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MI: What drove Inovadis into the realm of high end audio?
C: Inovadis is a company created by music lovers. Its two founders were purely addicted to music, and because they thought there is an audiophile life under 10000€, all our development projects on all our brands have been motivated by the same motto, opening the world of high end to a wide variety of consumers. This is the reason why our products always combine original design, manufacturing excellence, state-of-the-art technologies, unbeatable performances and the best price for value.

MI: Who is behind the CARAT audio brand name?
C: All the work behind CARAT is from the design specialist and artistic director as well as co-founder of INOVADIS, Eric James.

MI: Why the CARAT name?
C: The CARAT 57 line takes its name from the brilliant cut of a diamond. Diamond cutting, which is extremely meticulous work, is a mix of art and science. This is exactly what we focused on with CARAT in designing our line of electronics and keeping a constant concern for precision and purity of the sound.

MI: It seems you have some of best designers on your side. CARAT components share mystique and beauty, and it seems you find the right balance with this line. What was the inspiration?
C: The inspiration was a desire to come back to authenticity. We wanted to offer a different product on the market... something that music lovers would enjoy for its incredible musicality, as well as for its very refined design. All the high end products on the market often have a design much less cared for. We believe both go hand in hand and you get the result with the CARAT 57 series.

MI: CARAT A57 and C57 use a lot of high grade (audiophile) components. You offer quite a reasonable price. How did you manage this?
C: To allow CARAT to be competitive on the market, as in offering the best price for value while using the audiophile components that you find in our products, we are working together with a factory in China. Nearly all the brands on the market do it nowadays. Our design and engineer team is based in France. They work closely with a dedicated factory in China, selected for its taste and desire of excellence.

We chose this strategy to be able to reach a larger public with more attractive prices.
We could have produced in smaller quantities in France, but would have had to sell them at much higher price for the same performances.
We have preferred betting for a quicker start to be able to launch the product at this price point. This betting is on its way to be won, given the warm welcome of the brand in France as well as in Europe.

MI: Why do you offer so many input options and mm/mc phono in the CARAT A57? Is there a demand for so many options inside one box?
C: It is surely by passion. Eric James has a passion for Vinyl discs and could not conceive equipment of this quality without a pre amplifier at least as good! Besides, he worked a lot on the prototypes of this pre-amplifier to obtain a satisfying restitution, as much in Moving Magnet as in Moving Coil.
This adjustment was optimized to permit an adaptation to the MM units affordable, as well as the most sophisticated MC.

The presence of the MP3 front plug is logic. Each family has an iPod or a MP3 player, and it’s normal to be able to plug it into a Hi-Fi system. This allows you to plug it in a computer, as well. The passionate public, for who these products are made, generally owns a wide variety of equipment. For these reasons, it seems normal that the amplifier accepts the sources around it.

MI: In what class does the CARAT A57 work?
C: The CARAT A57 amplifier works in AB class.

MI: Can you tell us more about the pre amp and amp section of the CARAT A57? Topology shows that somebody did a great job in the technical department.
C: The preamplifier section uses digital control of signal to offer a very high accuracy of settings. That ensures a perfect balance of the channels. The sound quality is obtained by "classical" methods: audiophile grade passive components, optimization of component map on the board and ultra low noise ICs with high slew rate.

MI: Can you tell us more about the CARAT C57? For the given price it really offers quite surprising components and drive.
C: The reading mechanism is a Philips mechanism. Its precision is associated with excellent Burr Brown converters PCM1732 (24 bits/96kHz), as well as an exit floor based on the Burr Brown OPA2134 with audiophile condensators.

MI: Would you like to describe the CARAT I57?
C: We find the same quality components on the amplifier, the CD and the Tuner. All this has been associated with an amplification part slightly less powerful to permit to gain space and to fit everything in a very nice case.

This integration makes for very nice sound quality in a small sized environment. It’s not a mini HI-FI basic system, which is obvious when you look inside!

MI: Any plans for separate power and pre amplifier products?
C: Not for the moment. Our projects are more aiming to propose higher end components for the amplification with a more powerful model and with a more powerful source, as well. We are currently testing new configurations for the converters.

MI: Some are still sceptic about audio products manufactured in China. How do you manage quality control?
C: China is a continent able to produce the best and the worst. After all, they know how to send people in space. We are paying particular attention to the quality of the people we are working with. Further than the simple industrial production, it’s the whole production chain which had to be set up with notably the selection and the supplying with audiophile components.

The quality control is obviously defined from conception to guarantee a result strictly similar to the first prototypes, meticulously optimized.
All equipment is checked after an important “warm up” phase. This avoids a lot of breakdowns, which would occur from the very beginning.

MI: Who are your target consumers?
C: A CARAT consumer can be any music lover, even one who don’t necessarily have 10000€ to spend on sound equipment. Our customers are fans of design, beauty and purity… people like us in a way.

CARAT customers are, before all, the customers who love music.  Our design, of course, is much appreciated by addicts of nice objects but it’s from listening that our products convince people. Our affordable prices make our products reach a larger public… and to convince them, as well, to buy some CDs.

MI: What is the goal of CARAT Audio?
C: CARAT Audio’s goal is really to provide very good music quality to people who wouldn’t be able to afford very expensive high-end equipment. We want all music lovers to have CARAT at home.

MI: Do you feel that Carat represents high-end and audiophile points of view?
C: The CARAT Philosophy is audiophile in the right sense of the word: love of music. The means used to reach this result allows us to touch a larger public. A lot of our components are the same as in high-end equipment (which is typically much more expensive). We do not want to propose elitist prices, motivated by a confidential distribution.

MI: What is high-end for you?
C: High-end is when no improvement is feasible for a given configuration. This does not mean adding some functions, but doing better in what we claim. The CARAT range is high-end by this definition. But at the end, it’s when technology can step back to leave the space to music that we can talk about high-end!

MI: Is there a SACD or DVD-A player coming?
C: We are testing SACD solutions. We will integrate this format when we’re sure that the reading of CD format is as good too on this deck. It's a very meticulous, but passionate job. It is unacceptable for us to have a sound perfectible on most of the discs, and superb on some SACD.

MI: What product are you most proud of?
C: We are very proud of them all. But the CARAT A57 in particular achieves very, very good performance.
We are indeed very proud of the A57, which, despite its discretion, is able to do a very good job with a very wide variety of speakers. Its phono pre-amplifier is marvellous, and its power supply gives energy able to reproduce the main orchestras without adding any aggressiveness.

MI: What does CARAT’s future hold?
C: Certainly new products with the same musical intention. The calendar will depend on the (quite high) demand of the conceivers.

MI: Any last thoughts for our readers?
C: Just try them… you will love them.