This decision led to some interesting contests. In Loudspeakers, for example, high-value mini-monitors compete with cost-no-object floorstanders. In Analog Products, turntables compete with tonearms, phono cartridges, and phono preamplifiers. And in Amplification, single-box integrated amplifiers go up against separates, and low-power tube designs compete with high-power, solid-state behemoths. In Budget Product of the Year and Product of the Year, products from every category competed against each other: Out of all the products that Stereophile reviewed over the whole year, which product offered the best bang for the buck or sounded the best overall?
The competition is for a whole year, but it's not the calendar year. To be considered for our 2024 awards, only products subjected to a full review or considered in a column published from the November 2023 issue through the October 2024 issue qualify. Every product was subjected by the reviewer to a thorough evaluation over a period of weeks or months-plus, for regular reviews (not columns), a session in my test lab.
As Stereophile Editor Jim Austin wrote in the introduction to the 2022 awards: "The resulting review documents what's almost certainly the most thorough evaluation that product will receive outside the manufacturer's development lab.... That document, then - the review itself - is a product's best argument for winning an award or against it if the review lacks enthusiasm."
TWO ROUNDS OF VOTING
This story is from the December 2024 edition of Stereophile.
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This story is from the December 2024 edition of Stereophile.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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German kitchens, Japanese amps, and Afropop gems
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