Stereo upgrades

[diungerich]

I know the stereo in my boat is basically crappy equipment. I'm looking at upgrades now, but a question for those of you who have worked on improving your system. Right now, the stereo has what I'd call a bathtub effect, particularly from the rear speakers. That is, it's kind of a weird boomy (yet still lacking) bottom end (bass). I'm confident a new system, new speakers, etcetera would improve things, but I'm wondering if a fair portion of it is due to speaker placement and nothing I can do about it without relocating speakers. I don't have a wakeboard tower to get them up out of the "bathtub", and right now I don't think I want to invest that much in this boat. Would rather wait till I upgrade boats. At the same time, I don't want to throw away good money on the stereo only to have speaker placement negate what I'm doing. Thoughts?

 

[diungerich]

No stereo guys around here?

 

[tlombard]

I didn't upgrade the stereo in my boat myself, it was done when I bought it, but a friend and I put in some upgrades in his boat years ago and trust me, it can still sound really good. Both my boat and the friends are just simple 18' ski boats. I'm going to assume that your rear speakers are in the rear bench? What I've got now and what my friend did was upgrade to 8" speakers in the rear bench which made a nice difference. Of course the quality of the speaker matters a bunch too so even sticking with what I'm assuming are the stock size of 6.5" will improve dramatically with quality equipment. It made a really big difference in his boat. Then eventually he added amps and got fancier but he didn't go to far and it sounded really good. He also paid his way through college by getting MECP certified and installing and building custom car stereos so he was constantly changing and upgrading things to the point where I don't even remember exactly what is in there now. I lost track after I moved out and we were no longer roommates!

What I've got right now is 8" speakers in the rear bench and then 6.5" speakers on each side in front of the driver and passenger seat down low and it sounds GREAT. Of course there is also a 10" sub under the hatch and two amps which really help as well. With all of the speakers being so low and contained in the area they are the sound gets compliments from boats that we are tied up to all the time. That's when I tell them to hop on my boat and see how it sounds there and they are really blown away. Standing in the middle is just awesome. They also don't want to believe it is a single 10" sub until I pop the hatch and show them. I'm very grateful to the guy who I bought my boat from. He was proud of it too. When I showed up to look at the boat the first thing he did was fire up the stereo. Literally!

Even without the subs and amp, I think just simply upgrading the equipment will help. Just don't cheap out on the equipment like I did in high school when I bought subs and an amp from an electronics show! It was all cheap but man was it junk. After the subs blew in a matter of weeks I upgraded to low end name brand sub and a single 12" (all I could afford) blew the two cheap 12" subs combined away. I like to learn the hard way!

 

[spoilsofwar]

To a great degree, it's hard to get much outside-the-boat projection from a boat stereo if you have only cockpit mounted speakers. My boat suffered from this a lot, and it was solved by adding a waketower and tower speakers, but I understand you're not willing to go this way right now.

If you're only interested in the sound quality and volume when you're in the boat, there are a bunch of things you can do.

First, where are your speakers mounted? Boat manufacturers in general give no thought of speaker placement, from a sound quality perspective... They just cut the holes where they feel looks best, is convenient, etc.

Are your speakers powered by an external amplifier, or the head unit's internal amp? If it's the latter, consider investing in an external amp. You will never regret it.

If your speakers are mounted on a bulkhead, like mine were (rear seat bench) and open to the compartment from behind, there are baffles you can buy that fit behind the speakers and will increase the "punch" of the speakers and remove the empty boom. Same for the fronts... Mine are mounted on the coaming panels with no structure behind. It's like mounting a standard subwoofer on a panel instead of using a free-air sub.

Ultimately, you somewhat have to play the hand you're dealt. I still get little useful projection from my cockpit speakers, and have to rely on my tower speakers; 1 expensive head unit, 2 amps, 6 speakers (4x 6.5" rockfords, 2x 8" rockfords), and 1 subwoofer later. Unless, you're willing to cut new speaker holes or come up with alternative solutions.