Straightwire. This simple creation set a pattern of innovative design that has characterized PS Audio for more than two decades.

Following the introduction of the LCC, we needed a power amplifier to complete the PS Audio system. Enter the Model One. A rather plain looking affair, this first PS Audio amplifier was actually quite popular.

One funny memory that revolves around the PS Model One power amplifier begins with me on the test bench trying desperately to set the bias of an early Model One, and Stan waiting impatiently with his arms folded, because our car is running, the trunk is full, and we're late for the airport. Tomorrow is the amp's debut at the CES show in Chicago. As fate would have it, the amp explodes as I inadvertently drop a clip lead into the circuit, and the two of us decide not only to pack up the amp as we go, but also to take the entire test bench as well and rebuild the amp that night in the hotel room.

The first day of the CES show finds me in the extra bedroom of the hotel trying to rebuild the amplifier, and Warren, wearing a suit and tie in the showroom, pitching the product to potential customers.

One of the dealers finishes looking at our stuff, walks out of the showroom, inadvertently opens the door to the bedroom where I'm working at the bench and exclaims 'Wow, you build them right here!'

(To this day we still receive calls from people speaking fondly of their still functioning, and loved, PS IV or IVH preamplifier. The PS IV and the IIC amplifiers were by far the largest selling and best loved of all the PS Audio combinations of pre and power amp.)

At that time in the company's development, Stan and I also decided to create the world's first integrated amplifier with High End aspirations. In fact, Stan's final contribution to the company was his concept of the Elite Integrated. He was not at the company when the unit finally 'hit the streets' but he was surely instrumental in its design.

A few years passed and the next milestone for PS Audio was the arrival of Dr. Robert (Bob) Odell. Odell, a physician, had contributed a number of audio designs to Harman Kardon and was a highly regarded designer. Introduced to PS staff by Arnie Nudell (then) of Infinity, Bob was anxious for a new challenge in audio.

Bob came with an interesting perspective. Although he strongly wished to join the company, Bob would do so only if he felt that he had something substantial to contribute. At the time, Bob had been laboring over a new power amplifier design, and he brought a prototype with him to one of the three PS Audio listening rooms. This particular room was the livingroom of PS technical director Rick Cullen, and it held a pair of Acoustat 2 + 2 electrostatic loudspeakers, a PS IVH preamplifier, and a PS IIC Plus.

We hooked up Bob's prototype design and were totally unprepared for the sonic splendor that followed. His amp blew us away, it was so good. Our jaws dropped - and stayed that way.

Needless to say, Bob was taken into the company and his first product was the legendary PS 200C. The link on the 200C is to the original review in Stereophile by Tony Cordesman.

This amp incorporated a lot of very cool innovations. The transistors were mounted directly to polished solid copper bars that were, in turn, connected directly to the power supply capacitors. This was a real innovative approach because typically the output power transistors in an amplifier are connected to their power source via either wires or PC board traces. The exotic approach taken in the PS 200C eliminated all the problems associated with wires and traces, and, connected the power up in the lowest impedance, most direct way ever devised (even to this day).

A number of the first 200C's were prone to detonation at the most unfortunate of times. Tony Cordesman, a reviewer then for Audio Magazine, had a 200C catch fire during a listening session, which prompted his wife to throw all of Tony's gear on to a porch adjacent to the living room, and present him with a fire extinguisher.

Like many Audiophile products, the 200C was a brilliant design which pushed technology to its limits. Like a fine race car, tuned to the edge of performance, things can and do go wrong. However, we were able to quickly solve the 200C problems, and the amp went on to earn itself an enviable reputation for both sonics and reliability.

Bob Odell had attained his goal of making a major contribution to the company, and Bob participated in the design of virtually every piece of gear produced at PS Audio from that point on.

PS Goes digital

About this time, digital audio finally began to get interesting. There were only two machines out at the time, the Philips and the Sony. Both companies had worked together developing the CD player, and now each of them had a competing machine. From an Audiophile's point of view, the Philips was a much better sounding machine than the Sony, but neither really held a candle to the sound quality of any good turntable. In fact, both CD players sounded abominable and a great controversy arose (analog vs. digital) that is still heard today, although less after now.

So we bought a Philips machine and a Sony, and started to work on them. Our idea was to replace the analog stage of one of the machines (because Bob and I knew nothing about digital) and see if it sounded better.

Remember, the CD players were designed by a group of engineers we commonly referred to as 'Flatlanders,' a term we coined because of their myopic view of audio and good sonics. Their credo was 'If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist.' Kind of the same view cartographers took in the days when mankind still thought the world to be flat. So, because the 'Flatlanders' had designed the analog stage, using cheap op-amps and little in the way of Audiophile savy, we figured our chances for success would be good. We were right.

Enter our first digital product, the PS CD -1. Based, ultimately, on the Philips machine, it was the world's first Audiophile CD player, and it didn't sound bad for its day.

Soon after the introduction of the CD-1 player, we began to wonder if we could extract musical information out of the CD player's digital output. Understand, that at the time, information on the CD process was very secretive and only Sony and Phillips had access to the Red Book, a comprehensive technical guide about the CD process.

The digital output, found on the rear of a growing number of CD players, was intended to be connected to a forthcoming video processor that the two companies had dreamed up. The idea was that you would connect the digital output up to your TV set through the video processor and watch still snapshots of the artists as they performed. Kind of like a funky MTV (which didn't exist at the time). It was a failure.

But working closely with both Rick Cullen and our engineer Mark Merrill (who did know something about digital), we discovered that, indeed, there was a signal coming out of the digital output that contained what appeared to be music. Voila!

I then came up with an idea that borrowed from the original PS Audio modular phono stage concept. Could we build an outboard unit that would take the digital signal from the CD player, convert it to analog, and thereby maintain complete control over the entire digital to analog chain? If we could, the CD player would then function only as a transport.

Enter the world's first D to A processor, the PS Digital Link. This unique idea spawned an entire cottage industry within the Audiophile community, still strong today. The Digital Link was quickly followed by competing companies' products such as the Arcam black box and the Theta. Obviously, these companies had the same idea as we did around the same time independent of our own. But, the fact remains, PS was first.

While we worked hard to improve digital sound, we pursued analog refinements, too.

In power amps we had already complemented the 200C with the smaller and more affordable 100C, and introduced to the world the concept of the large transformer for small signal devices.

Originally developed as an option for the PS IVH, the PS HCPS (High Current Power Supply) was now becoming available on more and more PS products, including the PS MCA (which was our moving coil phono cartridge head amp) and the 4.5 preamplifier.

The 4.5 preamplifier, our second most popular analog product of all time, sported and entirely new look for PS: gone was the 'black box with a plain knob or two,' replaced by a more contemporary design.

The 4.5 was soon followed by the PS 5.0, then both were complimented by a new power amp group named Delta. There was the PS 100 Delta stereo power amplifier and the PS 250 Delta mono block amplifier.

The PS Power Sonic was another modular add on. This power conditioner was an isolation transformer that cleaned up the power coming out of the wall, and provided a fully balanced output (the first to do that), which is so prevelant in power conditioners today. It sold well during the years that power conditioners were all the rage.

In the digital arena we introduced the PS Super Link, an improved Digital Link D to A processor. It was about this time that, over dinner one evening in Beaver Creek, Colorado, Arnie Nudell and I discussed going into business together.

Specifically, Arnie asked if I'd build loudspeakers instead of preamps. There wasn't a whole lot of thinking involved on my part, because there was no one else in the world whom I'd rather run a business than Arnie.

And so the stage was set: Bob and I sought a buyer for PS Audio.

The new regime

Enter Randy Patton, and Steve Jeffery, late of Sumo and late of JBL respectively. Bob Odell and I spent a number of months making sure that these two guys had the right feel to carrying on in the tradition of PS Audio, and we agreed to remain on as design consultants. A deal was finally struck and, in 1990, Steve and Randy bought PS Audio.

Over the next few years, the new PS Audio introduced a number of innovative and wonderful products, including the Ultra Link D to A processor, a new Super Link D to A processor, the Reference Link, the Lambda CD transport, and the 5.5 and 7.0 preamplifiers.

But, as sometimes happens, the two partners decided to go their separate ways. Steve Jeffrey became the President of Wadia Digital, one of the most prestigious High End audio companies in the world. Randy stayed on as President of both PS Audio and Threshold Corporation, and he managed to navigate both companies through some pretty treachrous waters, until the middle of 1998 when PS Audio folded due to severe cash problems.

Everyone involved with PS Audio over the years gave it their best because they believed in the brand and they believed in the mission statement.

As we look towards the future, with the name now back in the hands of Paul McGowan, we remain convinced that a focused approach to both products and customer relationships can serve both the brand and its patrons.

Please revisit this Web site from time to time so we can let you know when there are new product developments.

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