220 to 110 coversion - mistake?

Audiotumbler,

If you are in the US and just bought a 220v cd player, you will need a step-up transformer rather than a step-down.

I live in a 230v country and uses products from the US and Japan. I have several step-down transformers and these have 100v and 115v taps. Products from Japan goes into the 100v and items from US to the 115v. The step-downs come out from the power distributor which itself is a conditioner. I can't tell if the transformer have deteriorated the sound in any way.

Thanks for all your responses. I could have gotten a shanlin CD player out of Hong Kong for about 25 dollars on ebay - The additional rub, besides being 220, was the shipping... almost 200 bucks. That pretty much nixed the whole idea, but at least in the future I would not be averse to the 220 set up.

Thanks again guys

On a recent visit to SoCal from the UK we got a Chinese made, 200 watt transformer at Frys Electronics for $30 to run her hair straighteners (rated at 60 watts). It has an on/off switch and another for stepping up or down. Stepped up to 220 from 115, as soon as the straighteners came on it emitted a loud buzz from the vibrating case. Running the cellphone adaptor or simply switched on it made a low level hum. Now the adaptor is over here in the UK stepping the 230 down to 110 to run our Nakamichi tape deck (rated at 35 watts). The case still vibrates when it's on but with no hint of complaint like it did when stepping up for the hair iron. The tape deck performs as always. Any suggestions for what to use to internally damp the case? A block of porous rubber? It's perfectly silent when I damp it with my hand. Of some note, the fine print with the transformer says that stepping up halves the wattage rating stated on the box.

If you go back to Fry's, to the car audio section, you'll find a product called "Dynamat" that's designed to kill vibration and dampen sound. It's expensive bought in the small kits they sell so if you're willing to wait a few days you can get generic versions of it from places like Parts Express. You apply as much of it as you can make fit inside - or outside - the case.