A Guide to Personal Importing of Hi-Fi Products｜On the Difference in Voltage

【A Guide to Personal Importing of Hi-Fi Products】
Exchange Rates｜Voltage ｜English

You may well wonder why one would go to the trouble of buying British audio-visual products in North America, of all places — but depending on exchange rates, it can sometimes work out cheaper to buy from an American retailer than from the UK itself. On top of that, there are many brands and products that ceased to be imported into Japan after the bubble era and are simply no longer sold here. And then there is the most fundamental issue of all: the difference in mains voltage.

The mains voltage in Japan is 100V AC (strictly speaking, 101V ±6V) at 50/60Hz. The United States, by contrast, uses 117V–120V (60Hz). Taking into account parts of Canada and countries in Central and South America that use 110V as well, consumer electronics sold in the North and Central American market — including audio equipment — generally carry a nominal voltage rating of 110–120V. (A midpoint figure such as 115V is often stated.)

Even where the nominal voltage is quoted as 120V, that figure is never something you can count on getting precisely at every outlet. The actual voltage varies quite considerably depending on the distribution from the substation, the routing of the transmission lines, and the surrounding load conditions at any given moment — and consumer electronics are designed to cope with this constant fluctuation. In practice, products rated for 115V in the US market will very often work without any problem at all in Japan’s 100V environment, and there are indeed cases where the power supply section is completely identical between the US-market version and the Japanese export version of a piece of audio equipment.

【PR】

・World Voltage and Plug Type Reference Chart (Sofmap Yahoo! Store)
・World Voltage and Plug Type Reference Chart — BicCamera.com

Note: Country-by-country voltage information found online is frequently inaccurate or contradictory — please treat the above links, like any such source, as a rough guide only.

However, the mains voltage in Britain (230–240V) and most other European countries falls in the 200V–240V range, which means that in order to use UK- or EU-specification appliances and audio equipment in Japan, you will need either a step-up transformer (100V to 200–230V), or a separate 200V circuit — drawn, for instance, from the kind of indoor 200V wiring used for air conditioning — dedicated to equipment that requires 200V or above. (Note: the wiring work itself is simply a matter of switching a single wire at the distribution board, but you will need to have it done by your electricity supplier.) Even then, Japan’s 200V supply (strictly 202V ±20V) may in some situations run slightly low, so whether things work correctly will honestly depend on your individual setup and is difficult to say with any certainty without trying it.

Equipment designed for 200–240V will not operate correctly on 100V, and in any case the availability of 200V wiring in ordinary Japanese homes is limited — so European audio equipment is simply not very practical to use in a typical Japanese household. On the other hand, equipment designed for around 115V will generally run without trouble at around 100V, which means that in practice, most electronics purchased in the United States can be used in Japan without any difficulty. Strictly speaking, resistive appliances such as electric heaters and irons may warm up slightly less effectively, but for audio equipment, this sort of voltage difference is unlikely in most cases to prevent the unit from working at all. If something does fail to operate normally in Japan, the likely causes are either that the equipment’s low-voltage tolerance margin happens to be on the narrow side, or that the voltage at the wall outlet has actually dropped as low as 90–95V. In such cases, a step-up transformer to bring the voltage up to around 115–117V should resolve things.

There is quite a range of step-up transformers available, but for use with audio and visual equipment, you should avoid the small, inexpensive portable step-up transformers sold for travel use — their maximum wattage rating is too low. Even a compact step-up transformer may be sufficient to run a low-consumption device such as a CD/DVD player or preamplifier, but it tends not to be ideal from a sound quality standpoint. The ideal choice for Hi-Fi use would be a purpose-designed isolation transformer, though something marketed for musical instrument use can be had for roughly ¥10,000–¥30,000 with a capacity of 500W–1000W. Sound quality does seem to vary between products, but the general principle is that bigger and heavier is better, and ideally you want a transformer with a capacity at least double the total wattage of the equipment you intend to run through it. Beyond that, consulting the reviews and impressions of people who have actually used a given model would be a sensible approach.

Entries from Iyashi-no-Oto, who uses a Noguchi transformer → Clean Power 2 / The Effect of Clean Power. Isolation transformers are not limited to step-up or step-down types — 100V-in/100V-out models also exist, and connecting audio equipment through one rather than directly to the mains can apparently make a substantial difference to sound quality.

As for the drawbacks of running equipment slightly below its design voltage — in rare cases (where the voltage is very low) the unit may behave erratically, but the more common audio concern is that drive may be insufficient, preventing the equipment from performing at its best. When a 110–120V audio product is run at Japan’s 100V, the effect is most noticeable with amplification — integrated amplifiers and power amplifiers in particular — where the amp can lose some of its natural authority and seem, to the ear, a touch subdued. With Hi-Fi equipment, even if there are no faults or operational problems as such, putting sound quality first probably means it is worth at least going to the effort of using a 115–117V step-up transformer.

That said, this is ultimately a matter of how a given setup sounds to a given listener’s ears — so in a system where the sound feels a little rough or forward in an unsatisfying way, running it at a slightly lower voltage might actually smooth things out rather nicely. As for CD players, there has long been a somewhat questionable piece of received wisdom from certain critics to the effect that low-voltage operation is actually preferable for obtaining a more delicate, less “digital” sound. On that basis — assuming, of course, that everything functions correctly — simply using a US-spec unit as-is in Japan is quite a reasonable option, I think. It is also worth noting that overseas, many well-known Hi-Fi brands — Cambridge Audio, NAD, ARCAM, and others — have released DVD players that are simply not available in Japan. Region coding is something you would need to sort out yourself, but the prospect of getting a DVD player with a distinctly different flavour of picture and sound quality from anything Japanese, at a comparatively affordable price, is not something to overlook. And if you are going to do it, using a British DVD player in US 115V spec — paired with imported DVDs — as a way of studying English is rather a charming idea, I think.

Japan’s 100V mains voltage is exceptionally low by world standards — the lowest among all major countries — and this turns out to be not particularly ideal from a Hi-Fi standpoint. When it comes to the sound quality of audio equipment, it is generally said that the same product will perform better at a higher voltage, and that 60Hz is preferable to 50Hz as well. Among high-end Hi-Fi enthusiasts, there are those who take this to its logical conclusion: having dedicated audio circuits wired separately from the domestic supply at the distribution board, running European equipment in its original local specification on 200V/60Hz, and stepping American products down from 200V to 117V — a thoroughly systematic approach to mains conditioning, all in the name of sound quality.

Japan’s mains frequency is 50Hz in eastern Japan and 60Hz in western Japan. Certain appliances that use motors — microwave ovens, electric fans, washing machines, and the like — do exist in versions restricted to one frequency or the other, but for audio equipment this is generally not something to worry about, with the exception of record players. With analogue turntables, the mains frequency matters for the same reasons as it does domestically, so imported models will require pulley changes or similar adjustments to match the local frequency — worth bearing in mind.

The mains frequency in Europe and the UK is 50Hz, while North America uses 60Hz. Some time ago, I heard from someone at an import distributor that a particular European amplifier designed for 50Hz had been converted to 100V for the Japanese market, but then went into oscillation in 60Hz regions of Japan, requiring a further specification change after the fact. I live in a 50Hz area myself, so I have never encountered this personally, but it is perhaps worth keeping at the back of one’s mind as something that could occasionally go wrong. Generally speaking, though, 60Hz does tend to be considered preferable to 50Hz from a sound quality perspective in most cases.

Incidentally, for equipment that runs off an AC adaptor and operates on DC internally, the adaptor itself will in most cases accept 100–240V input (this is stated on the adaptor itself), which means it can be used anywhere in the world as long as you have the right plug shape — and plug adaptors are widely available. (I use a Yazawa HPJP5 adaptor to connect British audio equipment running off an AC adaptor to Japanese wall outlets.) For audio cables and other accessories that require no power, ordinary passive speakers (active speakers with built-in amplifiers that do not use an AC adaptor are excluded), and mains cables, there is essentially no need whatsoever to concern yourself with voltage or frequency specifications, regardless of where in the world the product was purchased.

There are many countries in the world where two different voltages — 110V and 220V, for instance — are used side by side within the same country, and some audio equipment sold overseas accordingly comes fitted with a voltage selector switch. For some reason this switch tends to disappear on the Japanese-market version of the same product, but where a unit does have one, it can be switched to the 110V setting and used in Japan even if the unit was sold in a 200V market — which considerably broadens your options for buying at local prices wherever you happen to be.

Finally, a word on safety. Running a 120V-rated product on 100V, or a 230V product on 200V — in other words, operating equipment at a modestly lower voltage than its design rating — raises no particular safety concerns, aside from the possibility of unstable operation due to insufficient voltage. The reverse, however, is a different matter entirely: running equipment designed for 100V on 120V, or plugging it into a 200V outlet, risks overheating, fire, and damage to the equipment, and is extremely dangerous. There are those who claim — or who have claimed at various times — that running 100V audio equipment at 117V improves the sound, but please, resist the temptation: for your own safety, do not do it under any circumstances.

【A Guide to Personal Importing of Hi-Fi Products】
Exchange Rates｜Voltage ｜English