Buying stuff from the states

hussey

I seen these guys http://www.sonicelectronix.com/ and I am wondering

a) anyone ever deal with these before

b) is there any odvious problems with buying good from the states (ie voltage etc)??

trotter_inc

The only problems Ive heard about are to do with the tuners in stereos - they dont have the same increments when searching for stations over here - this means you might not get your stations tuned into correctly.

For example, say 2FM is at 91.8, the US tuners might not be designed to tune into 92.0 when searching for stations so you might not be able to tune it in fully.

Hope this helps, apart from this I havent heard any othe problems with buying from the US.

PBC_1966

I posted this reply to a question about radios a while back. Forgive me if I save some typing by just quoting it again:

If the radio has digital channelized tuning, then you won't be able to receive all Irish/European stations properly. On AM, American broacasters use 10kHz channels: 900, 910, 920, 930 kHz etc. Irish/European allocations are on a 9kHz spacing, e.g. 900, 909, 918, 927kHz.

Similarly, American FM broadcast channels are on 200kHz spacings, where the decimal digit is always odd: 87.9, 88.1, 88.3 MHz etc. European broadcasters can use channels which are located between these, e.g. 88.2 MHz, so you won't be able to properly tune all transmitters. The Zenith pilot-tone system of broadcsting stereo is the same, so that will work, but as has been mentioned already the European RDS is not used in North America.

The final point to note is that the FM pre/de-emphasis correction is 75uS vs. 50uS, so the received audio frequency response won't be quite right on FM, along wioth slight changes in the background noise, although tone controls can compensate to some degree.

Many modern radios are sold into an almost worldwide market these days, so in many cases it may be possible to re-program the radio to European standards, either with a special key sequence or by changing a link inside the set. You would need to ask the manufacturer if that's the case for the model you're considering.

I wouldn't bet on those radar detectors working every time either due to different band allocations.

Hope this helps,
-Paul.

Tommy Vercetti

Originally posted by PBC_1966

I wouldn't bet on those radar detectors working every time either due to different band allocations.

They're illegal here, raising revenue is more important than reducing accidents.