The story of PSI Audio began in 1975 when Alain Roux started producing his first loudspeakers while studying at EPFL in Lausanne.
Two years later, Alain Roux began to make a profit selling his loudspeakers and decided to create a company called Roux Electroacoustique. In 1988, the company was transformed into a joint stock company and renamed Relec SA. At that time, Alain also moved the company to a new purpose-built building in Yverdon-les-Bains.
Over the years, Alain and his team developed a wide range of loudspeakers for the hi-fi industry, sound reinforcement systems to professional studio applications. Many loudspeakers were also manufactured as OEM products under the brand names of prestigious international companies. Several of these products have won the most coveted awards in the industry.
In 1991, an analog and digital electronics department was added to the acoustics laboratory and electronics expert Christian Martin was hired to lead development in these areas.
From 1992 to 2003, Relec SA had the privilege of working in close partnership with Studer. Relec SA developed and produced the OEM line of monitors for Studer, consisting of A1, A3 and A5, all of which are recognized worldwide.
In 2004, Studer was acquired by an international group and had to stop selling studio monitors under the Studer brand. Relec SA and Studer therefore had to end their fruitful relationship.
This was then the start of the PSI Audio brand in studio monitoring…
Since then, PSI Audio has become a globally respected brand that manufactures the ultimate professional studio monitors. PSI Audio now offers a full range of highly innovative loudspeakers with state-of-the-art all-analog technology.
The 1,000 square meter facility houses all the workshops necessary for the production of loudspeakers: mechanics, woodworking, winding, wiring, PCB lab, PCB assembly, magnetization, assembly workshops, quality control stages, 150 cubic meters of anechoic chamber, packaging, storage, etc.
PSI unique and multidisciplinary expertise in acoustics, vibration mechanics, electronics and metrology has made it possible to develop equipment for other industries: seismographs with which many bridges and dams in Europe are equipped, high-precision amplifiers for precision mechanical devices, measuring instruments for the watch industry, acoustic tables for the medical industry, etc.
Technology
The most important aspect of the technology is that everything is well thought out and designed to work together perfectly and function as a unified system, with the laws of physics being the only limit.
PSI Audio aims to deliver the most coherent sound and design possible across the entire product range. To achieve this compatibility between models, PSI ensures that the transfer function is identical in both frequency response and phase.
Speakers from PSI Audio are 100% analog and do not use DSPs. This requires intelligent design and the highest level of quality control of all components and manufacturing of the speaker. Mature analog technology guarantees fast, linear, seamless and reliable operation without latency.
The task of a loudspeaker is to reproduce sound without distorting it. This requires a smooth frequency response without boosting or attenuating individual frequencies. Both the design and the individual calibration of each speaker ensure this.
Accurate sound reproduction requires not only a smooth frequency response, but also a clean phase response. The CPR system accurately aligns the monitor’s phase response to reproduce the perfect transients and spatial image of real sound.
PSI uses a series of carefully adjusted all-pass filters to compensate for phase and ensure that the signal is reproduced perfectly down to the lowest frequencies. This is done exclusively with analog technology, ensuring that latency is kept to a strict minimum (below 0.6ms) and that unnecessary conversions to and from the digital domain are avoided.
It is very easy to set a loudspeaker cone in motion, but this motion must be perfectly controlled. It must accelerate and stop as quickly as possible without creating unwanted vibrations. A speaker diaphragm is pushed and pulled by the coil in the magnetic gap in response to the current flowing through it. The mechanical construction of a transducer represents a mass on a spring, which of course does not behave the same way at all frequencies. It usually has a resonant frequency at which it moves more easily. Not only does the transducer have resonant frequencies, but so does the material itself, the suspension, the spider, and so on. It is important to know all these physical characteristics in order to be able to correct them with electronics.
Whatever the material of the transducer (paper, cloth, polypropylene or any other), it must be taken into account to avoid sound coloration. The material of the diaphragm should not color the sound. For this, PSI Audio has selected materials according to their weight, stiffness, durability and homogeneity in production.
To correct all these physical characteristics, PSI has implemented a feedback loop that starts from the speed of the transducer and acts on the output impedance of the amplifier. It goes without saying that this circuit cannot work in real time with any digital technology and only analog technology can achieve a perfect, seamless result.
AOI technology ensures that there is no sound coloration from the transducers and that transients are maximized.
The shape and dimensions of the waveguide used in PSI Audio tweeters have been specially designed to optimize the dispersion pattern, maximize the sound pressure level and extend the bandwidth.
All PSI Audio amplifiers are designed and assembled 100% in-house to ensure the highest possible level of reliability and performance. This is achieved through Class G/H amplifiers, which combine the benefits of Class AB amplifiers with higher efficiency and lower distortion. Class G/H uses multiple power supply rails with different voltages and seamlessly switches to a higher voltage when the audio signal requires it, and seamlessly switches back to a lower supply voltage when the audio signal decreases. This reduces average power consumption and the heat generated by wasted energy. Class G/H amplifiers require much more complex power supplies, but combine many advantages.
PSI Audio has also developed Class G/H amplifiers for various other industries when they could not achieve the desired specifications with Class D or Class A/B amplifiers.
This feature is extremely useful when you want to switch between listening configurations and see if the speakers are active or in standby mode. PSC technology allows you to remotely activate and deactivate the standby mode of your speakers via the signal cable. It is best used with the R&B footswitch (router and bass management), which allows you to seamlessly switch between 3 different monitoring configurations.
From decades of experience in manufacturing the best possible loudspeakers, PSI Audio knows what it’s all about: seamless control of every last component and assembly step.
All woodworking and every contact and welding is done by hand to guarantee not only impeccable quality but also long-term reliability. Step by step, the elements are manufactured and assembled with great care, each part being checked for quality and consistency by assembly technicians. The fact that manufacturing is done by hand, with a human eye on every step, plays a key role in the consistency of production to ensure reliability, the smallest tolerances and the highest performance. The result is that PSI speakers are usually in service for several decades before they wear out, and then they can be easily repaired and upgraded.
