Inca Design Katana

By Jason Kennedy

Overview: Price: £600 Website: http://www.activdistribution.com/ Size: HxWxD: 11x38x37cm Weight: 11kg Type: CD player Low resonance aluminium chassis Coaxial & optical digital outputs Balanced & single ended analogue outputs Burr-Brown upsampling 24/96, HDCD DAC Plus points: Exceptional build quality, including teak remote, strong stereo imaging and presence Minus points: Timing could be better

When Inca Design was founded in 2003, the plan was to call it Inca Tech and launch it with a new version of the Claymore amplifier that originally carried that name back in the eighties. As it turned out, even though there is a Claymore in the pipeline other designers have created different products in the meantime and the name has become Inca Design. The first to reach fruition is the Katana CD player, a product that looks far more expensive than its asking price.

This quality of casework is rare at twice the price so the obvious question was how had Inca Design had achieved this extraordinary result. The answer given is that by designing the player in the UK and manufacturing it in China they can keep costs low. The fact that other brands who use the same approach have not achieved as much is, they claim, that while all products are priced in order to maximise margins, theirs are tighter than most.

The Katana's build quality is more than skin deep. The chassis is built to allow the transport to operate in a low-resonance environment and uses profiling on the aluminium panelling to break up vibration. The base plate is a sandwich of aluminium and copper, a fact that is clear if you turn the player over.

Inside the case, a Philips transport sits on a slab of 10mm thick copper which is machined to cancel resonances and has the effect of mass-loading the mechanism - effectively giving it something into which to sink its own resonances. Signal processing is covered by a single Burr-Brown chip containing an upsampler to 24/96, a DAC and an HDCD filter.

The combination of balanced and single-ended output sockets on offer means that even the back panel on the Katana looks like it's from a more expensive player. What's more, Inca Design supplies both single-ended and digital optical cables to hook up the player, which is nice.

Another thing you can't miss with this player is the teak remote. The laser-cut legends and rounded ergonomic form mean that it has the highest tactile rating of any handset we've had the pleasure of fondling.

Sound

The Katana proved itself as accomplished sonically as it is physically, displaying good skills when it comes to the fine art of music reproduction. Its character is relaxed and smooth but not to the extent that detail is masked, in fact this is a pleasingly transparent player for the price and reveals a great deal about any disc you care to place in it.

With a modern recording you immediately appreciate the use of reverb and phase-related effects in the studio. The beat, the words and the instruments are all clear enough but the three-dimensional aspects are what stand out. Bass lines are tuneful and weighty, there's clearly no shortage of range on this player, though the mid seems just a hint soft - you can hear what's going on but there's a degree of smoothing.

Complex rhythms are not handled with the same degree of slickness however. Interaction between piano, double bass and drums for instance is easy to follow but could have better synchronicity. By the standards of its peers though, the Katana is hardly a slouch and there are few players which combine stereo imaging with great timing. Here, depth of image is as strong as ever, with each instrument sitting in its own acoustic environment and claiming its place in the mix.

Resolution of detail is also strong - it has to be to produce the stereo image but there is also a sense of richness to the overall sound that makes other players seem a little lean. It bettered a Sony 555ES SACD player for instance in nearly all respects unless we gave the latter a head start with an SACD disc.

This player seems to thrive on studio effects and reveals each producer's tricks with ease thanks to its sensitivity to spatial cues. Many CD players struggle to produce fully formed high frequencies but this certainly isn't the case here. Rhythmically dense material may present a greater challenge to the player's timing skills but it remains relaxed and enjoyable nonetheless.

Verdict:

The Katana is a remarkably accomplished CD player with considerable poise, it may not be all things to all men but then such players are rare even at twice the price. This combined with its phenomenal build should make it something of a giant slayer.