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Because in the 1980s, Japanese companies such as Korg, Roland and Yamaha started to seize the market for music synthesizers, the EU demanded that those firms start meeting EU regulations for electrical safety. To avoid the high cost of electrical-safety testing and certification by independent testing labs (a requirement in most of the world), these firms started making gear that ran from AC adapters only. The change from analog circuitry to microprocessors at the same time helped to facilitate this, by reducing power consumption and simplifying power supply design.
The United States has no direct federal regulation of electrical safety, but existing laws tend to use Underwriters Labs standards for electrical safety of electronic gear. However, UL standards are quite different from EU standards, making them incompatible in test-lab certification. Getting a product UL certified (usually not by UL itself but by a third-party lab) can easily cost $12,000 or more, and the test does not apply in most other countries. Selling electronics in Canada requires CSA certification, which is roughly similar to UL certification but is different enough to require separate testing.
How does your modular synthesizer fit into all this? It's a "loophole" in the law that many modular cabinet builders take advantage of. Because a modular synth could be considered a "kit", requiring some assembly by the end-user, most electrical-safety laws exempt it. If they had tried to regulate electronic kits, they very likely would have killed off the kit industry, and made it almost impossible for hobbyists to obtain components to experiment with. Apparently Doepfer, the world's largest maker of modular synths and cabinets, has been threatened by the German safety authorities over safety testing, in spite of the "kit loophole"; so Doepfer spends some $12000-15000 having samples of each new cabinet design tested by an independent lab. This is done only to silence bureaucrats, and has no actual bearing on sales of the cabinets elsewhere in the world. Safety standards in the USA are much less severe, and safety testing is only undertaken by mass-producers or firms wishing to minimize their legal liability. Because most people would consider modular synthesizers to be "professional audio" products, requiring some skill and knowledge to use, they have not been subject to the same severe safety standards that usually apply to home appliances such as TV sets. However, this does not mean such products might not attract a major product-liability lawsuit in the future; the small sales and specialized nature of the modular synth simply make it unlikely. A greedy liability attorney would not pursue a tort claim for injury against a company that grosses less than US$100k/year, simply because he could not be assured of receiving a large fee should he win. Small synth makers are usually sole-proprietor firms with almost no financial resources, making them undesirable targets for a tort claim.
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== RFI and "EMC" ==
RFI, meaning "radio frequency interference", is a major problem in our world of cellphones and wireless gadgets. US federal law is very specific about electronics. FCC Part 15 testing must be performed on any product having switching frequencies of more than 9 kHz in internal circuitry--including any device using a microprocessor.
To sell the same product in Europe, IEC 61000 testing is required to certify it for a CE mark. The CE mark simply states that the product has been tested, meets the EU standard, and is legally permitted to be sold in Europe. Needless to say, the IEC test is similar to the FCC Part 15 test, but different enough to make separate testing mandatory. This typically costs $15,000-$20,000 for each separate product. The regulation also says that .
This paper describes the basic procedure. To make regulators and attorneys happy,
it should be conducted by an "approved" testing lab.
== Materials ==
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