new reference in the german Stereo: Einsten the ..

LP, HiFi & Records, Image hifi, Stereo, Stereoplay, Audio, Hoererlebnis,
Fairaudio,.. are you seriously stating they are all the same????? (I take it for
granted you read all of those)

If it's the Thing About Accuphase the three magazines with the widest
distribution have that disturbs you, agree it can become tedious. The other
holy cow being KEF. Then again, I'm sure a number of Accuphase owners will
agee wholeheartedly with those "many good points".

Rest assured Einstein is up there with the very, very best.

I am not unfamiliar to Accuphase, I replaced Accuphase Dp-78 by dCS Puccini one year ago. Even before I had Accuphase DP-67 and replaced by Musical Fidelity KW-DM 25.
Further, I have lived in Germany almost 5 years and started to collect equipment there in 1993. I remember as today I used to go to HD Hauptbahnhof for to get english audio magazines.(what hi-fi, hi-fi news and records, stereophile)
If my memory is correct, beyond them, Image Hi-fi was a bit better in paper and picture quality!
Being honestly, not just german press, english speaking audio media have weaknesses in testing and analyzing the particular equipment.

I used read stereophile tests but not seriously since 2006. However, I read J.A's lab reports carefuly in order to pick a few important points about the equipment.

I think you will understand this after having reached a particular level in Hi-End Audio.

Image Hifi and Hifi Reords are way better magazines than mass market Stereo and Stereoplay....

Both of them raved about Puccini and are very serious to do so!

Agree with you on both accounts, Kops. What makes Stereo, Stereoplay and Audio so appealing to the “main crowd”, however, is in the end exactly their Achilles’ heel: they perform A/B-tests (the others never do) and they have introduced an absolute scoring table. Many people only look at that score and have no further thoughts on system synergy, their listening room, etc. Although these magazines themselves warn it’s a very bad idea just to take all the components with the highest score and throw them together, they are caught in their own scheme, they must automatically declare one or a few references on the basis of highest score (btw, something that is often disregarded by readers: this is the reference of the components they tested, of course, it doesn’t go beyond that and they don’t claim that).

Back to Einstein. In the 5/2007 issue of Image hifi there is actually a review of The Source by Roland Kraft, another “seasoned” reviewer who knows what he is talking about imho. This contains a very interesting observation: “Sonically, (The Source) plays at a level where the only meaningful discussion should be restricted to whether the gear downstream can cope at all with the quality of a front-end such as this”. Here, various players are not and do not need to be pitched against each other. That particular review of The Source ends with the statement: “A stroke of genius!”