How does one achieve good sound in a go-fast boat?
09-22-2013, 03:05 PM
#32
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It all depends if you are going for sound quality or loud sound. If you want loud mount them up high. If you want sound quality mount them low-and here is why--- sound travels from them speaker to your ear at a constant speed, having the speakers up high, you have a speaker 14" from your right ear and 74" from your left. It will be loud but sound horrible. Mount them lower and your distances are closer to equal. It's called phase linearity.
I used to build car audio speakers. Yes I used to sit there with magnets, speaker baskets coils cone and hand build speakers of all sorts. I have worked for pioneer, T3 audio, RE Audio, American bass, Eclipse, Fi Audio, DC Audio, and a few others. I fixed there broken speakers, basically they sent me their blown speakers and I replaced all the soft parts and sent them back.
And from doing this I know for a fact that while there are a couple build houses in the US, 99.99% of all audio gear comes from South Asia. Not that that is always, some of the best amps in the whole world come from Korea. But realize that most of this stuff is coming out of the same place with identical parts.
To the guy that said buy a 5 ch amp is a waste, not all of us can fit a crowne. http://www.woofersetc.com/p-3131-a60...amplifier.aspx. I used to run a Memphis Audio "Memphis belle" amp for a long time. It was awesome. You get 125rms x4 chan, plus 1100 watt mono sub channel.
Kinetic makes awesome batteries. I had 24 of the 16V batts in a competition van I had. Sold that one and started another one that had 38 of the kinetic 2400's. at the end of it all I realized all they were doing was going to the Chinese build house and rebadging batteries. After that I did a lot of digging and found the same battery for half the price. Now I have them in both my boats.
To truly get solid audiophile sound in a boat is truly difficult. Plan it out. Has some people help you. Make some foam baffles for the back of the speaker. Make some speaker pods and place the around the boat to see where it sounds the best. Have some people hold the pod 6" off the floor, then 12" , then 18" and so on. Take the time and do your research. While fiberglass can be fixed, no one wants to cut random holes in it.
I used to build car audio speakers. Yes I used to sit there with magnets, speaker baskets coils cone and hand build speakers of all sorts. I have worked for pioneer, T3 audio, RE Audio, American bass, Eclipse, Fi Audio, DC Audio, and a few others. I fixed there broken speakers, basically they sent me their blown speakers and I replaced all the soft parts and sent them back.
And from doing this I know for a fact that while there are a couple build houses in the US, 99.99% of all audio gear comes from South Asia. Not that that is always, some of the best amps in the whole world come from Korea. But realize that most of this stuff is coming out of the same place with identical parts.
To the guy that said buy a 5 ch amp is a waste, not all of us can fit a crowne. http://www.woofersetc.com/p-3131-a60...amplifier.aspx. I used to run a Memphis Audio "Memphis belle" amp for a long time. It was awesome. You get 125rms x4 chan, plus 1100 watt mono sub channel.
Kinetic makes awesome batteries. I had 24 of the 16V batts in a competition van I had. Sold that one and started another one that had 38 of the kinetic 2400's. at the end of it all I realized all they were doing was going to the Chinese build house and rebadging batteries. After that I did a lot of digging and found the same battery for half the price. Now I have them in both my boats.
To truly get solid audiophile sound in a boat is truly difficult. Plan it out. Has some people help you. Make some foam baffles for the back of the speaker. Make some speaker pods and place the around the boat to see where it sounds the best. Have some people hold the pod 6" off the floor, then 12" , then 18" and so on. Take the time and do your research. While fiberglass can be fixed, no one wants to cut random holes in it.
This is why I stay away from Audio Forums. Everybody thinks they know audio because they worked at some company that did audio or they installed some systems.
Acoustics is an actual science, there is a right way and wrong way to do things.
People that "Design" Audio systems in cars and boats need to do themselves a favor and actually learn the science.
Look up Floyd Toole's book on acoustics and read some white papers from Dr. Sean Olive. You will see right away that you knew almost nothing and in fact what you thought you knew was way off. Sean Olive is head of our research group and the President of AES (the audio engeneering society). The company i work for spends millions researching and understanding how to make the best car audio systems in the world. We spend more on research then most of the car audio companies you know of have for annual sales. We do over $3.5B in car audio, ya that's billion. We have over 20 million car audio systems on the road today.
Trust me when I say the boat audio business is a mess that's full of hear say and misled hobbiest.
MP
09-22-2013, 03:17 PM
#33
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On a positive note: :-)
We are almost done with a pretty *****en system in a new OL. We used powerful DSP for proper crossovers and time alignment at the seating position. The system uses a set of headphones that have actual mics on the outside so the system can measure the sound at the ear position and make the proper adjustments. You can stand up and create special modes for when you are standing up in the boat.
We used low distortion high output drivers powered by efficient amplifiers. So it should be a great combination of clarity, loudness, and effeceincy (reducing the load on the battery system).
Can't wait to hear it and get it dialed in. This should be one of the best sounding boat systems.
MP
We are almost done with a pretty *****en system in a new OL. We used powerful DSP for proper crossovers and time alignment at the seating position. The system uses a set of headphones that have actual mics on the outside so the system can measure the sound at the ear position and make the proper adjustments. You can stand up and create special modes for when you are standing up in the boat.
We used low distortion high output drivers powered by efficient amplifiers. So it should be a great combination of clarity, loudness, and effeceincy (reducing the load on the battery system).
Can't wait to hear it and get it dialed in. This should be one of the best sounding boat systems.
MP
09-22-2013, 04:32 PM
#34
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The issue with the 8" set ups is not playing loud or clear. It's that they are not linear. The most important job of a speaker is to reproduce the sound, if the speaker changes the sound of what you are playing then its not doing its job. It's very difficult and almost impossible to get a small tweeter and large mid range to create a flat response. The tweeter can not play flat down to the upper range of the mid range 8" so the tweeter struggles. Same for the 8".
It may sound good to you but its not right. Same thing goes for Bose Systems, they sound cool but do a horrible job of reproducing sound accurately.
MP
It may sound good to you but its not right. Same thing goes for Bose Systems, they sound cool but do a horrible job of reproducing sound accurately.
MP
09-23-2013, 12:05 AM
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It's like anything else done right it can work. Done wrong and it will sound like crap. All I can say is for the added trouble of having to redo the whole seat structure, there is no gain in it. You already get what little boundry gain you would get from the subs being that close to the floor. There are many things that could cause it to go wrong. It's not just point them at the floor and away you go.
09-23-2013, 01:16 AM
#38
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Wet sounds is actually pretty good, I dont know much about the company but it looks like they buy stuff off the shelf. They do have some horn loaded compression drivers that are pretty good but you have to have the depth.
Most car audio speakers will work good for awhile in salt water. The speakers are the cheap part so I would rather have a better speaker and replace it every couple years. The problem is that nobody makes real high quality marine speaker.
JL is always good but I am not a fan of the 8" coax or component systems. They don't sound very good, IMO. They have lots of bass and highs but the integration is not good.
MP
Most car audio speakers will work good for awhile in salt water. The speakers are the cheap part so I would rather have a better speaker and replace it every couple years. The problem is that nobody makes real high quality marine speaker.
JL is always good but I am not a fan of the 8" coax or component systems. They don't sound very good, IMO. They have lots of bass and highs but the integration is not good.
MP
