No magazine can help but concentrate on the present, and tend to downplay what happened in the irretrievable past as being less important than the new and the exciting. I instituted's annual "Products of the Year" feature in 1992, therefore, to give recognition to those components that had proved capable of giving pleasure beyond the formal review period.

This is the third year we have given awards. There are six individual categories: "Loudspeakers" (including subwoofers); "Amplification Components" (preamplifiers, power amplifiers, etc.); "Digital Sources" (CD players, transports, D/A processors); "Analog Sources" (phono cartridges, turntables, tonearms, FM tuners, etc.); "Home Theater Components" (other than video, which we don't cover); and "Accessories" (everything else).

The two most important categories are self-explanatory: the "Component of the Year"the Best of the Bestand the "Budget Component of the Year"the Best Sound for the Buck.

There is also an "Editor's Choice" award, which I reserve to myself to single out those superb-sounding products that have proved themselves. "New! Improved! Latest/greatest/bigger/better/faster/more powerful..." writes Jack English elsewhere in this issue about the industry's emphasis on what is happening now. Yet when I'm asked to recommend products, I tend to fall back on mature products that offer proven long-term satisfaction. To be eligible for "Editor's Choice," therefore, a component must have been continuously available for at least a decade.

The formal voting procedure consisted of two steps: First, I asked each of Stereophile's hardware reviewers to nominate up to five components in each of the categories. To be a contender, a product had to have been reported on in Stereophile between the November 1993 and October 1994 issues, either in a full review or in a Follow-Up. Most important, only those components for which a writer had put his opinion on the line for public scrutiny could be nominated. I then put together a ballot form which included all the components that had been nominated by three or more writers and/or editors. In this manner, most of the nominees in most of the categories would have been auditioned by most of the reviewers.

Seventeen of the magazine's reviewing staff gave three votes for their first choice in each category, two votes for their second choice, and one vote for their third choice (if they had a third choice). I tallied the votes and smythed the words you are now reading. (I've included the retail price as of December 1993 and the date of the original review(s) so you can read the full text of what we had to say about each product.)John Atkinson