About us
Best of High End is an independent magazine for people who take audio and video seriously.
We review loudspeakers, amplifiers, streamers, headphones and projectors — not from a press release, but from weeks of listening and watching in rooms we know inside out.
What started in 2016 as a video-first platform grew into a full editorial outlet: in-depth reviews, first looks at gear before the full verdict, reportage from the industry’s biggest shows, technical explainers, and daily news.
What hasn’t changed is the standard: cost is no object, only the result matters.
How we work
Where the gear comes from. We borrow review samples, preferably from the manufacturer directly. For practical reasons some units reach us through the local distributor or the appointed press agency. Everything goes back when we’re done.
How long we listen. A review unit stays with us for four to six weeks. Long enough to get past the first impression, and long enough to live with the thing rather than audition it.
Who reads before you do. If a manufacturer asks, they may read the copy before publication and flag technical inconsistencies. They cannot touch our judgement, our conclusions or the score. Corrections are limited to matters of fact.
Advertising and editorial. You will see banners from brands we also review. They are sold by the publisher and have no bearing on what we cover or what it scores.
What the score means
Every review ends with a number out of ten, carried to one decimal. It is not a gut feeling — it is a weighted average of four criteria:
| Weight | |
|---|---|
| Performance | 60% |
| Features & Functionality | 20% |
| Design & Build Quality | 10% |
| Price & Performance | 10% |
Performance carries the most weight for a reason. A beautifully built amplifier that doesn’t sing is still a beautifully built amplifier that doesn’t sing.
10/10 is the ceiling. From 9/10 upwards a product earns the Best of High End Award — reserved for gear that genuinely stands apart, not for everything we happen to like.
Every score on the site breaks down into these four numbers, so you can see exactly where a product earned its rating and where it lost ground.
Four rooms, four sets of ears
Most magazines review in one room. We use four — and we show you all of them, down to the last cable.
Marco Lisi — Inside HQ. 80 m², a 7.5.4 Atmos system with five woofers, built and tuned over years. The reference everything else is measured against.
Daniel Březina — High-End, Lived-In. A 50 m² family living room with a high-end stereo system and video, dialled in around one sweet spot. Gear judged the way you’d actually live with it.
John Bugailiskis — Sound proof. A modest room tuned for balance: acoustic control without losing natural warmth. Traditional 2.0 stereo, analogue and digital sources.
Finn de Kroon — Kii room. A 20 m² editing studio built around an optimised Kii setup — sharp enough for critical judging, relaxed enough to just enjoy the music.
Each room comes with the full system list and a sound-profile chart, so you know exactly what a review was heard on.
The team
Best of High End is written by a small editorial team spread across three countries.
Marco Lisi — Publisher · Belgium
John Bugailiskis — Senior Editor · Canada
Finn de Kroon — Editor & Videographer · Belgium
Daniel Březina — Editor · Czech Republic
Four listeners, four rooms, four sets of habits. That’s deliberate: no single pair of ears decides what’s good.
Why we film
We have published 780 videos and counting. That’s not a side project — it’s where we started and it’s still how most people meet us.
The reason is simple: most people would rather watch than read. A speaker’s cabinet, the finish on a chassis, the room a system is playing in — you can describe all of it in a thousand words, or you can show it in thirty seconds. Factory visits, first looks, explainers, interviews and a podcast you can also follow on Spotify.
→ Browse everything we’ve filmed
Get in touch
Got a question, a product to submit for review, or interested in partnering with us? Get in touch.
