New: Kirmuss Audio Record Restoration System

Designed by an Audiophile. Built for the Music.

There's a moment every vinyl lover knows. You drop the needle, and instead of music, you hear it — the crackle, the pop, the hiss beneath the melody. You've cleaned the record. You've been careful. But it's still there.

Charles Kirmuss knew that moment well. And he refused to accept that it was simply the nature of the format.

The Man Behind the Technology

An audiophile since 1968, Charles Kirmuss has spent his entire life at the intersection of technology and sound. At just eight years old, his passion for shortwave radio and woodworking led him to build his first speaker cabinet from plans in Mechanics Illustrated magazine. By his teenage years, he was spending every Friday night working in audio shops in Montreal, Canada in exchange for equipment, absorbing everything he could about the science of sound reproduction.

That obsession with getting things right never left him.

Over a remarkable career, Kirmuss worked as a technician on the Canadarm for the Space Shuttle in 1978, served as CEO of a GE technology division in Canada in 1985, and pioneered digital video and audio recording technology through the 1990s. He holds multiple patents across a range of technologies. But it was vinyl — and the question of why records never quite sounded the way they should — that ultimately consumed him.

The Discovery That Changed Everything

After four years of dedicated research into how vinyl records are manufactured and the environments in which they are stored, Charles Kirmuss made a discovery that the audio world had overlooked for decades.

Every record pressed from vinyl contains a release agent — a pressing oil baked into the groove during manufacture. This residue, identified by the Shure Brothers in the 1970s, is the true source of most of the pops and unwanted noise vinyl listeners experience. Every stylus pass heats this agent, welding dust particles deeper into the groove wall. Standard cleaning methods — brushes, vacuum machines, cleaning fluids — work only on the surface. They cannot touch what lives inside the groove itself.

Armed with this understanding, Kirmuss developed something the world had never seen: not a record cleaner, but a record restorer.

Patented Science. Real Results.

Launched in 2018, the Kirmuss Audio KA-RC-1 Ultrasonic Record Restoration System brought professional-grade groove restoration to audiophiles for the first time at an accessible price point.

The system combines 35kHz ultrasonic cavitation with Kirmuss Audio's proprietary ionising surfactant — a formulation that temporarily reverses the electrical charge of a record, drawing the ultrasonic energy deep into the grooves rather than simply agitating the water's surface. As Kirmuss explains, the surfactant works to attract the plasma wave created by cavitation into the record's grooves, resulting in far more effective removal of contaminants than ultrasonic energy alone can achieve.

The KA-RC-1's patented motor-drive and record suspension system sets it apart from competing ultrasonic machines. Unlike systems using a basic spit-roast mechanism that requires all records to be the same size, the Kirmuss system allows you to simultaneously clean two 12" LPs, one 10" record, and one 7" single — all without risking label damage, and with the ability to remove one record without disturbing the others.

The results are not subtle. Customers regularly report dramatic increases in audio levels, jaw-dropping improvements in clarity, and a significant reduction in noise and surface pops across collections they thought they already knew.

Recognised Worldwide

Kirmuss Audio is not an underground secret. The system has earned the endorsement of some of the most respected voices in the global audio community.

Stereophile's legendary analogue reviewer Michael Fremer — a man with over 30,000 records in his personal collection — gave the KA-RC-1 his enthusiastic recommendation, declaring that once you hear the results, you realise you've never actually heard your record collection properly.

The system is globally recognised by leading audio manufacturers.

Available in New Zealand at The Real Music Company!

We are proud to bring the complete Kirmuss Audio range to New Zealand vinyl lovers — from the flagship KA-RC-1 Ultrasonic Record Restoration System through to the full range of accessories, consumables, replacement parts, and protective storage solutions.

Whether you're a seasoned audiophile with thousands of records, a collector bringing second-hand-store finds back to life, or simply someone who wants to hear their music the way the artist intended — Kirmuss Audio gives you the tools to do it properly.

Your records are waiting to sound like this…