2025 Awards – Network Streamer

Selection

Selecting products for awards is never easy, but our product selection process makes it harder. We want to replicate the experience of those who enjoy their audio devices rather than those who approach every component with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp. That means we have a two-step pre-review process before a product reaches the review stage. A potential review product is loaned to the reviewer; if they feel it isn’t the kind of product they would buy, it’s sent to another reviewer who might be more in step with how that product performs. If, at that point, we can find no one who likes what it does, we send it back. Why? The product may not have been suitable for any of our review team members. If not, and the product is just wrong, we find denying it the oxygen of exposure is better than people buying it because “it can’t be that bad!” Or worse, the review is subjected to careful and unscrupulous massaging; I come from a theatrical background. I’ve seen excoriating ‘crits’ of shows dressed up to sound upbeat on billboards. The same goes for audio. If it’s bad, it’s far better not to have our name by it, than someone buy it!

The crème of the crop

This means that every review in hi-fi+ has already made the grade. Our reviews are already the crème de la crème. So, our Awards are the crème de la crème de la crème! That’s damn crème-y! But even in a list of products that is so admirable, there are always some that stand above the rest.

Audio magazines seldom exist in isolation. Our team interacts with people in the industry and enthusiasts. Some products keep coming up because they have ‘a bit of a vibe’. An example of this (from last year’s Awards lineup) is Soul Note. If the name ‘Soul Note’ is brought into the conversation at an audio event, it’s usually followed by someone else saying, “Oooh… that stuff’s nice!” There are always a few products each year that keep getting mentioned in and around the audio business. Some of those ‘vibe’ brands are in the pages of our Awards, every year.

Regarding product shortlisting, we’ve found that relying on the review published at the time is often more critical than cross-examining the memory of the reviewer months after the product was shipped back to the manufacturer. While, once again, those ‘vibe’ products stick in the memory, a reviewer that might look at several products a month – and has done so for many years – is unlikely to remember the nuances of something they tested almost a year ago. As reviewers, we should look at each product with fresh eyes, so we should purge our memories of what came before (some of the least valuable reviews compare the 2024 model with long-discontinued previous designs from the last century). The review itself is more of a snapshot of what the reviewer felt while reviewing it.

Trickle down

Many of the products over the next pages are the stuff of dreams. And some dreams don’t always come cheap. While some are in the ‘affordable’ class, many of these products are at the ‘aspirational’ end of audio. Some are at the ‘astronomic’ (literally… one costs as much as a short space flight). But crucially, what we’ve seen over the years is that these products form the basis for more attainably priced products. The lessons learned in making something that costs a small fortune filter down into the real-world.

This is not simply an attempt to justify sky-high prices, it’s an understanding that the bandwidth of audio is expanding in more ways than one. By making products that cost a fortune, companies haven’t abandoned the entry-level products. They’ve ceded the floor to a new generation of manufacturers. And they are winning Awards!