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 DAC—also approximately $14,000. JA later bought one, upgraded to 30.5, then to 30.6 status. He still has it (footnote 1).
The finalists in the Overall category included that Sonus Faber speaker and the Jeff Rowland Design Group Consummate preamplifier, which cost just shy of $9000. (The Levinson DAC was the overall winner.) Those were the most expensive products to win a category in 1992. The least expensive was the $499 Audio Power Industries Power Wedge, which won in the budget category. (This year's Budget winner cost $100 less.) The average price of 1992's winners—excluding the budget category—was $6259.
Since 1992, prices in the economy as a whole have risen by 85%, which means that, in today's dollars, those Sonus Faber loudspeakers and that Levinson DAC each cost almost $26,000. In today's dollars, the average price of a 1992 category winner was almost $12k.
Except in the Budget category, which this year was limited to products costing about $2000—there was no specific limit in 1992—reviewers are under no obligation to consider value when nominating or voting for Products of the Year. Reviewers are free to apply their own criteria.
Yet, some years—including this one—value seems very much on reviewers' minds. With one exception, this year's category winners all cost less than the average price of a winner in 1992—and that is in actual dollars, not adjusted for inflation.
One of this year's winners—to figure out which one, read on—is quite expensive—although it's far from the most expensive product eligible for this competition: That would be the $179,000/pair darTZeel NHB-468 monoblock amplifier, which failed to make the finals despite its excellence. Nor did the $149,000/pair VAC Statement 452 iQ Musicbloc amplifier—also judged to be of the highest quality but, in this competition, apparently penalized for its high price. Several other excellent, expensive products failed to make the final round of voting.
This year, with that one exception, expensive products didn't win (footnote 2). Apparently, for whatever reason, this year's judges were concerned about value.
How It Was Done
In a sense, the process began when we started preparing our reviews for the November 2019 issue—or maybe it was back in 1962, when J. Gordon Holt founded the magazine. Either way, it really got going in early September, when I compiled and shared a list of all the products reviewed over the last 12 months (through the October issue), in full Equipment Reports or in columns by Michael Fremer, Herb Reichert, or the sorely missed Art Dudley (who used to write this essay every year), and sought nominations from Stereophile reviewers in eight categories: Loudspeaker of the Year, Amplification Component of the Year, Analog Component of the Year, Digital Component of the Year, Headphone Product of the Year, Accessory of the Year, Budget Product of the Year, and Overall Product of the Year.
This year, in a departure from previous years, we only considered products that received their first reviews during those previous 12 months—except for Editor's Choice, which was open to products reviewed earlier but auditioned by the nominating reviewer during the past 12 months.
I then went through the nominations and totaled them up. In each category, the six products with the most reviewer support became finalists (except in the Overall category where, because of a tie, there were seven finalists). Then, each reviewer cast three votes in each of the categories. Three points were awarded to their first choice, two points to their second choice, and one point to their third choice. I counted up the points.
The final step: I wrote this essay.
As Art wrote last year, "It is Jim who tallies the votes, so it is he to whom non-complacent firebrands should send notes of praise and blame." Bless him.
Some notes: The prices listed herein were current at the end of August 2020. To order back issues mentioned in this article, call (888) 237-0955 or visit shop.stereophile.com—but first, note that "WWW" in an entry means that the review is available online, free, at our website: stereophile.com.
And the winners are ...
Footnote 1: JA wrote about a recent listening experience with his Levinson DAC in his review of the Chord Hugo M Scaler. Footnote 2: That one expensive product did win shows, I think, that reviewers were commendably flexible in their criteria
In a sense, the process began when we started preparing our reviews for the November 2019 issue—or maybe it was back in 1962, when J. Gordon Holt founded the magazine. Either way, it really got going in early September, when I compiled and shared a list of all the products reviewed over the last 12 months (through the October issue), in full Equipment Reports or in columns by Michael Fremer, Herb Reichert, or the sorely missed Art Dudley (who used to write this essay every year), and sought nominations from Stereophile reviewers in eight categories: Loudspeaker of the Year, Amplification Component of the Year, Analog Component of the Year, Digital Component of the Year, Headphone Product of the Year, Accessory of the Year, Budget Product of the Year, and Overall Product of the Year.
Footnote 1: JA wrote about a recent listening experience with his Levinson DAC in his review of the Chord Hugo M Scaler. Footnote 2: That one expensive product did win shows, I think, that reviewers were commendably flexible in their criteria
