Trio C100 Control Amplifier

Imagine the idea of just plugging a source directly into your power amp with no preamp involved. How pure is that? It’s as pure as a PS C100 Control Amp.

We’ve eliminated the preamp yet you have complete control over volume. In functionality this is just like a classic integrated amplifier but with one big difference - there is no internal volume control to damage the audio.

What’s wrong with a volume control?
It is just one more of many impediments in the signal path. In all high-end systems the fewer components the signal has to pass through the better. Volume and level controls restrict dynamic range and frequency response, hampering musical performance.

What we would like to do is eliminate as many impediments to the purity of the signal path as we can and that is just what the C100 Control Amplifier has accomplished. By eliminating the preamplifier and its volume control entirely, all that is left is a high-end variable gain power amplifier and a clean musically satisfying performance.

The Gain Cell is the key
With the invention and subsequent introduction of the PS Audio Gain Cell, the idea of a Variable Gain Power Amplifier, superior to separates, has become a reality. Not only can we eliminate the interconnecting cable, we can also eliminate the addition of volume and balance controls as well!

Imagine a pure dual mono power amplifier with adjustable gain. Then imagine that the gain of the amplifier can be adjusted without the addition of any extra components. In fact, imagine a power amplifier that you can control the gain with either a remote control or a front panel knob and introduce no additional circuitry of any kind.

You are imagining the Trio C100 Control Amplifier. So revolutionary is this concept that we felt it necessary to eschew the title "integrated" and replace it with "Control Amplifier". In point of fact, we are not "integrating" components to form a new product, we are simply controlling what already exists inside of the C100.

The difference in sound between this revolutionary new approach and any other is huge. Traditional volume controls do nothing but degrade the audio signal. Without this degradation the amount and quality of musical information is staggering. You have no idea what you were missing until you hear it reproduced by the affordable C100 Control Amp.

What the C100 provides
The C100 is a dual mono 100 watt per channel Control Amplifier (into 8 Ohms) that produces 200 watt per channel (into 4 Ohms) and drives speaker loads as low as 1.5 Ohms. It has a damping factor that exceeds 500 and is capable of driving any moderate loudspeaker to live orchestral crescendo levels.

The C100 has an input impedance of 47K Ohms, and features 3 RCA inputs and one RCA auxiliary output to feed a separate amplifier for biamping (like the Trio A100).

Speaker outputs are via a single set of high-end gold binding posts that accept either spade or banana plugs.

Volume and input selection is controlled either through the front panel motorized control or the supplied remote control.

The PS C100 Control Amplifier provides the cleanest, lowest distortion purest audio path in the world today. No intrusive volume controls are used, no extra stages of gain, no stepped attenuators, digital ladder networks, CMOS switches, nothing. The C100 takes advantage of the most innovative and technologically advanced audio product in the world, the PS Gain Cell.

Utterly reliable, affordable, built like the proverbial tank and sculpted by master industrial designer Alex Rasmussen, this is truly a work of art from PS Engineering and one you would be proud to own and enjoy for many years to come.

Instead of compromising with separates, think different.

Think short, sweet, pure and uncompromised.

The C100 Control Amplifier may be the answer to cleaning up your entire audio/video chain and pushing the envelope towards Pure Resolution. Now there’s nothing stopping you.