Hi,
I’m living in Russia and I bought 220V versions of Bryston BP173 and 4B3 through official distributor a month ago. After installing them into my system I eventually found that both units have excessive transformer noise and becoming quite hot. The most annoying is BP173 which has loud transformer noise in standby mode. Then I discovered that this noise is much lower after switching both units to wall instead of my Torus RM-8 CE isolation transformer. As I never had this problem with my older Bryston equipment, I asked dealer to check BP173, they replaced transformer by local distributor and returned to me. Unit was completely silent in dealer’s demo room (while he didn’t have Torus or Bryston Bit installed). Bute when I switched it to Torus at my home it had the same loud transformer - only a bit quieter when switch on from standby mode. The noise in standby mode directly from wall outlet is also still present but it can be considered as acceptable.
Then I called electrician, he checked power, and found that I have 230-233 V all the time at home. Moreover this voltage is standard in Russia since 2015 (230V +- 10% 50Hz)! There are still many places where old voltage exists, but our home (and many others) migrated a while ago. I asked local distributor for help, but he told me that I should get industrial voltage stabiliser for 220V and lower voltage for my system. I’m not going to do this as I have no place for this staff, not going to throw away my Torus, and have other equipment that works perfectly on 230V. As I understand distributor is not going to replace my units.
So I’m asking Bryston to suggest how should I solve this issue. My new equipment is currently switched off. While I can use it without Torus it is really not pleasure - Torus always did a big sound improvement in my system and does it even with new units. In summary I have following questions:
1. Why these 220V units exist at all? Many other US and Europe audio manufactures always deliver 230V units to Russia
2. Why Bryston still delivers 220V units to 230V country? Did Bryston know about new standard since 2015?
3. What is a difference between 220V and 230V units? Distributor told me that switching to 230V requires replacing transformers and there is no input to switch.
4. Why transformer noise is so loud when switched to Torus? Is it because Torus uppers voltage to several volts? I measured its output without a load - it can be 233 - 238 depending on voltage at home - which is ok from what I know about Torus.
5. Why I have no such issue with other Bryston equipment? It includes BDA3 (it rated to 220-230V), 4BSST (220V) and BP25 with MPS-1 (230V). 4BSST have slight noise but it is far from what I hear from 4B3.
6. Will replacing units to 230V versions solve this issue? Am I eligible asking distributor to replace units to 230V versions or this is impossible at all?
Regards,
Vladimir
