Recommended Components: 2019 Fall Edition

Products listed here have been formally reviewed in Stereophile, and we have determined them to be among the finest available in each of four or five quality classes. Whether a component is listed in Class A or Class D (or E), we consider it to be a genuinely recommendable product.

Each listing, in alphabetical order within classes, is followed by a brief description of its performance characteristics and a note indicating the issue of Stereophile in which its review, and in some cases its Follow-Up reports, have appeared—ie, “Vol.41 No.6” indicates our June 2018 issue. And so forth.

A relatively small number of products listed here have not yet been reviewed but have been suggested by one or more of our writers as deserving of consideration. Those products are rated with the letter K, used to identify new products that we hope and intend to review as soon as possible. No one here remembers what the K stands for.

We recommend that you read any product’s entire review before seriously contemplating a purchase (and so products without reviews should be treated with more caution): Many salient characteristics, peculiarities, and caveats appear in the reviews that cannot be included here. To obtain back issues of the magazine, visit our website: www.stereophile.com. We regret that we cannot supply copies of individual reviews. All full reviews are republished in our website Archives section: These are marked: WWW. More are added each week. Some products reviewed in columns may not appear online.

In general, products do not remain listed for more than three years, unless at least one of the magazine’s writers or editors has had continuous experience with them. (As a consequence, even still-recommendable products may disappear from the list. The only justification for this policy is that otherwise the list would grow and become unwieldy.) Discontinuation of a model from the market, of course, also precludes its appearance. In addition, although pro-audio components (recorders, amplifiers, monitor loudspeakers) can be obtained secondhand and sometimes offer performance that would otherwise guarantee inclusion, we do not generally include them: Stereophile‘s Recommended Components listing is exclusively concerned with products currently available in the US through the usual hi-fi retail outlets.

How Recommendations Are Determined
We try to include in Recommended Components every product that we have found to be truly excellent or that we feel represents good value for money.

The listing is compiled after consultation with Stereophile‘s reviewing staff and editors and takes into account continued experience of the product after the formal review has been published. In particular, we take account of unreliability and defects that show up after extended auditioning. The fact that a product received a favorable review cannot therefore be regarded as a guarantee that it will continue to appear in this listing.

The ratings we give components are based entirely on performance—ie, faithfulness of reproduction to the original, in as many aspects as possible. As with any such endeavor, our reviews are not free from bias. Indeed, ratings are strongly dependent on reviewers’ tastes and preoccupations. Products markedly deficient in one or more performance aspects are down-rated when the reviewer believes their deficiencies interfere with the full realization of the program material. Each of our reviewers has a distinct point of view (something in which we who publish them take pride), yet Recommended Components is a funnel into which all these opinions are poured: The letter grades assigned by the reviewer will likely survive this blending, but the nuances of their perspectives may not. And so you may see, on occasion, a very expensive and well-regarded product receive a B rating while a far less expensive competing product that has deeply impressed one or more writers gets an A.

We editors may intervene in the assignment of ratings, to smooth those steps into a more reasonable-looking wave, but we don’t always. The best approach for the reader lies in reading the whole of a review (and, ideally, other pieces by the same reviewer) before making a purchase decision. Get to know our reviewers’ tastes and points of view and you’ll find their opinions far more useful.

The prices indicated are those current at the time the listing was compiled (July 2019). We cannot guarantee that any of these prices will be the same by the time this issue of Stereophile appears in print. Note also that, in products where multiple finish options exist, the price we list is for the base-level finish (or, sometimes, for the version we reviewed.)

There is a near-universal consensus that at some point in the upward climb of product prices, severely diminishing returns (performance vs price) set in. However, there is no agreement as to the exact price level at which that takes place. When we find that a product performs much better than might be expected from its price, we have drawn attention to it with three dollar signs ($$$) next to its listing. We also indicate, with a ★, products that have been on this list for longer than three years; as mentioned above, we do retain on the list products we view as especially deserving. Longevity in a hi-fi component is rare enough that we think it worth noting, although it can also indicate that the attention of design engineers has moved elsewhere.

Please also bear in mind that deletion of a product from this list does not mean we woke up one morning, decided the thing was terrible, and banished it from our pages: It’s probably just one of those things where the product was discontinued a while ago and all remaining stocks are gone (a perennially fine product such as the Naim Aro tonearm would be a good example of something like that), or one where a fast-moving technology has left a once-cutting-edge product high and dry. It’s also common for us to cut products from the list only because their time is up and we need the space, and to very much regret doing so.

So, please don’t be upset if a product you purchased on our say-so is dropped from Recommended Components. And if you are upset, please don’t call or write to tell us about it. We probably feel badly about it already.

Individual reviewers identified by their initials are: John Atkinson, Jim Austin (JCA), Brian Damkroger, Robert Deutsch, Art Dudley, Michael Fremer, Larry Greenhill, Jon Iverson, Fred Kaplan, Michael Lavorgna, Eric Lichte, Sasha Matson, Ken Micallef, Thomas J. Norton, Wes Phillips, Herb Reichert, Bob Reina (BJR), Kalman Rubinson, Jonathan Scull, and Jason Victor Serinus.

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ARTICLE CONTENTS

Page 1
How to Use the Listings
Turntables, Tonearms, Cartridges, etc
Disc Players, Transports & Media Players
Digital Processors
Surround-Sound Components
Preamplifiers
Power Amps
Integrated Amps & Receivers
Loudspeakers
Subwoofers
Headphones
FM Tuners & Antennas
Cables
Miscellaneous
Powerline Accessories
Recording Equipment
Signal Processors

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