Every product in your system is a manifestation of a designer's heart and soul. Someone, somewhere, had a vision or a directive and from that they proceeded to create a physical piece of gear that represents those ideas.
Rarely are those concepts converted to a physical reality by a single individual. Depending on the company, it might be anywhere from a small team of two or three to a group of thousands. The final outcome might be modified, tweaked, sent back for redesign, adjusted, or approved by as few as one or as many as a big crowd.
Much depends on the nature of the product. Imagine the committees and hoops an airliner has to pass through as compared to a mass market receiver or, closer to home, a preamp or turntable.
What's interesting to me is how it all starts with the vision of a single person: Joe Sutter and the Boeing 737, Jørn Utzon and the Sydney Opera House, James Watt and the steam engine, Steve Jobs and the iPhone, Elon Musk and the Tesla electric car (and don't forget Space X).
At PS Audio it's the same thing: Scott McGowan and Sprout, Chris Brunhaver and the aspen series, Doug Goldberg and MultiWave, Ted Smith and DirectStream, Bob Stadtherr and the Power Plants, me on lots of our products.
What's key to this thought is the heart and soul of those individual products. How did they start? What was the original vision? How close did the final outcome get?
When you press play, you're breathing life into a system that embodies the hearts and souls of all those innovators that came before.
End of today's sermon.
