Scope
Each year, the SoundStage! Network highlights audio components that wowed our reviewers and recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to the audio industry. That long-standing tradition continues in 2025. As in past years, all product contenders have been drawn exclusively from components that earned a Reviewers’ Choice award on SoundStage! Hi-Fi, SoundStage! Access, SoundStage! Ultra, SoundStage! Simplifi, or SoundStage! Solo during the previous 12 months. This approach ensures that every winner has first passed through our established review process before being considered for year-end recognition. The resulting winners are our 2025 Products of the Year.
SoundStage! Australia, our international sister site, once again ran its own independent program for its annual product awards, based on reviews published on that site. As in previous years, the SoundStage! Australia 2025 winners have been announced separately in an article you can find here.
In 2022, we instituted awards for individuals whose work has substantially influenced the hi-fi industry. These Outstanding Achievement awards continue in 2025, acknowledging people who have shaped, elevated, or advanced audio in some way to the betterment of consumers. Just as in previous years, three winners have been chosen.
As has now become a tradition in its own right, the SoundStage! Network also celebrates the full roster of winners in a dedicated video presentation on our YouTube channel, continuing the expanded format we introduced in 2023. We’re proud to announce that this year’s host is Erica Ehm, who from 1985 to 1994 was one of the original VJs for Canada’s MuchMusic, a pioneer in television broadcasting during the music-video revolution. In her time there, Erica hosted TV segments while also interviewing musicians and celebrities from around the world. Since then, she’s worked as a songwriter, awards presenter, public speaker, marketer, podcaster, and more. This year’s awards video was shot at the Flato Academy Theatre, located in Lindsay, Ontario, Canada.
Product categories
For 2025, the SoundStage! Network’s program for the Products of the Year remains structured around three principal categories: Distinction, Outstanding Performance, and Exceptional Value.
The Distinction category includes three subgroups this year: Hall of Fame, Innovation in Design, and Aesthetics & Sound. Hall of Fame recognizes components that have earned long-term respect and relevance. Innovation in Design highlights creative, technically forward solutions that distinguish a product from its competition. Aesthetics & Sound honors components that excel not only in audio performance but also in visual design and craftsmanship. Multiple products can receive a Distinction award within any of these subgroups, which happened this year in the Innovation in Design and Aesthetics & Sound subcategories—two products were awarded in each.
Outstanding Performance is awarded solely on the basis of sonic achievement. Products in this category represent the highest level of sound quality in their respective types, irrespective of price.
Exceptional Value recognizes components that provide performance or functionality above what their price would typically indicate. These products deliver unusually strong value along with excellent audio performance.
For Outstanding Performance and Exceptional Value, awards are determined by product type—integrated amplifiers, power amplifiers, floorstanding loudspeakers, standmount loudspeakers, digital-to-analog converters, and so forth. If no product of a given type meets the criteria for a particular category in 2025, that product type has simply been omitted for that category. That’s because we want these awards to represent the best of the best.
Now it’s time to announce our winners for 2025. Each Outstanding Achievement award has a short write-up explaining our selection, while each product winner has a clickable link to its corresponding review and a sentence or two culled from the review that helps to explain why it won.
Outstanding Achievement awards
Edmund Meitner
Edmund (Ed) Meitner is the founder of EMM Labs and Meitner Audio, which were respectively established in 1998 and 2012, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where they remain headquartered today. But Ed’s history in audio dates back to the early 1970s, when he participated in the design of the Olive analog mixing console in Montreal, Canada. The Olive was the world’s first fully automated recording console; although not a commercial success, it is still regarded as a legend in professional-audio circles for the innovation and advanced thinking behind it.
Ed also designed test and measurement equipment—in fact, in the 1970s he designed the Amber 5500 distortion analyzer we are still using at Canada’s National Research Council (NRC) for speaker measurements—before shifting his focus to high-end consumer audio in the 1980s. Besides being a great product designer, Ed is considered a maverick in the hi-fi world, often designing products employing unique circuit designs and patented technologies. He also worked with Sony on developing single-bit digital-to-analog converters for use in SACD playback.
Ed’s lengthy career—now spanning over 55 years—has benefited hi-fi enthusiasts the world over through the fabulous products he’s created and the technologies he’s developed.
Dr. Sean Olive
Sean Olive is best known as an audio researcher, but his education began at the University of Toronto, where he studied music. He was and still is a pianist. From there, he went to McGill University, in Montreal, where he ultimately received master’s and doctoral degrees in their Sound Recording program. His PhD thesis focused on the interaction between loudspeakers and the room in which they’re playing.
From the 1980s to the early 1990s, Sean worked with Dr. Floyd Toole at Canada’s National Research Council (NRC) investigating loudspeakers, room interactions, and listener preferences. Along with Dr. Toole, he later moved to Harman International to further that research, which eventually had him investigating headphones and their effects on listening preferences. And like Toole—who received our Outstanding Achievement award in 2023—Sean has always shared the results of his work publicly. Although Sean Olive retired from Harman International earlier this year, he is still working as a consultant and presenter, offering his expertise around the world.
Sean is truly one of the world’s great experts in loudspeaker and headphone listening impressions, with research that has resulted in better-sounding products for listeners the world over.
Adam Mokrzycki
We’ve never presented a creator of a hi-fi show with an Outstanding Achievement award, but this year we’re breaking the mold—because Adam Mokrzycki, who lives in Warsaw, Poland, certainly deserves it.
Adam is the founder and driving force behind Audio Video Show, held annually in his city. The show has now run 28 times, always with Adam in charge. From its beginnings as a regional event, he has developed it into one of the largest and most influential audio shows in the world. This is not only because of its long history and now-significant size (it occupies three distinct locations in Warsaw), but also because of Adam’s successful mission to expand the event to an international audience, both in terms of the manufacturers who exhibit and the people who attend.
I vividly recall how, in 2016, Adam personally invited about ten journalists from around the world to attend the event. I was one of those invitees. None of us had been to Audio Video Show before, and few of us had even heard about it before our arrival. Once there, we were astonished by the professionalism and size of the show, which is obviously why Adam invited us—so we could experience it for ourselves and relay our impressions to the world. Since then, Audio Video Show has grown larger and has attracted an even higher number of international exhibitors and attendees.
Adam’s nearly three decades of work has created an event that originally benefitted his city and country, but now benefits the world—and from all indicators, will continue to do so.
Distinction awards
Hall of Fame
Bluesound Node Icon streaming preamplifier, Roger Kanno (SoundStage! Simplifi, June 2025): “If . . . you want your streamer to also serve as a preamplifier, especially if you plan to add a subwoofer and utilize room correction, the Node Icon offers exceptional value and is my number-one recommendation.”
Innovation in Design
Devialet Phantom Ultimate 98 dB active loudspeaker system, AJ Wykes (SoundStage! Simplifi, December 2025): “The build quality is exemplary, the technology is sophisticated, and the bass output in particular punches well beyond the speaker’s size and weight class.”
Anthem MRX SLM A/V receiver, Dennis Burger (SoundStage! Access, May 2025): “The MRX SLM isn’t merely a good receiver in a seemingly impossibly slim package; it also changed the way I think of how an AVR can and should be used.”
Aesthetics & Sound
Focal Diva Utopia streaming loudspeaker system, George de Sa (SoundStage! Hi-Fi, November 2025): “Being a high-performance active wireless music system, the Diva Utopia is a very attractive option for those seeking topflight sound from a stylish and décor-friendly package.”
Marantz Model 10 integrated amplifier, Jason Thorpe (SoundStage! Ultra, September 2025): “The Model 10 is physically beautiful, for sure, but beyond that, its sound quality is commensurate with its price—fantastic bass, wonderful retrieval of detail, and a clear, grain-free top end.”
Outstanding Performance awards
DALI Epikore 9 loudspeaker, Jason Thorpe (SoundStage! Ultra, February 2025): “This speaker, the Epikore 9, could well be the perfect speaker.”
Bowers & Wilkins 805 D4 Signature loudspeaker, Jason Thorpe (SoundStage! Ultra, July 2025): “Despite their smaller size and reduced driver complement, the 805s delivered musical experiences that never stopped taking my breath away.”
Dynaudio Confidence 20A active loudspeaker system, George de Sa (SoundStage! Hi-Fi, July 2025): “Dynaudio’s Confidence 20A is an incredible loudspeaker system. It performs exceptionally well in all respects, delivering true high-end sound, top-to-bottom.”
SME Model 35 turntable and Series Vi tonearm, Jonathan Gorse (SoundStage! Ultra, November 2025): “The SME Model 35 with its new Series Vi arm is an astonishing turntable. It offers world-class detail retrieval, rock-solid pitch stability, a gorgeously stable and believable soundstage, and the ability to track and retrieve deeper bass than you ever imagined could be pressed into a vinyl groove.”
Mola Mola Lupe phono preamplifier, Jason Thorpe (SoundStage! Ultra, October 2025): “The most telling endorsement of the Lupe I can give is that I couldn’t find a single thing wrong with it, and God knows I tried.”
Ortofon MC X40 moving-coil phono cartridge, Jason Thorpe (SoundStage! Ultra, August 2025): “This cartridge is going to make life very difficult for the other big players in the phono cartridge world.”
Bryston Bi-200 integrated amplifier, Philip Beaudette (SoundStage! Hi-Fi, May 2025): “I relished the Bi‑200’s outstanding performance at the volume extremes and spent much of my listening time there.”
Rotel Michi Q5 CD player–DAC, George de Sa (SoundStage! Hi-Fi, November 2025): “The Michi Q5 is the finest-sounding CD player I’ve ever reviewed, and also the best-performing DAC that I’ve ever reviewed.”
Hegel Music Systems D50 digital-to-analog converter, George de Sa (SoundStage! Hi-Fi, June 2025): “Hegel Music Systems’ D50 is an excellent DAC that delivers utterly quiet, incredibly smooth, and composed performances with astonishing dynamic presence.”
EMM Labs DV2i streaming DAC-preamplifier, Phil Gold (SoundStage! Ultra, April 2025): “Products as significant as this do not come along often. It’s a milestone, not only within the world of digital audio, but for audio in general.”
Shunyata Research Theta speaker cable, Killain Jones (SoundStage! Hi-Fi, February 2025): “The Theta speaker cables provided nuanced detail, clarity, and focus, along with exceptional dynamics. I had a preternatural sense of hearing deeper into all the music I auditioned without feeling overwhelmed with information.”
Meze Audio Poet headphones, AJ Wykes (SoundStage! Solo, September 2025): “The Meze Poets are stunning headphones. They confirm, once again, that Meze Audio’s reputation for exceptional design and build quality is well deserved.”
Noble Audio FoKus Rex5 earphones, Geoffrey Morrison (SoundStage! Solo, August 2025): “They’re among the best Bluetooth earbuds I’ve ever heard, and they’re not even that expensive. What a win.”
Exceptional Value awards
SVS Ultra Evolution Pinnacle loudspeaker, Philip Beaudette (SoundStage! Hi-Fi, April 2025): “With extraordinary value and accomplished sonics, the Ultra Evolution Pinnacle deserves an audition if you’re in the market for loudspeakers to fill a large listening room with sound.”
Arendal Sound 1528 Monitor 8 loudspeaker, Philip Beaudette (SoundStage! Hi-Fi, December 2025): “Its effortless sound and even tonal balance invite long listening sessions, especially at higher volumes, while it is as transparent as anything I’ve heard. The fact that a pair of them does all of this for US$6800 (US$8350 with stands) has me shaking my head in disbelief.”
Anthem MCA 225 Gen 2 stereo amplifier, Philip Beaudette (SoundStage! Hi-Fi, October 2025): “In terms of performance, the Anthem MCA 225 is probably on the cusp of the curve of diminishing returns for a class‑AB power amplifier.”
WiiM Amp Ultra streaming integrated amplifier, Dennis Burger (SoundStage! Access, November 2025): “So is it worth the money? You bet it is.”
WiiM Ultra streaming preamplifier, AJ Wykes (SoundStage! Simplifi, May 2025): “Whether you’re updating an established audio setup or building a system from scratch, the WiiM Ultra is a versatile solution that combines high-level performance with user-friendly streaming, equalization, and routing capabilities.”
Goldring E4 moving-magnet phono cartridge, Thom Moon (SoundStage! Access, March 2025): “It is a glorious-sounding cartridge, as much at home with rock as it is with classical or jazz. It offers great precision of reproduction, with a very pleasant overall tone, great highs, and thundering lows.”
FiiO FT1 headphones, Geoffrey Morrison (SoundStage! Solo, September 2025): “These sound lovely for headphones costing well under $200, which makes them an absolute bargain.”
Meze Audio Alba earphones, Geoffrey Morrison (SoundStage! Solo, March 2025): “They’re enjoyable to listen to, comfortable to wear, and good looking. What an impressively solid combo at a great price.”
Looking back on 2025 and forward to 2026!
With our 2025 awards now finalized, we congratulate all of this year’s winners. We also recognize that behind every product is a team of individuals whose creativity, engineering talent, and commitment made these accomplishments possible. And to our three Outstanding Achievement recipients, we extend our gratitude for the lasting impact your work continues to have on the hi-fi industry.
As we close out this cycle, we’re already looking ahead to 2026, when we will again present honors for Distinction, Outstanding Performance, and Exceptional Value, and also recognize three more individuals for their Outstanding Achievements. We look forward to sharing next year’s selections when the time comes.
. . . Doug Schneider
das@soundstage.com
