CD players. Power consumption?

[Victorious]

I plan to meander down the french canals..to the Med..... Then turn left.
Not a detailed plan... but the best plan i ever had!... Without too many deadlines and targets.... sailing to windward could become almost "Optional"
As an ex musician a CD player of reasonable quality is as essential to me.
nearly as vital as a fridge in fact.
But with a view to watts and amps.. I have no idea what type of player/amplifier to look for.??
where might the best balance of quality and power consumption be found?
(bearing in mind that 10 watts of clarity is worth 1000 wats of cheap junk)
I wanna HEAR music.... not inflict it on everybody else!

Any thoughts?

<hr width=100% size=1>www.victorious.co.uk

 

[snowleopard]

start by going to a big branch of halfords where there should be a hifi 'wall' - lots of players and speakers which you can connect any way you like to hear the quality. they will let you play your own cd so you should be able to check them out to your own satisfaction.

if you felt that car systems weren't up to the job (unlikely) and bought a domestic system, you would be well advised to replace the input transformer with a dc stepdown rather than use an inverter.

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[Talbot]

Although Halfords do have their wall, IMHO I would either go to a specialist car radio or consider a Bose portable. Either way, the shape of the area for the speakers and their location are as important as buying a decent player. You might also consider having an MP3 player and transcribing your cds onto mp3 - I know that that does degrade the quality slightly, but the reduction of the number of CDs is worth it (e.g. 120 down to abt 12). If you are transiting the canals, you will also need to consider some means of piping soft music into your cockpit.

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[Abigail]

Hi - we got ours from a specialist car radio shop - a Sony MD-CD changer x-M510 with Pioneer 4 50w speakers. (Halfords were worse than useless - two women of a certain age wanting kit for their boat were treated like something a boy racer would scrape off his tyres!) We're not musicians I confess and this is working well for us.

The other thing we did which we are very happy with is transfer our whole collection to an ipod. This saves an extraordinary amount of space! (We then sold our CDs at car boot sales which more than paid for the ipod.) Put your CD in while you are on line and the great database in the sky will often be able to transfer all the details for you.

We're working on the cockpit thing - I am very interested in the wireless arrangements some americans use. Also we will seperately switch those speakers so that the main cabn, aft cabin or cockpit can be used independently.

<hr width=100% size=1>Sarah & Pip

www.greatlittleboats.com
UK & Ireland distributors of Swifgig

 

[ColinW]

As an alternative to the car hifi route you could consider getting a set of decent computer speakers, powered from your 12VDC supply. Then you could use a laptop to play CDs and DVDs or use a portable MP3/CD player.


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[Victorious]

Some interesting thoughts so far....
And thanks for the mention of the Ipod... I was untill now almost unaware of thier existance.

but no word of power consumption.

Certainly at first glance the Car audio seems the obvious way to go... but how much Pink Floyd might i get for my precious amp hours? ( Yes..I am an aged hippy)
Perhaps as it is designed to be portable... The ipod would more efficient in much the same way as Laptop pooters needing to run as long as poss on "on board batteries....



<hr width=100% size=1>www.victorious.co.uk

 

[ColinW]

Don't be fooled by the specifications you see on car audio equipment. They invent their own measures like "peak to peak total music power" which turns 5W (rms) into about 100W (ppmp) to impress the kids. Amplifiers (as in car audio or self amplified computer speakers) are pretty efficient nowadays so most of the power they use is turned into noise and not heat. That means that you'll only be using significant power during sustained loud passages. Even then a true 5W (rms) per speaker would be enough to hurt your ears in a boat cabin and that would only be drawing about an amp from a 12V supply.
A laptop is a lot more hungry because they use about 70W and need to be powered from an inverter (because they are 18VDC) which may waste another 25W as heat. So a laptop is probably best run off its internal battery unless motoring or plugged into a shore supply. That's why I also suggested a portable MP3/CD player which you could amplify through the same powered speakers.


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[steveh]

Hi

I brought a 30 Gig MP3 player off ebay - it holds hundreds of CDs and uses very little power. I connect this to a car CD player through a aux plug on the front and have all my music and useing little power. Quality is fine on a boat.

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[roly_voya]

Since all boats are different and everyone idea of 'loud' is also different how about getting an old car system from a scrap yard - ie one with a duff radio but tape or CD working, set it up to the right volume and measure the power intput. Also a poit I found was that if you install speakers in the forward bulkhead and close the door you form a wonderfull speaker enclosure that really enhanses base response!

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[charles_reed]

Most car CD player seem to take between 1.8-2.5 amps.

I've got one of the latest Clarion 6-CD decks which reproduces fairly well.

As Sony produce all the laser readers you're unlikely to find much difference between the read end of the system. The amp area tend all to be much of a muchness and your choice will be governed by the speakers as much as anything.

By far the most important part of the system is the final stage, the speakers. Here the decision will be governed by the size of boat and the type of music to which you're listening. For rock/jazz you need a good bass response which can only be obtained from a fairly large enclosure and a large bass speaker - for classical music the crossover and tweeters become more important.
Car speakers tend to produce an exaggerated bass response, but most car amps require a low (4 ohm) impedance so moving up to serious speakers with an 8 ohm impedance can cause problems.
Choose speakers first, by listening to them, then look at the amplifier that best suits them - the deck is the least critical.

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