The term was almost surely invented by a marketing department or someone thinking about marketing, not engineering. It tries to create the illusion among potential customers that they are actually getting something of value and desirable for their money. Instad they wind up with a fancy box, a few jacks and switches, and a potentiometer. Not only is it deceptive, IMO it's not a very good idea. As you adjust the volume, the load impedance on the previous stage and the source impedance feeding the subsequent stage changes potentially altering the FR. For a given system output level, the total gain does not change, it just drives the active stages harder than would otherwise be the case with a real preamplifier and it does not provide the impedance control and buffering a real preamplifier does.
A lot of audio terminology is deceptve. A power amplifier does not amplify power it usually amplifies voltage, occasionally current with a volt-current product output capability at its final stage sufficient to drive a loudspeaker. This can easily be seen if you have VU meters on your amplifier usually calibrated in equivalent watts into 8 ohms. Disconnect the speakers and they will continue to swing wildly suggesting that they are delivering power to a load when they aren't.
The acoustic suspension loudspeaker should probably have been called a pneumatic suspension speaker because that is a much more accurate description of how it works.
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Faraday seems to have held a somewhat different view but I'm sure would have been happy for you to have corrected him.
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