Idiot needs advice for mega cockpit radio/cd/ipod audio

T

tcm

...
Joined
11 Jan 2002
Messages
23,958
Location
Caribbean at the moment
Visit site
We have a usual cockpit radio but it's not a proper racket, not really. It's okay, but not LOUD enough at sea. I went to a french halfords, saw some kenwood stuff but ran out again cos i daren't ask all the idiot questions. Or not in french anyway. I can wire things but um, no expert. The cockpit speakers say they're ok to 80 watts. Is that mega loud? If there's a kit i could get swmbo to buy in the uk and i wire it up, i'd buy it. I need two speakers inside, two outside, an amplifier and the er head unit i think it's called. I definitely got to be able to plug in an ipod. I might need a sub woofer. In fact, to hell with it, we could have a grown-up full woofer, perhaps? Well, it makes a change from anchor threads...

Advice welcome. Brendan has just gotta know about this? Or others?
 
Fusion Marine - helped install some of their kit a month or two ago and we were quite impressed. It was only low end stuff and fairly belted out Bicycle and one or two other Queen classics which were all that seemed to be on said friends iPod. :eek:
 
too late to go into specs now, but they look a little small for a real racket. Will have a look tomorrow night, but suspect you'll have some real audiophile input by then, not really my area of expertise.
 
tcm said:
We have a usual cockpit radio but it's not a proper racket, not really. It's okay, but not LOUD enough at sea. I went to a french halfords, saw some kenwood stuff but ran out again cos i daren't ask all the idiot questions. Or not in french anyway. I can wire things but um, no expert. The cockpit speakers say they're ok to 80 watts. Is that mega loud? If there's a kit i could get swmbo to buy in the uk and i wire it up, i'd buy it. I need two speakers inside, two outside, an amplifier and the er head unit i think it's called. I definitely got to be able to plug in an ipod. I might need a sub woofer. In fact, to hell with it, we could have a grown-up full woofer, perhaps? Well, it makes a change from anchor threads...

Advice welcome. Brendan has just gotta know about this? Or others?
Click to expand...

All that boaty 12/24 volt stuff won't hack it, you really need some decent 240 volt kit. If you want to avoid the 50Hz hum from an earth loop, ensure you lead at least one of the cables to earth, e.g. attach the live lead to the engine and the brown to the beer keg.
 
Doesn't matter if it's 240V or 12V, you need power (RMS not peak or 'music power') to make noise. So you want a car multi channel amplifier. Look for a class D one as whilst some purists say these don't sound as good, they don't know what they're talking about when it comes to modern units. Tripath is one of the names to look for, they call their class D technique class T (geddit?). Class D has the really useful benefit of running cold, and being very power efficient. Both good things on a boat.

Speaker wise, you can add noise by having bigger better speakers or more of the smaller ones. A sub woofer is a big box with a hole in it that does the frequencies below what a small woofer can handle. It adds the nice chest thumping bass to the music. Just like standing in front of the stack at a concert (almost). A good multi channel amp will have a sub woofer output. You generally only need one 'cos the uman ears can't tell where really low frequencies come from.

You can do the job by using prebuilt components, or, if you've got the space, you'll get a *much* better sound and volume by having the speakers built into voids in the structure. This is seriously more expensive tho cos you have to design each speaker for the void that's available.

Tell you what, fly me out to wherever you got Mojomo parked and I'll do it for ya :D

Alternatively gimme a ring and I'll talk you through the idot questions.
 
Would this fit?

car-interior.jpg
 
Would you like to borrow the sound system I put together for my last ship? (for the sound for flight deck movies and the ships rock band!)

Two custom cabinets each with two eighteen inch speakers for the Subs ( each was approx one and a half metres long and eight cm high and deep) two mid tops with fifteen inch drivers by Celestion and horns for the high frequencies. (These need to go on stands.) The amps were all from QSC. One amp for each side bi-wired to give 2400 watts per side into the subs and about a straight kilowatt to the mid tops. Digital Crossover to separate the line output from the mixer to the relevant amps. One 13 amp supply is not enough to run it all - but it does sound good in the open air!

The subs are on castors as they are too big and heavy to carry about. The amplifier stack is a two man lift and is also rack mounted on castors. (The total weight of amps and rack was over 90 kgs.)

If you want to go bigger you are into line array speakers.

None if the above is any help at all, but I had to learn something totally new to me and I was pleased with what I achieved in the end.

For the live audio buffs the desk was an Allen and Heath Mix whiz 16:1
 
Last edited:
tcm,
I suggest you go pose this one in the audio section of pistonheads.com. That will be a lively discussion with some of the worlds most dedicated noise polluters.

I have a paltry 15" sub-woofer and a 400w amplifier, but they are setup for in cabin noise. The cockpit speakers are the common or garden marine 7" round speakers with no tweeters or crossovers. Works for me.
 
wow fab response all , and great pix from lakey as always

But pteron obviously blew everyone else away with the RMS etc sh ite. So, adding up the woofers and wire and blarney, how much would it all cost hm and can it get in your checkable bag? Obviosuly not too wildly lakey-picstyle is fine - 4 spkrs and subwoofer somewhere. The ext spkrs have to be max 280mm dia external face , internals speakers need to be bracket mounted abs max 45cm high, and none of that digital remote control rubbish - it just needs a volume knob that goes to 12. And an ipod input that i haven't bent, oops. The boat will be in Las palmas from midend sept so you could come oct or nov to do the techno stuff and i'll saw the boat up as directed. I'm in perpignan at the moment so erm that's not too handy and yr swmbo won't like you off in august? Other option is gib but we're parked up in marina bay 1st till 10 sept, then liftout in lanzarote 15th

Er incidentally, i am almost always miles from anywhere with loud racket, and wdn't play it to annoy others. Sound quality at low vlume is important. Or of course, this is the party boat, and we get out the cockpit disco ball...
 
Last edited:
tcm said:
We have a usual cockpit radio but it's not a proper racket, not really. It's okay, but not LOUD enough at sea. I went to a french halfords, saw some kenwood stuff but ran out again cos i daren't ask all the idiot questions. Or not in french anyway. I can wire things but um, no expert. The cockpit speakers say they're ok to 80 watts. Is that mega loud? If there's a kit i could get swmbo to buy in the uk and i wire it up, i'd buy it. I need two speakers inside, two outside, an amplifier and the er head unit i think it's called. I definitely got to be able to plug in an ipod. I might need a sub woofer. In fact, to hell with it, we could have a grown-up full woofer, perhaps? Well, it makes a change from anchor threads...

Advice welcome. Brendan has just gotta know about this? Or others?
Click to expand...


Why not do a Google and see what folk do on the Yankee side of the pond where the sound competes with 2 X 500 HP outboards and can rattle the fillings out of observers teeth while they stand on the beach half a mile away.

The towers can cost 20,000 Bucks and heaven knows what the sound
systems costs.


http://www.onlyinboards.com/Ski-boat-accessories/wakeboard-tower-speakers.html
 
tcm said:
The boat will be in Las palmas from midend sept so you could come oct or nov to do the techno stuff and i'll saw the boat up as directed. I'm in perpignan at the moment so erm that's not too handy and yr swmbo won't like you off in august? Other option is gib but we're parked up in marina bay 1st till 10 sept, then liftout in lanzarote 15th
Click to expand...

Sounds like a plan. Let me check with the admiral and see what we'd need.

I'll email you.
 
Just my humble opinion, but Halfords over there should also do the Alpine cde-111RHAL this is a serious stereo at a laughable £134.99 I say laughable because of the qaulity this unit reproduces sound, I could not find a better head unit for under £300 Alpine really know audio, they are up there with the likes of MB quart & JL audio. This unit also has a built-in ipod/iphone connection.
You need to ignore what wattage the maximum rating is on your speakers and concentrate on the RMS rating of each speaker, match each speakers rms to the output of each channel from the head unit, so you would need at least 50w rms on each speaker unless you want it to fart.
You shouldn't need an amp if you have the above correct as you should be hearing the music perfectly, but if your at sea and not bothering anyone then the unit give you a set of pre-out rca's to run a sub from. I would only run a Mono block amp ( 1 channel) to run the "sub only" this will be dedicated for the low freqs, and will be more than enough to give the whole system some punch, rockford fosgate definately my choice for a mono, also has the control on the head unit to turn the sub down or off when needed. The whole system would be less than £200 add another £250 for the amp & enclosure.:)
I
 
tcm said:
We have a usual cockpit radio but it's not a proper racket, not really. It's okay, but not LOUD enough at sea. I went to a french halfords, saw some kenwood stuff but ran out again cos i daren't ask all the idiot questions. Or not in french anyway. I can wire things but um, no expert. The cockpit speakers say they're ok to 80 watts. Is that mega loud? If there's a kit i could get swmbo to buy in the uk and i wire it up, i'd buy it. I need two speakers inside, two outside, an amplifier and the er head unit i think it's called. I definitely got to be able to plug in an ipod. I might need a sub woofer. In fact, to hell with it, we could have a grown-up full woofer, perhaps? Well, it makes a change from anchor threads...

Advice welcome. Brendan has just gotta know about this? Or others?
Click to expand...

I've got the Fusion ipod system in my Targa 40 - head unit with ipod doc down below, couple of Focal speakers in the saloon powered straight off the head unit, then a wired remote control at the helm, two 7" alpine speakers at the helm, two more in the radar arch, and a 10" sub in the helm seat base. All the cockpit speakers are driven off an alpine marine amp. Sounds very nice, and has some welly for those out-at-sea occasions when you need a bit of Dizzee Rascal in your life.

Cheers
Jimmy
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top