Products of the Year

When Stereophile's Product of the Year Awards were first published, in 1992 (footnote 1), we decided that unlike some other publications and their awards schemes, we would keep the number of categories to a minimum. That way, we would avoid what the late Art Dudley once described as the "every child in the class gets a prize" syndrome.

This decision led to some interesting contests. In Loudspeakers, for example, high-value minimonitors 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
As he did for the 2023 Awards, Editor-in-Chief Jim Austin asked me to organize the voting and prepare the feature. In September, I compiled and shared with Stereophile's audio-equipment reviewers a list of eligible products. Each reviewer was invited to nominate three products in each of seven categories: Amplification Component of the Year, Analog Source Component of the Year, Digital Source Component of the Year, Headphone Product of the Year, Accessory of the Year, Loudspeaker of the Year, and Budget Product of the Year. Reviewers were asked to award three points to their top choice, two points to their second choice, and one point to their third choice (footnote 2). The result of Round One was a list of Finalists comprised of the top vote-getters in each category.

The Budget category is, of course, a bit different from the others. For the 2022 Awards, Jim Austin decided not to put an absolute maximum price on products eligible for the budget category; "after all, a $500 amplifier or pair of speakers is obviously budget, but a $1000 phono cartridge might not be," he wrote. So he played it by ear, on the grounds that a "budget" component was one that, in his judgment as Stereophile's editor, was considerably cheaper than most of the products reviewed in its category.

As I had in the 2023 Awards, I followed Jim's example when I prepared the 2024 ballot.

In addition to qualifying for the second round of voting in their category, every Finalist from every category—not including Budget and Accessories—remained in the running for overall Product of the Year. In this final round of voting, reviewers were again asked to award three points, two points, or a single point to their favorites in each category and overall—but this time, the lists were shorter. The highest vote-getter would become the category winner, and the highest vote-getter in the Overall category would become Stereophile's Product of the Year.

Some final notes: The prices listed were current at the end of August 2024; some may have changed by the time you read this. The finalists in each category are listed in alphabetical order.

We regret that back issues of the print magazine are no longer available. However, electronic issues can be purchased from Zinio. Reviews of all the products listed are available, free, at stereophile.com.

And the 2024 winners are ...

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Footnote 1: Past Products of the Year articles can be found here.

Footnote 2: See my explanation of how this voting system works here.