You can’t judge a book by its cover, and you sure can’t judge a house by how clean the living room is. Surface impressions might be tidy and impressive, but what really matters is what’s behind the walls—what’s supporting everything you see.
That idea kept coming back to me as we were finalizing the new PMG Signature preamplifier.
One peek inside the chassis and you’ll see what I mean. Rows of beautiful film capacitors. Big ones. Hundreds of microfards and not one is in the actual signal path. It’s all power supply.
Power isolation, regulation, storage, shielding—it takes up most of the real estate. Not because it looks good (though it does), but because it’s necessary to give the tiny, delicate audio signals a clean, rock-solid foundation.
Back in 1974, my first preamps were lucky to have clean power rails, let alone a design like this. We’ve never done anything this elaborate—and never for the sake of complexity. It’s all in service of the music.
Because what matters most is what you don’t see—and what you don’t hear.
