Good sound system on a boat

[AndrewA2]

I bought these for my kids:

They are REALLY good. Great sound quality, great volume, great battery life, and waterproof to boot ! Once again <$40

Tribit XSound Go Bluetooth Speaker - Speakers Bluetooth Wireless with Rich Bass, IPX7 Waterproof, 12W Powerful Sound, 24H Playtime, Portable Speaker with Built-in Mic & 66 ft Bluetooth Range, Black

[mikedefieslife]

Originally Posted by AndrewA2

Has anyone worked out how to have a true multi zone setup where you can control 1 or many zones from anywhere ?
I want to be able to play music that is synced in the main cabin, cockpit, and flybridge. then i want to change the flybridge to its own play list. later i might want to tell the cabin to play relaxing music before i head down to sleep....
You get the idea. Just haven't seen that apart for MEGA (Yacht expensive setups....

Every decent system will do this. Bose, Sonos, Yamaha, Panasonic. The Panasonic All share has some waterproof speakers in the range. Can't vouch for the their quality though.

Many of these systems will have a line in and an optical in for those that want as lossless audio as possible. Not much use if you're playing from MP3 though

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

You hear so many peoplel who think Bluetooth and MP3 etc are high end quality, but they by definition can’t be.
Most seem to equate thumping bass and loud for quality, it’s just they way it is, music quality went into the crapper with the first music video’s.
I used to be an audiophile, something that I believe no longer exists, but when I’m done cruising, I’m getting me a pair of Klipschorns, a good tube amp and turntable. Maybe find a Shure V15 type IV and break out the vinyl’s.

I'm not sure I'll ever move into a house, at least until after I am too senile to play music, but I get your system. Same as I had in 1975, except Speakerlab 7's with K-horns, oh, it had two, monural tube amplifiers, 800 watts each. No knobs, just power. And to top it off, a Teac 3340s, 4 channel 15 ips and 10.5" reels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EexPD8ch-sM

Loved that machine. My brother and I had a portable recording studio in the trunk of a 58' Caddie which we took to outdoor rock concerts, made live recordings, then brought it home so I could try to blow out my speakerlabs. Never did though.

On the boat I try to cut out as much of the compression as I can. I like to download wav files or flac and play them out of the PC's sound board directly into the stereo amp aux in, then to the speakers. No compression or dac anywhere. If you take a compressed mp3, then send it via bluetooth, I think you have compressed and decompressed at least twice. That cannot be good.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

You hear so many peoplel who think Bluetooth and MP3 etc are high end quality, but they by definition can’t be.
...
I used to be an audiophile, something that I believe no longer exists, but when I’m done cruising, I’m getting me a pair of Klipschorns, a good tube amp and turntable. Maybe find a Shure V15 type IV and break out the vinyl’s.

This article is a reasonable summary of Bluetooth compression standards for carrying audio, and how they compare to the usual compressed music files.

The first thing to understand is that MP3s can be pretty freaking good. I can still usually hear the improvements from a better source (CD, vinyl, open-reel tape) from MP3... in a quiet listening-room setting and a premium sound system. But for sonic wallpaper, or tunes for happy hour, the higher-rate MP3 files are just about indistinguishable from CDs to most listeners. In my programming career, i spent countless hours listening to MP3s through $200 headphones.

The data rate for MP3s is up to 320Kbps and that's also the top rate for basic BT audio. Plus, there are proprietary BT codecs that improve on that. If you read the info about AAC, a common choice for BT devices, it doesn't require decoding then re-encoding the source MP3 stream. What this means is that for MP3 playback, AAC is essentially equivalent to wire!

The device makers have also gotten smarter about acoustic design, so today's smaller BT speaker units use digital and analog tricks to improve the subjective quality.

So yeah, if your source is FM radio or a USB fob full of tunes, Bluetooth speakers are quite satisfactory for most people.


Audiophiles, like their equipment and records, are mostly closeted away. I had great systems as a young man, and a departed uncle left me a Thorens turntable with an SME arm and Ortofon cartridge, a Revox open reel deck, and a pair of Altec 15" coaxial drivers & crossovers which will hopefully make it into "Abbey Road" cabinets, whenever I get around to building those.


[and I still hung onto my mint-condition TEAC A-2340SX (converted to 15 ips). Why, I don't know]

[Captain Puget]

Several strategical placesd waterproof speakers - 2 way and at least 2x automotive subwoofers mounted in the top of lockers (often unused space anyway). One sub in the cabin and one in the cockpit. I have 2 speakers each in the cockpit, main cabin and fore peak, but I Really like my music. You may need more amps to power the remotes.

The subwoofers also are great whale guards and the otters love to come check out the early morning concerts while I’m having coffee (they seem to prefer classical) 😉

[Coltrek]

Originally Posted by AndrewA2

Has anyone worked out how to have a true multi zone setup where you can control 1 or many zones from anywhere ?
I want to be able to play music that is synced in the main cabin, cockpit, and flybridge. then i want to change the flybridge to its own play list. later i might want to tell the cabin to play relaxing music before i head down to sleep....
You get the idea. Just haven't seen that apart for MEGA (Yacht expensive setups....

the Jenson JWM90A may fit the bill.

I installed one a year ago, the only beef I have is that a little more wattage would be nice, for a little more bass.

[Jenta]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

You hear so many peoplel who think Bluetooth and MP3 etc are high end quality, but they by definition can’t be.
Most seem to equate thumping bass and loud for quality, it’s just they way it is, music quality went into the crapper with the first music video’s.
I used to be an audiophile, something that I believe no longer exists, but when I’m done cruising, I’m getting me a pair of Klipschorns, a good tube amp and turntable. Maybe find a Shure V15 type IV and break out the vinyl’s.

I remember going to CES in Vegas not that long ago and there was a whole wing of rooms in a hotel that were filled with $30k speakers and tube amps and such. I doubt that world will ever stop existing, so long as there are people with mega bucks that will spend that on a new set of speakers along with a bridge support system to keep the speaker cables off the floor. And if a "better" set comes out next year they will buy those and sell their old ones off for a fraction of new. They were really cool though, and yeah - they sounded REALLY good.

[blazing928]

Fusion, clarion, jbl, all make marine head-units (HU). GIGO, garbage in, garbage out is your mantra, understanding the return on investment quickly becomes minimal.

Good HU will have multi zone capability and you can buy a smaller control unit for each area. Better HU may have quite a good inbuilt amp to power the areas, so you won’t need to buy extra amps.

Fusion 8” drivers ( speakers) sound ok, always bigger is better as you’re trying to move air.
The other marine brands do very good speakers, clarion get a good wrap, but fusion seem to have simple grills in the classic range. Bose and many brands do out door speakers, but I’ve seen grills rust away in salt air, so I can only imagine the internaks are getting hammered by the salt.

Like in a car, I have added sound deadening material Megasorber D14 to the GRP panels to stop them being speakers. Product similar to Dynamat, sold by Megasorber here in Oz but much much cheaper. The add on effect is the boat is quieter as I’ve been spending quite a lot (!!) trying to reduce sound and vibration in our boat ( power boat).

Having a HU that has some form of DSP, ( digital sound processing) is a must as each boat/ speaker combination is different. Lots of hard surfaces , poor location of speakers etc.

No need to stick to one brand of speaker, certainly for inside use, though when I see how much salt spray I get inside the boat, I do feel marine may still be a good idea inside. I run a dehumidifier all winter and it’s very noticeable how dry the boat is inside, I used to wipe off a smear of salt off the fake wood every time even with doors shut. But tha5 may have been just salt air coming in when the doors are opened.

Plenty of iPod alternative media players that can store higher quality music. I have a very high end after market car audio system in one car , Brax and Alpine, but it’s viscous to poor input, Gigo! The phone vs a high quality CD is very obvious. But in a noisy boat you’re unlikely to notice. At a quiet anchorage, probably.

To get full sound you’ll need a sub woofer, one inside, one outside, these will require seperate amps as no HU will run a sub. Plenty of small compact car subs now have inbuilt amps and short throws, that can fit into tight spots, so that will sort the inside. external marine subs will need more space. Hence why I have 8” drivers outside for some bass without a sub.

[Turtle Blues]

Wet Sounds is an incredible company. Everything is built for the marine environment by some great sound engineers.

[Student_Driver]

I am six standard deviations away from the norm. MP3s are 128-320kb/s, CDs~ 800kb/s and HD Audio > 3 mb/s. I’m listening to HD and agree that good sound begins with good source material. At sail, mp3s will be fine.

I’d like to setup a roon server ( NAS and software) and may install a bluesound vault and amp or a Naim Unity. Question is whether home stereo amps convert a/c to d/c? Could you take a home stereo and modify it to use d/c without adding a dedicated inverter?

Am going to build speakers for the boat using scanspeak drivers. DIY. Thinking about a small line array for the cockpit with power handling like the old bose 901s

Part of me wants to bring my dcs bartok/Audio Research/WattPuppy rig onboard and modify the salon to fit it all, but that’s nuts. Looking for middle ground. Car/marine stereo pre-amps & power-amps just can’t hang with a good home rig.

[mikedefieslife]

I thought HD audio died with DVD-A. Not the porn acronym but with DVD audio discs which were touted as the next big thing back in the early 2000s. They were 24 bit 96khz vs 16 bit 44khz for CDs. FLAC is 24 bit 192Khz, but you'd have question where the source material is coming from for those.

[Lake-Effect]

I've never regarded a boat as an "audiophile" venue. For me the only essential application of recorded music is when washing dishes. Must have tunes to do the dishes by. Other times for music - like relaxing, morning news, happy hour, etc - are nice-to-haves but not essential. For whatever reason I don't like music playing in the cockpit when actually underway.

Seems to me the simplest audiophile setup in any boat would be high-end headphones, and optionally an esoteric headphone amp. And a hard-drive of high-bitrate or lossless music recordings.

[Lost Horizons]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Seems to me the simplest audiophile setup in any boat would be high-end headphones, and optionally an esoteric headphone amp. And a hard-drive of high-bitrate or lossless music recordings.

Correct. Except, there are very good hi-res players available with built-in headphone amplifies that use a combination of internal flash memory and SD/micro SD cards. I have an Astel&Kern player that holds 500 GB of hi-res and 44/16 music, essentially all my library. Use it on the boat mostly with headphones and occasionally with a relatively expensive sound bar, although not happy with the sound bar performance. It lacks high frequencies above 16 kHz or so. Good mostly for vocals and audio books. Will probably replace the sound bar with decent powered speakers such as Adam Audio.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Lost Horizons

Correct. Except, there are very good hi-res players available with built-in headphone amplifies that use a combination of internal flash memory and SD/micro SD cards. I have an Astel&Kern player that holds 500 GB of hi-res and 44/16 music, essentially all my library. Use it on the boat mostly with headphones and occasionally with a relatively expensive sound bar, although not happy with the sound bar performance. It lacks high frequencies above 16 kHz or so. Good mostly for vocals and audio books. Will probably replace the sound bar with decent powered speakers such as Adam Audio.

You can actually hear above 16k? What are you - 12?

Nice find on that Astel&Kern player. I hadn't heard about them.

[Lost Horizons]

Believe it or not, I can tell the difference when fabric screens are removed from speakers.