I was upstairs in the sales office yesterday rummaging around through our PS museum when I happened up one of our best selling preamplifiers of all time, the PSIV, circa 1978.
This was our very first full 17" chassis preamplifier and it was a beauty. Features? Well, it's main feature was the ability to switch in and out its internal gain stage—moving between a passive preamp and an active preamp. Why? Because each had its charms.
The passive section sounded more open and relaxed but a little wimpy in the bottom end. The active stage solved the passive's shortcomings but added a few of its own.
For the most part, people used it as an active preamplifier because it sounded best and worked really well.
When I think about how far we've come in the intervening 46 years, it occurs to me that it's a little surprising we're still making 17" chassis with essentially the same functions. No, we no longer offer a passive output—that's because in the meantime we've figured out how to make 100% better sound than what can be achieved passively—but otherwise it's volume, balance, input select, etc.
What's funny to me is remembering back then how I imagined the future to be. I figured there's be no separates, that active wireless loudspeakers would be the norm and what we were building back then were the building blocks that would eventually get us there.
I guess I am not much of a fortune teller.
