Hi Fi on board

We had exactly these questions when we first got our boats. Our solution was to add a Bluetooth enabled car stereo with remote control and quality speakers. This gives you full control of the stereo wherever you are on the boat. We back that up with a Bose soundlink and of course Maria’s Karaoke setup (not to be used on the boat!)

More details and comment on the thought process below:

https://mariadz.com/2013/10/12/music/
 
There are also quite a few speakers intended for use with desktop computers which get power from a 12v wall wart supply, so could be used easily enough on a boat.
 
Why bother with CDs? They occupy a lot of space, have limited capacity in terms of recorded duration and are quite vulnerable on a boat.
I have a decent car Radio/CD (bought from Lidl) feeding a set of four excellent speakers, with a woofer and a tweeter at each end of the cabin. I only tried a CD once to see if it works. I do have many SD cards containing recordings of Jazz, Classical and Organ music to suit every mood or occasion. This means that I can listen non-stop for several weeks without repetition. The SD cards, in their plastic cases, reside inside a used tobacco tin.
 
Not sure about hi-fi, but I have just bought an UE Wonderboom for the cockpit (bluetooth radio in cabin). Brill sound for the money. And it floats.

I paid £65 for it. Gets very good reviews.
 
So it seems the advice is to dump 400 CD's buy a plastic instrument and a wireless speaker! I guess the plastic recorder would have to have blue tooth?
 
dave_gibsea said:
So it seems the advice is to dump 400 CD's buy a plastic instrument and a wireless speaker! I guess the plastic recorder would have to have blue tooth?
Click to expand...

I probably have that many CDs, too. I digitise them with MusicBee into FLAC format (better than MP3) but keep the CDs. My mobile has an SD card to which MusicBee will write and synchronise. With a good music player on the mobile, you'll find that you can alter the balance of the musc being sent to the wireless speaker so can fine tune the sound to what suits your collection.

Edit: Just looked. 434 CDs and my SD card is 128gb. Plenty of space for more.
 
Last edited:
For those suggesting a Bluetooth speaker that happen to be iphone owners, how do you load music to your phone? I never managed to find out how to store music in my iphone and then play it offline.
 
I am currently refitting my Marina 16 G.T. boat and when it came to what "hi-fi" to use I opted for a cheap Maxtec "deckless" bluetooth car radio with SD card slot and hands free calling. It is much shallower from front to back than one with a CD deck inside...Only about 3" deep, which helps the installation in a small boat. I made a custom housing for mine from 18mm ply, rounded off with a router table and 1"x1" x 1/8" aluminium angle and it sits on a matching shelf I made that goes across the front of the cabin under the front windows. The speakers I chose were not cheap...four Fusion MS-FR602's (£80 a pair from Pacer marine)but their loudness, clarity and quality are really worth the money. I have two fitted in the cabin, on custom made brackets, which sit neatly between the front two slanted reinforcing ribs on each side under the gunwhales. Because they are not only angled back but down as well it prevents them from cancelling each other out, so the sound is ear splittingly loud! hifihousing1sml.jpgcaninhifi1sml.jpg
 
Jeepster said:
I am currently refitting my Marina 16 G.T. boat and when it came to what "hi-fi" to use I opted for a cheap Maxtec "deckless" bluetooth car radio with SD card slot and hands free calling.
Click to expand...

Good luck. I had the version with a CD player in my car. It lasted about a year before it started playing USB and SD card tracks in random and unchangeable order, and the CD player always overheated and started skipping after 40 minutes, unless it was below freezing outside and I left the heater off. Shame, really, because it seemed quite nicely made and the price was excellent.

I recently tried a Maxtec bluetooth speaker - one of these

Wireless-AMP-Speaker_Black-A.jpg


which was such a dreadful piece of tat that I gave it to the local charity shop having tried it once. At full power it was not quite as loud as my Samsung tablet. I could have got mymoney back at Aldi, but I couldn't be bothered driving 25 miles each way to get rid of it.
 
That's a shame...They are cheap to buy though...I seem to recall paying somewhere around £20 (or less) for it over a year ago and it's been in the box till now. I plan to use mine on bluetooth most of the time, playing mp3's from my phone which will be with me out in the cockpit at the helm.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top