Origins · engineering
PSB Speakers was founded in 1972 by Paul Barton in Pickering, Ontario, Canada — the initials are Paul and his wife Sue Barton — and has spent half a century pursuing a single technical thesis: that loudspeaker design should be driven by acoustic measurement and double-blind listening rather than by marketing claims, and that Canada's National Research Council acoustic laboratory was the right facility to do that measurement work. PSB has used the NRC's anechoic chamber as its primary R&D facility since the early 1980s, in parallel with Floyd Toole's pioneering psychoacoustic research at the same facility — work that established many of the principles modern loudspeaker engineering takes for granted. PSB is now part of the Canadian Lenbrook Group alongside NAD Electronics and Bluesound, all of which share the Pickering engineering campus.
What Definitive carries
The line spans three series plus a custom-install branch. The Synchrony Series — Synchrony T800, Synchrony T600, Synchrony Audio — is the reference floor-standing and stand-mount expression of Paul Barton's engineering, voiced for the kind of in-room neutrality NRC measurements predict. The Imagine Series — Imagine X1T, X2T, XB stand-mount — is the volume-line reference with the same engineering principles applied at a more accessible price point. The Alpha Series anchors the entry into the brand. The Custom Sound / Image install lines are the architectural and in-wall complement for whole-house installs.
Where it sits in the room
In the Canadian-research-driven loudspeaker conversation PSB sits alongside Paradigm, Revel, and Bryston — the brands that take the NRC measurement work seriously and let it drive the product. The differentiation is Paul Barton's fifty-year unbroken design tenure and a product line that has remained NRC-grounded through generational ownership transitions. For dealers carrying a measurement-led loudspeaker line, PSB is the Canadian anchor.