The five things you could (or should) have got from Santa.
By Roy Gregory
As you sit back and relax, deep in post-prandial lethargy, struggling to digest the festive excess, thoughts inevitably turn to the disappointment at Santa’s limited audiophile sensibilities. For all those well-behaved and thoroughly deserving hi-fi fans, here’s the short-list of gifts you could, should or possibly would have received – at least if you’d shopped for yourself! Still, it’s never too late and there’s always the January sales. Audio products might not loom large amongst the New Year discounts, but there’s always that quid pro quo for the more fashionable items that do…
Here are five products that have delivered startling musical benefits, quite beyond expectations and in the widest range of system contexts. There’s something here to lift the performance of almost any system.
Andante-Largo Super TMD
The new gold standard for contact cleaning and enhancement, Super TMD comes with serious credentials from the specialist manufacturing sector, developed specifically to maintain reliability and consistency in ultra-low-voltage circuits. It’s impact on audio systems is little short of shocking – and it’s all about musical improvements. So simple, so effective – so often overlooked. Give your system a spring clean and you’ll be amazed at its new lease on life.
The other nice thing about Andante-Largo’s Super TMD cleaning kits is the range of Q-tips that comes with them. Available separately in Japan, they are densely wrapped and available in standard, lozenge shape, a ribbed option and a smaller size that finally answer that “How do you clean inside RCA/XLR sockets?” question.
https://gy8.eu/review/andante-largo-super-tmd-contact-cleaner-and-enhancer/
https://gy8.eu/blog/munich-high-end-2025-products/3/
The Chord Co. PhonoARAY
The least likely of all Chord’s GroundARAY products, the PhonoARAY has also proved possibly the most effective, presumably because it’s helping banish noise from the environment around the smallest signals in the system. The PhonoARAY functions by sinking noise out of the arm-tube itself, so it only works if your tonearm wire is grounded to the headshell or arm-wand. As long as that’s the case (and it normally is) the phonoARAY is simple to insert, with an impact that is as immediate as it is dramatic. Once tried, there’s no going back
https://gy8.eu/review/ground-pounder/
The Telos Macro G
More, dedicated grounding, but this time for the Network domain – possibly the most destructively polluted environment in audio and prey to all sorts of intrusive and transmitted noise. The Macro G uses proprietary active noise cancelling to reduce harmful pollution levels – and it does so really effectively. Don’t be fooled by the paired RJ45 sockets. This NOT an inline device: it operates in parallel and can be hooked up to both a router and a switch.
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