This review page is supported in part by the sponsors whose ad banners are displayed below

Something similar held true for the other frequency extreme. Mathematician and musician Daniel Victor Snaith aka Caribou has authored a compellingly danceable electro/pop album called Swim which is truly enjoyable but whose many sound effects and even voice are mastered overly crisp and present for my ears. With the Octave/EC combo this becomes a joy kill. With the Einstein meanwhile it sounded a lot more pleasant than I’m used to. And it wasn’t because the Bochum machine subtracted much in the treble. It simply didn’t attract attention. The motto was long-term comfort. And I marveled at the substantial bronze tinge of the cymbal work on Totally Wired II’s "Tilldess" from the Ulf Sandberg Quartet.


Focusing instead on the initial transient where stick meets metal, one must admit that more hardness and directness are possible. That’s simply the other side of the same coin. To avoid misapprehension, the Einstein handles attacks with proper vigour. Others simply do it even more angular and instantaneous which can also sound less pleasant contingent on album and listener sensitivity to this aspect. Matter of taste again.

The same could be said for the midrange which was nicely fed from below and lit from above with a tad less luminance to veer slightly into warmth rather than lightness. The Einstein plays it pleasantly sonorous which many like. Lovers of particularly fresh and immediate presentations will feel less catered to. So much on tonality. Enthusiasm for me arose with something else. The near fatal charm which Einstein’s integrated exudes has to do with its first-class illusion of in-room presence. The means toward such musical presence are less connected to dynamics where the machine has no flaws but isn’t extraordinary for this price range. No, for me it was the blessedly great plasticity as it was conveyed by the musicians and stage actors and the manner in which dimensional contexts arose. I generally tend to assume that when a component is comparatively forward in the vocal band, it will also stage more forward. My Octave+Electrocompaniet combo is categorically lighter and more forward than were the fatter, earthier and softer upper mids of the Einstein. Yet it’s the latter whose stage perspective tended to begin in front of the speakers. So? Some won’t be tickled.
The four output Mosfets per channel get their own heat-exchange chimneys
I however rather happen to like such a perspective because music becomes more involving and lively. Hence this particular confluence of sonorous and forward seemed particularly clever to me. ‘Present & forward’ might be interesting in the short term but goes on the nerves in the long term. 'Fat & laid back' meanwhile will be so cozy as to put you to sleep in the fourth song. Perhaps this oversimplifies but if the message comes across, it served its purpose of expressing liveliness without aggravation, warmth without boredom. I mentioned subtleties which make the difference. This was one of them.

Relative to the scale of the imaginary stage I had no complaints. Nothing felt blown out of proportion or chamber-music compacted. Where opulent width and depth were required, they appeared but not otherwise. Granted, front/back distances were rendered keener with my reference amplification but that could have been a side effect of the Einstein’s closer-up casting. It moved the ‘way back’ of the virtual venue closer to the listener. Its particular rendition of instruments and voices is insufficiently described by the term localization sharpness. Of course it was that too. More fundamentally it was the 3D plasticity of the performance however. With vocals for example I imagined being able to walk around them like a sculpture. Fascinating. In this regard Einstein’s integrated was amongst the best I’ve ever heard, price no object. I’d thought my pre/power combination good already on that count but here the integrated went noticeably further.