No, I don't know what 'Meracus' means, and I stopped playing around with anagrams after I reached 'ear scum'. How about 'US Cream'? No way: Meracus is so decidedly, unabashedly a German company that it couldn't possibly apply. Oh, is it German! If you've ever studied a hi-fi magazine from the Fatherland or visited the Frankfurt or Berlin shows, you'll know what I mean: staggering build quality, weird shapes, bold colours, lots of glass, wholly unique operational procedures. And the Meracus Imago is almost deliberately 'un-exportable', because the customer has to be on some Teutonic wave-length to get to grips with it.

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Study the photos. You've never seen another CD transport like it, right? Now check out this edited portion of the instructions, just part of the initial assembly once the transport screws have been removed and its component parts are spread out in front of you like some Kid's Toy From Hell:

'Next, using the three screws provided, fit the brass ring to the underside of the glass top. DO NOT OVERTIGHTEN THE THREE SCREWS. The cut-out in the ring should be at the back of the glass top; that is, the furthest away from the MERACUS writing. Fit the assembled glass top to the main unit using the four screws and spacers provided; the spacers go between the unit and the glass. Finally fit the glass ring CD aperture cover into the barrel provided.'

And that's just for the CD aperture lid; you can see that owning an Imago will be an adventure. It's certainly unlike any CD spinner I can recall. It uses the same case as the larger Meracus components, what they label a trapezium but what I'd call a box with sloped sides. The chassis is made from varnished 12mm thick MDF, mounted to a 2mm thick steel sheet, and it's available in myriad colours if you're prepared to pay extra to banish the basic black; the review sample was a gorgeous blue designed to soften the hearts of Bugatti fanciers. The finish is superb, the paintwork so smooth and glossy that you could mistake it for an automotive body part. Porsche, of course.

And it's huge. You'll need a lot of de-e-ep shelf space to house this sucker, possessing as it does a serious 420x405mm (WxD) footprint. The sloping sides reduce the top surface to 295x405mm (WxD); this area is covered with the 4mm thick sheet of bronze-coloured glass, which 'floats' above the chassis courtesy of a spacer in each corner. Amusingly, the odd-ball glass lid in the middle actually saves space compared to a rear-hinged lid; the Imago is 100mm tall, but you only need 20mm clearance for the lid itself. What you do have to allow on top of that, though, is enough space for your hand, clutching a disc, to enter the area above the opening.

How the aperture cover works is reason enough to buy an Imago, especially if you're the type who covets things like cameras with clear bodies so you can see the works, or wristwatches with skeleton backs. That large round disc is fitted to a barrel at the back of the opening for access to the CD transport itself. Press 'open' and the glass disc lifts up and swings out of the way, with the smoothness of a Japanese autofocus camera lens. It took a long while before I grew tired of watching the Imago open and close; then again, I was in a pretty stupid, easily-amused mood the day the Meracus arrived. Eventually, the novelty will wear off and it will be reduced to a party trick for amusing any of your friends that possess audiophile/gimmick tendencies. And let's face it: all this hydraulic hoo-hah really isn't necessary, when you consider that the world's most costly transports feature slide-back doors...usually manual. But it a lot of fun. Not, I hasten to add, something expected of German goods.

Meracus also had fun with the controls. The front panel contains only the on/off switch, the large machined-brass rotary control to the left of the comprehensive display. The basic controls themselves are ranged along the front edge of the glass top plate, 'non-switches' which operate in contact-less fashion via 'light barrier' methods. Touch the glass lid in the appropriate place and the CD aperture cover lifts and lowers, or play commences or stops; green or red LEDs shine through the lid to tell you what's been activated, too. Every other operation is accessed via a remote control which also performs all of the functions for other Meracus components.