Darko’s Product of the Year 2024

End-of-year ‘best of’ lists should be easy to put together: take a breezy look back at the year almost gone and pick a few favourites. Job done. If only it were that simple.

I think calling ‘best’ is a fool’s errand, largely because no single reviewer has sampled enough products at home to be confident of a best in any category, let alone at any single price point. All a hi-fi/head-fi reviewer can do is pick his/her favourites of the year: the hi-fi/head-fi products that they enjoyed the most, or, in my case, products that point to a brighter future…albeit along a path less likely to be travelled.

This year is no exception. But in 2024, I made it even harder for myself.

A few years ago, I decided that my end-of-year picks should all be connected: I would select three or four products reviewed during the preceding twelve months; products that would form a decent hi-fi system. This year, I took this thinking one step further and held back my four favourites to cover them for the first (and only!) time in a single end-of-year ‘best of’ video. That’s why this video’s runtime is double that of my normal review videos.

Did I consider that ‘other’ product for inclusion in this video? And if not, why not? My sweet summer child, I am sure you realise that it would take me several hours to explain why one or more other products did not make the cut. I would much rather talk about what did make the cut and why.

I hope you like this video as it took weeks – not days – to make.

🎥 Camera: John Darko / Olaf von Voss
🎬 Editor: John Darko
🌈 Colour: Olaf von Voss
🕺🏻 Motion GFX: John Darko
💰 Ad segment: John Darko

🎵 Song IDs? Playlists of all music heard in this video – and other videos – can be found on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/johndarko

👉 As seen in this video…

Moondrop MIAD-01
📖 https://moondroplab.com/en/products/miad01

Campfire Audio Clara
📖 https://www.campfireaudio.com/pages/clara

Alessandro Cortini – Nati Infiniti
📖 https://cortini.bandcamp.com/album/nati-infiniti

OPRA from Roon
📖 https://github.com/opra-project/OPRA

FiiO R9
🛒 https://amzn.to/4gS0bIJ