JAPANESE decks without US FM radio band sound better than US versions

[Ultimateherts]

I noticed that a lot of imported Japanises decks do not have US radio frequency bands. I also noticed a trend where people on this forum only go after these kinds of decks. Do the JAPANESE decks without US FM radio band sound better than the US equivilent versions?

[bikinpunk]

It probably has more to do with the fact that nearly all of those decks you're talking about don't have a US equivalent and are made for the Japanese market only. So, people have to import them from eBay or friends overseas. I've been around for a long time and I've never heard someone say the difference in sound quality is due to the tuner section being Non-US band spec. It's just that those decks aren't made for us in the States.

[Hillbilly SQ]

Might just be all in the head. They went through the trouble to import therefore it sounds better TO THEM. Or maybe the Japanese units use higher quality parts. The parts used can make a difference on how the signal gets ingested and spit out.

[quality_sound]

No, it's like Erin said, it's availability. Things like the IVA-C800 aren't available here. Only option is to go to another marker. Though, given the option, I'd get a unit from Hong Kong since at least the FM band will work fine here.

[Q-Authority]

Yes, as bikinpunk stated, probably imported more for the possibility that some of these units were made only for the Japanese market. Some just being unique in themselves, and others being actual 'special edition' units. There are more of those than you might imagine. Unfortunately, many of them are not necessarily spec'ed any better, but are merely fancy rebadges. Still, there are some very nice ones that were never made for here that I would love to have. I keep track of Nakamichi stuff in Japan fairly closely, and I am continually surprised by stuff that I never knew existed. You can really tell how little is known about them when googling the units, and getting virtually no English hits on them. Makes it hard to evaluate them when thinking about importing one, lol. Some seem to be virtually unknown.