Tannoy PS-88
A compact powered subwoofer built to sit under a console and rescue the bottom two octaves your nearfields never had.
Overview
At $798, the PS-88 was never the cheapest way to add low end to a project room — but it was one of the few built for the specific problem of small reference monitors perched on meter bridges. Tannoy's own documentation describes the PS-88 as a self-powered subwoofer designed for close-field reference applications, intended for placement under a console. The pitch was simple arithmetic: most small nearfields of the period rolled off hard somewhere in the 50 to 100 Hz region, right where kick drum, bass guitar, and the fundamental weight of a mix live.
The box is a sealed two-way-in-spirit design built around two 8-inch transducers, side-mounted rather than front-firing. That side-firing layout was deliberate — A Mix review (August 1990, p.96) noted it avoided the "foot-through-cone syndrome" that a forward-facing woofer under a console would invite. The two 8-ohm woofers run in parallel for a net 4-ohm load, driven by an internal 100-watt mono amplifier. Tannoy's manual cites sensitivity of up to 93dB/1W/1m, and the system sums the left and right inputs to mono before the amp stage.
Connection options are generous for a box of this size: stereo RCA line inputs on the back panel alongside speaker-level inputs on heavy-duty five-way binding posts, plus high and low impedance inputs accessible through 1/4-inch or RCA inputs. There's an output level control, an active crossover, and equalization built in. The crossover point sits at 110 Hz — Mix (August 1990, p.96) judged that figure well-matched to most small reference speakers. Tannoy's own literature quotes extended response down to 36Hz, while the same Mix review measured effective range extending to about 40 Hz; treat the bottom octave as useful rather than seismic, and note the discrepancy between the two figures.
What the PS-88 does cleverly is correct for the physics of a sealed box. A sealed woofer rolls off at 12dB/octave, and the PS-88's active EQ and a dynamic limiter supply a correcting signal to flatten that roll-off — producing, in Tannoy's description, flat response from where the limiter takes over up to system resonance, with an 18dB/octave rolloff above it. That's the engineering argument for buying a purpose-built sub instead of a passive box and a spare amp: the correction is baked in.
The honest caveat comes straight from the period review. Mix (August 1990, p.97) found the bass "a little underclamped" — a touch tubby, unsurprising given two high-output 8-inch drivers in a sealed enclosure of barely one cubic foot. The reviewer cured much of it by raising the unit off the floor, and Tannoy began shipping small spikes to do the job more genteelly than a pair of 2x4 slabs. Best results came with the level control at the 12 o'clock half-gain position. Anyone hoping for wall-shaking, slam-dunk low end was warned to look elsewhere; the PS-88 augments small monitors in the range they most need it and stops there.
Later, Mix (February 2001, p.124) referenced the PS-88 — by then a discontinued model — as the piece that "completely corrected" a low-end imbalance in a monitor field test, For a compact box with modest output ambitions, that's a durable reputation among people who mix for a living. Spiked feet for decoupling, side-firing drivers that survive life under a desk, and a built-in crossover that plays nicely with small speakers — the PS-88 was a specialist tool, and it's remembered as one.
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