PSI Audio celebrates 45 years of Swiss precision speakers with an open house event on 28th and 29th October

Yverdon-les-Bains, 17th August 2022 – For 45 years, PSI Audio has been providing outstanding sound reproduction to professionals around the world. And there is no sign of slowing down: the Swiss manufacturer still has a lot of ideas and projects for products to come. At this point, however, it is time to look back at the history of PSI Audio.

45 years of Swiss audio precision

In 1977, when Alain Roux founded what would later become PSI Audio, his goal was clear: to build the best sound reproduction systems available. In 1988, when it became a limited company, Relec SA (for Roux Electroacoustique), he had already established his abilities at creating outstanding speakers and manufactured award-winning OEM products for renowned international brands. Possibly the most prolific pro-audio brand to rely on the expertise from Yverdon-les-Bains was Studer, whose studio monitor range from 1992 to 2003 was developed and built by Relec SA. After Studer had been acquired by an international company and stopped selling speakers, Relec SA decided to continue the studio monitor range under a new brand name – PSI Audio was born. Today, the brand stands for all-analogue designs so meticulously developed and crafted, that their acoustic fidelity is unrivalled. PSI Audio brings world-renowned Swiss precision to studio monitoring.

True-to-life sound for discerning professionals

The one central characteristic in all PSI Audio efforts is and has always been fidelity. Speakers should not have a sound, they should not make the audio sound bigger, or better, or more polished – they should simply reproduce the sound as it was intended. Especially in a professional environment where audio is created to be played back on millions of different systems in millions of different settings, the monitor speakers must not colour or transform the sound in any way. With PSI Audio speakers, what you hear is what you get – truly unaltered audio reproduction as close to the original source as possible. With PSI Audio there are no surprises when a mix gets played back on a different system – the engineer can fully rely on the sound image displayed in the studio.

Autonomous production for outstanding quality

To achieve the level of quality that has earned PSI Audio its spot on the world map of most important studio gear brands, the experts in Yverdon-les-Bains keep as much of the manufacturing process in-house as possible. Unsatisfied with the performance of available parts, PSI Audio started developing and building its own drivers, winding its own coils, magnetizing its own magnets. The circuit boards are hand-soldered, every bit and piece is measured and matched to even out what little tolerances the high-quality components still possess. A PSI Audio speaker is not an amalgamation of random parts bought on the market – it is a well-developed professional tool hand-manufactured by trained experts. Every single product is meticulously measured and calibrated in the company’s anechoic chamber; a process recorded on the individual measuring protocols provided with each purchase. PSI Audio speakers are not throwaway products; they are long-time companions the likes of which no other manufacturer can offer.

Proprietary technology, manufactured by hand

Building a speaker with the utmost care certainly helps, but still requires the design to be immaculate to get the desired results. PSI Audio has developed several proprietary technologies to elevate the products to entirely new levels of fidelity and precision. Compensated Phase Response (CPR) painstakingly time-aligns the individual chassis in an all-analogue circuitry, making sure the entire spectrum is reproduced perfectly in phase. Adaptive Output Impedance (AOI) monitors and corrects membrane movement, practically eliminating acoustic smearing from unchecked inertia. Class G/H amplifiers deliver ample power at extremely low levels of noise and distortion. With the latest revision of the A25-M, PSI Audio innovated in the driver field, introducing the Extended Dome Driver (EXD) as a cross between dome and cone drivers. Finally, there is the non-speaker innovation that has revolutionized the way we think about room modes and acoustics: the active bass trap AVAA C20 that simply sucks resonant frequencies between 15 and 150 Hz out of the room with no calibration or tuning required. Innovative technology, put together by experienced specialists in the company’s very own workshop – PSI Audio is Swiss quality at its finest.

The sound for surround – and more

While some manufacturers match pairs of speakers, PSI Audio matches component parts, effectively eliminating their tolerances in the overall circuit. As a result, there are no matched sets of PSI Audio speakers, because all PSI Audio speakers are matched. Their sonic structure is so consistent that speakers can even be combined across models, making PSI Audio monitors particularly interesting for professional surround and immersive setups. Large three-way systems like the A25-M or A23-M for the left and right channels, an A214-M as a centre, A21-M as surrounds, A14-M as ceiling speakers and Sub A225-M as LFE – all these models work perfectly together, forming one cohesive acoustic image.