Stereophile's Products of 2014
No one spells it out anymore: Ours is a culture of BTW, TIA, AFAIK, and other letter-lumps, some of which have taken on meanings beyond their original intent. (Only recently did I discover that LOL stands for "I'm certain you find my attempts at humor as riotously funny as I do.") I am scarcely young enough to adapt.
Our interoffice communications are no different. Once a year I am jarred to find in my inbox a message from John Atkinson with the curious subject line "POTY." I am scarcely old enough to be perturbed: Every 12 months, I have to be re-reminded that POTY stands for Product of the Year.
Stereophile's Products of 2015
Timing distortions are the lifeblood of magazine publishinga field of endeavor where cheers cheered in September can sound wistful by raw November, when readers read them. Then again, by the time you see this, an asteroid strike or an itchy finger on a nuclear trigger may have blown us all back to the age of bronzeoxygen-free, one hopesin which case this edition of Stereophile's Products of the Year celebration will seem all the more nostalgic.
But this is no mere nostalgia: Only once every 12 months do we set aside our complaints, our contentions, our niggling criticisms, and simply declare: Here are seven products that kicked righteous wads of ass and made it worthwhile to be an audiophile this year. And precisely half of our top-place winners are priced within reach of the average consumer.
Stereophile's Products of 2016
Was there ever a more stressful election season?
I wished for more choices: choices with less money behind them, choices I wasn't merely expected to make, alternative choices that stood a chance of winning.
I wished for a better sense of the world around me: Why hadn't I strayed outside my comfort zone a little more often? Why hadn't I tried harder to listen as others do?
Most of all, and simplest of all, I wished for more time: Damn it all, I'm too busy! Why can't I have another month to make up my mind?
But no. John Atkinson was insistent: "Please don't abstain," he wrote in an e-mail under the subject heading "2016 Product of the Year Final Ballot." "The fairness of the . . . system depends on everyone voting." I rolled up my sleeves and got busy.
Stereophile's Products of 2017
The mice in the walls call summer to close while nets come down and leaves turn dead red, but by the time you see this there'll be holiday music in the air . . . and some generous soul might, just might, sneak a few looks through this issue of Stereophile to see what gifts to buy before the tree goes up and presents are openedand all will be nice!
And what better way to serve those possible givers of audio giftsand, at the same time, honor our hobby's most deserving designers and manufacturersthan with our annual Product of the Year awards?
Stereophile's Products of 2018
Since fake news is on everyone's minds these daysI would say it's been in the news a lot, but that kind of reasoning is too circular even for meit's worth keeping in mind that there's also such a thing as fake praise. You see it every day, whether it's a fake Google reviewan alarming number of businesses seem unaware that real people don't actually say things like "the team at New Hartford Chevrolet really listened to all of my needs"or fake trophies handed out to all 20 co-captains of your child's soccer team.
Then there are fake awards.
Stereophile's Products of 2019
The first vote I ever cast was in 1964, when I was 10 years old. Our fifth-grade teacher, a psychotic harpy who fined students 25 cents if they dropped a pencil, directed us to elect a Class President and a Class Treasurer: positions of indeterminate powers, although it was generally understood that they did not include the ability to wage war or annex adjoining classrooms.
And the winners are . . .
Stereophile's Products of 2020
This is Stereophile's 29th Product of the Year issue; the first appeared in 1992. That was the year I finished grad school. It seems like a long time ago.
That year, the Loudspeaker of the Year was the $14,000/pair Sonus Faber Extrema. The winning digital source was the legendary Mark Levinson No.30 DACalso approximately $14,000. JA later bought one, upgraded to 30.5, then to 30.6 status. He still has it.
Stereophile's Products of 2021
Here's another Stereophile milestone, our second one this year. In August, we celebrated the magazine's 500th issue. This month, we celebrate a number that's smaller but almost as round: our 30th Annual Product of the Year Awards.
Stereophile's Products of 2022
What does it mean to be Stereophile's Product of the Year? It's an honor, certainly, and probably helps the winner sell more products, but is there anything more we can say about it?
The PotY competition is the culmination of a whole year of the magazine's work, starting with the choice of products to review. Only products we review or consider carefully in a column qualify for the competition, and every product we review is eligible for the competition: We only review products we think will have a decent shot at being among the best.
Stereophile's Products of 2023
When we introduced Stereophile's Product of the Year awards in 1992, we decided that, unlike some other publications' awards schemes, we would avoid what the late Art Dudley once described as the "every child in the class gets a prize" syndrome. We decided to keep the number of categories to the minimum. That way, in Loudspeakers, for example, high-value minimonitors would compete with cost-no-object floorstanders. In Analog Products, turntables would compete with tonearms, phono cartridges, and phono preamplifiers. And in Amplification, single-box integrated amplifiers would go up against separates. In Budget Product of the Year, we lumped everything together, recognizing products from every category that offered the best sound for the buck. The overall Product of the Year, meanwhile, would be the winner of all the winnersa single product, unless the voting resulted in a tie.
To be considered for our 2023 awards, products must have been subjected to a full review or considered in a column published from the November 2022 issue through the October 2023 issue. Each product was subjected by the reviewer to a thorough evaluation over a period of weeks or monthsplus, for regular reviews (not columns), a session in my test lab.