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RE: Worthless feature

Does anyone move regularly between 120 and 240?


I did a few times. If you move more than once or twice you'll quickly get annoyed at having to re-buy so many basic household items like vacuums, hair dryers, kettles, printers, fans, etc.

The only audio component I had with auto-sensing power supply was a Linn DS and I really appreciated that. My Simaudio amp was pretty easy to convert back and forth. I did it several times myself but the last time all I had on hand was a pretty low grade soldering iron and I overheated the board and ruined the relay for the soft start circuit. I also had a Grace 901 DAC/headphone amp with a voltage switch, but I found out after I had moved the first time that it wouldn't work on 240V. There was a bad/open tranny winding but they must have let it out of the factory anyway since it was destined for a 120V market. That was very frustrating since switchable voltage was a selling point for me. And I had the reverse problem with a Sony Blu-Ray player I bought when I lived in Australia. But the Sony TV I bought along with it works fine on 120V. I've purchased step-up and step-down transformers and in my experience they do not perform well when driving a large linear power supply.

I've also done a lot of international business travel and I pretty much take for granted that any electronic device I would conceivably travel with has an auto-sensing SMPS. I fried a shaver once that didn't, and that was pretty annoying. And I had a computer that wouldn't charge on 100V in Japan.

Another big selling point of auto-sensing SMPSs on audio components is the ability to buy & sell to the worldwide market. I'm not a gear flipper, but I have bought and sold equipment and I've lost count of the number of times a potential overseas buyer has asked me about voltage conversion. And I'm pretty sure that some manufacturers and/or importers rely on voltage incompatibility to maintain different pricing in different markets.



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  • RE: Worthless feature - Dave_K 00:47:01 09/08/16 (0)

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