The black PS 500 introduced a new aesthetic vocabulary to the '60s audio programme. Other than a spot of orange at its most significant control, the device was almost entirely black. Although a graphite paint finish had been in use since 1960, its severity was lessened  by combination with broad areas of anodised aluminium.  The PS 500, on the other hand, seems to have retreated from the user to a remote region of hi-tech self-satisfaction. The design marks a significant transition within the audio programme in which the functionalist user- addressing designs of the early 1960s began to be displaced by a dramatisation of technology. The programme hesitated between these two approaches until the start of the 1970s, whereupon (excepting a brief and unsuccessful flirtation with Pop) the aesthetic language of the PS 500 prevailed.