A vision for future PS Audio products?

The following guesswork (aka wishful thing) is prompted by Ted Smith’s revelations in the thread on the development of the 2-chassis TSS Super DAC. In a recent post he noted that the 2 chassis would be connected by fibre optic cable. Being so independent could the 2 chassis form the basis for other products?

  1. Fully active speakers with digital input. AN1, AN2 and AN3 in development already have powered low-frequency drivers so a future development could add amplification for the higher frequency drivers, with the analogue chassis of the TSS DAC incorporated in the speakers. Dutch 7 Dutch 8c and Kii Three have shown the way here.

  2. Digital control amp. Not only could the TSS digital chassis feed the TSS analogue chassis it could also be the central digital component for PS Audio hifi systems in the future, feeding active speakers (1.) or, with the addition of wired digital I/O (I2S in and out), connect to all PS Audio sources (PWT, DMP, Octave Server etc) and DACs (DS, DS Jnr. etc). As this Digital control amp would incorporate the latest, improved, version of the Digital Lens it should result in improved sound quality being obtained from all these sources, and simultaneously improve the performance of PS Audio’s legacy DACs. Using the digital chassis of the TSS as the basis for a digital control amp would bring other gains. It would enable the software and hardware development for the Octave server to be decoupled. As the software development for the latter is likely to require several iterations to reach maturity it will probably lag behind the development of the digital hardware. Having a digital preamp product would allow the use of legacy software for music streaming and control until the Octave software is sufficiently bullet proof.

A final, practical, marketing point. I, like many others I suspect, would be far more likely to buy two 5k products over a period of time rather than a single 10k product. Indeed many of us might be content with the sound quality gains from a digital preamp product of the type described.