My nutso idea of using an electric motor tied to an electric generator to provide perfectly regulated and pure AC to stereo systems had been shot down within seconds of presenting it. And, for good reason.
It was clearly impractical from any number of points. But, the idea stuck.
If the AC power in our homes cannot be repaired, I knew it had to be generated from scratch.
For most of us, when we get stuck, we turn to a friend or a colleague. Sometimes that friend or colleague serves more as a sounding board than an advisor—and this works because in order to explain a technical concept to someone who is not technical, you have to break the idea down into its simplest form. And that action often results in you seeing the problem in a completely different light.
My friend, and former colleague at Genesis Technologies, Mark Schifter was always a good sounding board, as was my friend and our attorney, Peter Rudy. Mark's pretty technical as is Peter, but not at a circuit level. So they were perfect for bouncing off this crazy notion—which I did.
Peter piped up and said, "oh, you're trying to build your own power plant?"
Bingo. Whatever we wound up with, now it would have a name. The Power Plant.
Mark, on the other hand, thought it was a really good and novel idea and said, "have you asked Doug about it?"
Doug Goldberg is an interesting fellow. At the time, he was the director of engineering at the skunk works division of Northrop Grumman. Under his watchful eye were literally thousands of some of our country's brightest geeks and nerds. Engineers of all disciplines. And, at the the same time, Doug's one of us. A crazy audiophile. He had designed most all of Mark's old company's products—Audio Alchemy.*
*Which is where I first saw the idea of separating out the I2S clocks and data from a DAC which is where and how we would, years later, move from his RJ45 connector to an HDMI connector on all of our digital audio products. But, that's fuel for an entirely new series of history posts.
I got Doug on the phone, explained my whacky idea to him and, within a microsecond, Doug came back with something that not only would change the course of PS Audio forever, but the audio industry itself.
"You're wife's right. It's a crazy idea. Why don't you just make an electronic version of your electric generator?"
"Say what?"
"A power amp fed by a sine wave oscillator. Simple."
Holy sh*t! Bingo! Nail on the head. OMG! Of course!
A power amplifier has all the right stuff. Designed properly, it can have extremely low output impedance down in the depths of what's technically possible. In fact, a quick calculation showed me that its output impedance could be lower than the equivalent of a 1/4" copper wire. That, in fact, it could be so low that it would be like camping out within an inch of the city's power generating station (probably too noisy for good HiFi listening).
Simple and brilliant. Now, I had to figure out how to build such a thing.
