It’s that time of the year again: The team of esteemed high-end audio equipment reviewers at Stereophile selects their favourite products of the year. These choices stem from comprehensive evaluations, including a series of tests in Jon Atkinson’s renowned Stereophile test lab, over the past 12 months. Established in 1992, this long-standing and prestigious award ceremony employs a sophisticated three-round voting system, while maintaining a minimal number of categories for focused competition. In the Analog Products category, for instance, turntables are evaluated alongside tonearms, phono cartridges, and phono preamplifiers.
It’s a significant honour that the SME Model 60 flagship turntable not only secured the title of Stereophile’s Product of 2023 Analog Component of the Year but also garnered the Editor’s Choice accolade from reviewer Michael Trei. Having examined the SME Model 60 in Stereophile Vol. 46 No. 8 Michael Trei remarks on his Editors’ Choice selection:
“SME rarely introduces new models, and when they do, it’s always an event. The Model 60 is only the second flagship turntable from SME in over 30 years, building on the strengths of its predecessor, which remains in production. SME is one of the only turntable manufacturers that makes almost every mechanical part in house, right down to the tiniest screws and washers, and this attention to detail shows in its unsurpassed quality of fit and finish. The performance is reference quality, with an uncanny ability to extract more music from the grooves of a record than pretty much anything else.”
