Upgrading stereo - suggestions

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Andy Bav

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When we bought our Bavaria we were spoilt with a Fusion system with the main head unit in the saloon, a small 4 inch by 2 inch (roughly) repeater at the helm and a 200 watt sub woofer under one of the cockpit settees.

Bavaria is long gone, so am looking to upgrade existing system which is is a Panasonic (car stereo look-a-like) head unit near the 12v / 240v switches. Has anyone upgraded their system, and is it a simple plug and play ? Also is Fusion the best option, or any other suggestions ?

We are not having a rave but I do enjoy listening to music on a good quality system.
 
I used a Kenwood Bluetooth unit, can be used to make/receive phone calls, remote control through the phone app, can also play music stored on your phone, also USB input
app can also be installed on the later raymarine units
speakers in saloon , cockpit and flybridge
 
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Upgraded a previous boat to Fusion and am planning the same with the current boat as we were impressed with their kit but interested to see other suggestions
 
just bought a fusion to replace the car sony one which dates back to the early 2000's where sony made the screens all flashy and animated but showed no actual useful information so its going in the bin. also replaced the 20 year old sealine factory speakers in the cockpit with a pair of fusions which sound much better. the sony's in the cabin will be going in the bin too when I get around to it.
 
My boat came with a Fusion system with repeater at the upper helm. It’s a lovely system but I am tempted to upgrade the standard fusion speakers. The Bluetooth reception was brutal and it regularly broke up 15-16ft away from the head unit. I contacted Fusion and asked if it was possible to improve the Bluetooth reception with a remote receiver or if there was a software upgrade that addressed the issue. They replaced my UD650 head unit with the newer UD655 no questions asked. I saw a thread from a US site saying that they were replacing that model due to the Bluetooth issue. Great service.
 
Thanks for your replies. Not sure if there is a Bluetooth repeater available, or if they all need to be wired to the head unit?. Irrespective, Fusion seems to be the go to marine unit...

Last year someone lent us a JBL Partybox 200 - absolutely superb piece of kit... but hardly compact ?
 
I got one of these. The sound is surprisingly good. They’re portable, waterproof, and float. They pair for stereo if u get 2. I think u can add more.
If u have an old iPhone, iPod, etc.. you can stick it in a stand with power and you’ve got a perfectly good head unit. Use the usual apps for streaming or offline audio.
 

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Hav a look at Sonos. Superb quality. They do in ceiling / wall speakers, all link together, or run separately. All run through boat wifi and can connect to a NAS / Internet (spotify etc)../ CD Player / computer.
I have them throughout my home and see zero reason as to why they won't translate to a boat...
 
pumpsmynads said:
I got one of these. The sound is surprisingly good. They’re portable, waterproof, and float. They pair for stereo if u get 2. I think u can add more.
If u have an old iPhone, iPod, etc.. you can stick it in a stand with power and you’ve got a perfectly good head unit. Use the usual apps for streaming or offline audio.
Click to expand...

We have one too and it is, as you say, surprisingly good. We did ponder just having another for the boat but I think I prefer a hard wired system, if for no other reason that the Wondebroom is as cheap as chips and being such good value has no place on a boat. It would represent an existential threat to the man maths that has so far proved a successful strategy with SWMBO!
.
 
I've been using the cheap WiFi boxes for a few years.
They work well - I have three zones - Flybridge, Cockpit and Saloon.

The trick is to use the same box (design and software) everywhere or they will get out of sync with each other when you put all the zones together and play them all simultaneously.
Remember that these WiFi devices all "stream" so different ones might stream a different rates/delays.
On my system, iPhones only allow one zone to be streamed at a time - Android (with the correct app) is fine - another reason fo not having an iPhone.
 
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