Certified Pre-Owned PS Audio Sprout Integrated Amplifier

TAS Budget Component Product of the Year! Stereophile Editor's Choice!

A complete integrated amplifier. All you need is a set of speakers or headphones. What PS Audio has invented will change forever the way you listen to music at home, from the lowest quality downloads to the highest quality discs to your best LPs. If you love music like I do, Sprout will change your life and your relationship to music. Sprout brings the music: pure, sweet, simple and LIVE! Connect to your turntable, CD player, or mobile phone. It's easy. It's Sprout!

Scott McGowan grew up at the PS Audio factory, sharing his father Paul's love of music and high-end performance audio; but disliked the complexity, cost and tangle typical of audiophile systems. Why couldn't he have the performance levels of his father's creations packaged in a single, beautiful product he and his friends could afford to own? It should be powerful yet simple to operate. Its aesthetics should be inspired by the "less, but better" designs of Braun's Dieter Rams and Apple's Jony Ive. He would call it Sprout.

Sprout is a simple, elegant source of music for those who want quality sound without the hassles that come with it. Appealing to the eye and ear, solid and reassuring to the touch, Sprout's user interface is human, providing feedback to the user and connection to the music. Sprout's ease of use makes it appealing and accessible to music lovers around the world. It features a phono preamplifier for vinyl, a Bluetooth receiver for music streamed from smartphones, a high-quality hi-res DAC to handle anything stored on a laptop, enough power for any speaker, and a headphone amp that drives even the toughest loads.

Sprout is for those who care about their home, their music, and their enjoyment of music in their home. We believe there are a lot of such folks out there.

Scott chose the name Sprout to represent what he saw as a rebirth of hi-fi in the home, a chance to get away from massive, unaffordable instruments that dominated living rooms and required a pilot's license to operate.

Rather than a display screen and endless menus, Sprout's user interface is a direct hand-to-Sprout connection through two precision rotary switches. These allow intuitive, direct control of the device, and provide feedback to the user through a positive click, and immediate response to changes in volume.

Sprout's ease of use makes it appealing and accessible to those who would find most audio gear intimidating. It's also appealing to those who have "been there, done that", and seek a better, simpler way to play music in their home. Sprout simultaneously appeals to those making their first purchase of an audio component - and those making their last purchase, seeking quality without complication.

The real challenge for PS Audio Engineering was how to package the eight major subsystems in Sprout within the confines of this elegant minimalistic package, while maintaining their high standards for reliability and performance. It was not an easy task.

The first challenge would be to settle on the power amplification stage of Sprout. There are many excellent designs of small and reliable power amplifiers on the OEM marketplace today; but only a very few with high enough performance standards to even be considered for Sprout. The field was quickly narrowed down to the top six contenders for this all important task. PS Audio's chief of engineering, Bob Stadtherr, built a test bed for Sprout's designer, Scott McGowan, enabling him to easily listen at length to any of the six candidates. Hundreds of hours were spend with endless debate but finally one design was adopted.

Sprout's DAC and phono stage were easy: this was technology honed over the last few decades of engineering and the team merely had to select from our stable of designs that which perfectly matched the musical qualities of the chosen power amplifier.

Much debate was expended on Sprout's human interface. In vogue at the time of Sprout's design was the ubiquitous remote control and digital display to show status. Designer McGowan was adamant the cold, non-interactive nature of remote controls would not be part of Sprout. Instead, a precision human interface was chosen for the front panel: a stepped tactile volume control and input selector mechanism provide both feedback and a connection to the device itself.

"We spend a great deal of time interacting with our machines," said Scott, "but those that bring music into our home are personal and I did not want to lose touch with that that brings music into our homes. I wanted to touch, to feel, to interact with Sprout. Sprout is audio furniture. It's personal. It has to be touchy feely."