Products of the Year

dCS Rossini Apex
With so many great products passing through my test lab and listening room this year, it was difficult to choose just one. I must give shoutouts to the KEF Blade Two Meta loudspeaker and the Channel D Lino C3.3 phono preamplifier for their audio engineering excellence. But in the end, the honors go to the dCS Rossini Apex. Yes, it also features superb engineering, but the two weeks it spent in my system after the test bench work was done were the most musically involving I have experienced from digital audio.—John Atkinson

Wilson Audio Specialties Alexx V
As others have written here, the speaker makes the biggest difference in what you hear in your listening room. That means that speakers get a leg up in contests like this. No matter: The full-range Alexx V—or rather, a pair of them—did more than any component has ever to enhance my audiophile journey, except perhaps for the Polk Audio Reference 7B Studio Monitors I bought when I was 16 years old, which first showed me that music can sound better.

These big speakers can do big music well—but they also reproduce the most delicate notes of a piano's top octaves with delicacy and veracity. Not many speakers can do that, and it matters for the experience of music.—Jim Austin

Fozgometer V2
The Fozgometer V2 impressed me with its simplicity, quick setup, and clear instructions.—Larry Greenhill

Lejonklou Entity
This minimal, high-value phono stage from Fredrik Lejonklou looks like an external hard drive but sounds clear, detailed, and exciting. The product of thousands of hours of obsessive listening and experimentation, the Entity is not sonically perfect, but it captures the living essence of the performance more vividly than many full-featured, more expensive components. The Linn Silver interconnects recommended by Lejonklou significantly improve its performance.—Alex Halberstadt

KEF Blade Two Meta
Speakers still have the biggest impact on your overall system. Here's one that only costs an arm (and not a leg) but will get you almost to the top.—Jon Iverson

Audio Research Reference 6SE
I have lived with several tubed preamplifiers for extended periods of time. The ARC Reference 6SE beats them all handily: the limitless airy extension on the high end; the tight, authoritative lows. The unique balance of ultrareal and wide soundstaging without etching or harshness. The ability to decode any vocal track, no matter how mumbled. Beautiful ability to sort out massed strings and orchestral textures, while also delivering gorgeous jazz trios. It's a Classic already.—Sasha Matson

Fleetwood Sound Company Deville
The DeVille rewrote the rules for what I thought was possible from a two-way standmount speaker. Midrange to treble was incredibly open and liquid, giving instruments extreme depth, body, detail, and extension. It's fussy, won't work with just any speaker cable, and requires careful system matching, but no other speaker in its price range that I've heard opened such a vast, canyon-like window to midrange to treble, with solid bass fundamentals.—Ken Micallef

MBL Radialstrahler 120
The 120s have a perennial place in my room—and in my heart. Whatever music I send their way, they radiate lifeblood and energy, substance and detail. The speakers consistently strike a balance between precise mechanical realism and believable human warmth. Smooth treble and well-rounded midrange come from handmade omnidirectional drivers that cohere with a pair of push-push, side-firing woofers. Designer Jürgen Reis's "tricks" extend the ported cabinet's bass; I seldom miss a subwoofer. The 120s interact with the room, filling it with freed-up, 3D musical energy. Many nights of "just one more track" and the occasional goosebumps can't be ignored.—Julie Mullins

Genelec G Three
Besides being hipper and more pro-style-smart looking than any of those wood-veneer or painted-up floozie speakers, Genelec's active G Three showed me the cleanest, clearest, and flat-out most alive view of what's on my recordings. Think low distortion with thrill factor. It's designed or nearfield listening and you can place it almost anywhere. And, at $1390/pair, it costs almost nothing.—Herb Reichert

KEF Blade Two Meta
The Blade Two Meta updates KEF's original Blade's breakthrough design from 2009 with a 12th Generation Uni-Q coaxial midrange/tweeter, a Meta-material Absorption Technology disc to absorb the tweeter's back-wave energy, and a more sophisticated crossover design. These elements, coupled with two pairs of force-canceling woofers in independent subenclosures, create a Single Apparent Source (or point source) with wide-band controlled dispersion, and a pair of Blades creates a spectacularly clear and stable stereo soundstage. Despite their dimensions, they are easy to place and seem to evanesce, leaving only powerful, beautiful music in the room. I just could not resist; I bought them.—Kal Rubinson

Gryphon Apex Stereo
Combines high class-A power with solid engineering, robust build quality, excellent measured performance, smooth, rich, detailed sonics, and a cost that's high but given what's delivered is more than reasonable among the industry's top-tiered products.—Rob Schryer

dCS Rossini Apex
In a year of major sonic advances in my reference system, including the remarkable clarity delivered by the Stromtank S 1000 battery power source (since replaced by the whole-system Stromtank S 2500 Quantum Mk. II) and Nordost QNet/Qsource Network Switch/Power Supply combination, the product most able to take advantage of their enhanced silence and reveal entirely new levels of detail, nuance, shading, and bass clarity was the dCS Rossini Apex DAC. It's the equivalent of upping your season subscription to the best rows in the house or, even better, revamping the concert hall's acoustics. Since the upgrade, every revisit to old favorites is a revelation.—Jason Victor Serinus