gsxrmike

Tigeman, the JL marine speaker are not made of foam just to keep things even.

having said that concert level speaker are not really the best sounding speaker's loud yes but usually harsh allot of people confuse harsh bright sound that may be clear with sound quality.

Studio monitors however are purely focused on SQ. Since you were an old IASCA guy would you recommend a pair of wave guides? That and I believe the JL W5 won allot of IASCA trophies back in the day, but that was long before JL was a known name, back when phoenix gold was considered the best!

just a little nostalgia

Tigeman

Your most important factor is amps and giving your speakers enough juice! Headroom is important.

JL makes a terrific amp (their one product I love) and they have a marine line if u want it.

ARC makes the best amps on the Market IMO nowadays. The KS series is a very efficient amp that doesn't break the bank. It's a Class G/H amp like the alpines, which is what gives it's efficiency. Some say a g/h class amp can be lacking in the midbass frequencies... I've honestly heard it, but most never will. I run these amps in my boat.

The Wetsounds amps are great and that piece of stainless is beautiful! BUT they ARE the KS amps above. They are the same amp, but the Wetsounds have coatings on the connections and board. These were originally going to be the Hertz amps, but Tim couldn't get the Italians to get the price down low enough.

Love the hertz amps, but they're $$$$$$

Power is everything... This is the area you don't wanna skimp. A poor amp can make the best speaker sound like crap, and a great amp can make a mid range speaker outperform your expectations.

But once again, tuning is EVERYTHING!

Tigeman

LoL ahhhh the Phoenix gold days! LoL, course I was using Blade stuff at the time.

I almost mentioned the marine stuff wasnt foam surrounds. And your right, JL has won alot of awards. But they changed when they became big.

Your right, the pro-audio can be bright.... Noticed I said "peaky" above. Actually it can be VERY bright, almost harsh. The Wetsounds stuff is no exception. But in reality I would say 99% of the folks here aren't gonna glass a kick panel in to fit a pro-80 inside of it, so I didn't mention it. Since most will never use the hlcd stuff, due to mounting options. Plus at moderate levels, the harshness is non-existent.

As for the waiveguides... If you can implement them correctly, then hell yeah. I haven't even looked lately, since ID is gone, does anyone still make em? But power is cheap nowadays, which partially negates the advantages that the high sensitivity drivers gave you. Most people can't tune these so I would steer most boaters away though. Before the hlcd became big in the wakeboard Market, Matt at ID had a boat they loaded a set of their horns up on the tower. Sounded great.


Some other options for those of you who want the best of the best, and want to stay the car audio route.....

DYNAudio, Morel, Rainbow.... all amazing speakers.

Wet-N-Wild

NICE!!!!

Nightlife1970

Tigeman,

Finally someone that preaches power with me. Having been into all forms of audio, power is one of the main things preached about in the Pro Audio field. Headroom makes a system.

I worked in the 12volt electronics industry for 15 years. Was a rep for many different brands. The biggest problem was blow speaker from to little power. I don't know how many times I had to teach a dealer that a 200 watt amp would blow a 500 watt sub before a 700 watt amp. Alwasy got the responce it's a 500 watt sub 200 watts should not hurt it. lol

Kind of funny as I used to judge and compete in IASCA and USAC as well. 2 cars I worked on placed in 1994. I don't follow car audio as close as I used to. I moved on to Highend home audio after getting out of the 12volt biz. But looks like I may have to pay more attention to it again. Getting more requests to install for people again. Just had a 20OL dropped off today for an all Alpine system.

Tigeman

I think the only speaker I've ever blown from to much power was when we put 1200w to an itty bitty tweeter. It survived for about 10 secs before it let loose a 6" flame out the top lol

I think alot of people don't understand gain control and like to send clipped signals through their speakers

rlj676

Another factor that was briefly mentioned here is efficiency of your amp. How many batteries and what charging system do you have or want to add?

I had a JL 300/4 and w/ a single deep cycle and starter battery it wouldn't run at any type of volume w/ the motor off, couldn't pull the current. I switched out to a class D (Memphis), no problems now and sound is still good.

So just be aware of what the power supply needs are of whatever amp you go with.

Last, in a boat environment you can never really get great SQ, so you can go w/ a decent sounding basic system or a really loud one, but not likely a truly great/loud one.

Nightlife1970

Maybe you remember when Pyle was owned by the Pyle family in Hunington. They had a technology called Ironglaze that they put on their woofer voice coils. Basically as the coil got hotter it got stonger.

We had 4 10" free air's in my boss's 33 Powerplay, and they were getting close to the warranty. So we decided we were going to try and blow them.

First thing we did was take the biggest amp we had (Autotek 333) cranked it wide open and fired them up. After about 10 min of watching them jump around we decided it was gonna take something stronger. So we hooked them directly up to the 100 amp 12 power supply. That had no effect. So we decided to hook them right to 120v AC. They would last a good 3 min. or so then the former would catch fire. It would shoot a 5' flame out the bottom of the magnet for about 30 sec before the driver would stop.

When we sent them back, it was the first set of those woofers Pyle had ever gotten back. They called us to ask what happen, and our returns girl said she had no clue. They still replaced them though.

Aubrey27

I had Sony CDXM1016PKG Marine Audio System, basically more the technology is becoming common in every part of the world the need of pampering yourself with luxuries is also a necessity now. First we started off with stereo systems that came built-in in the cars while iPOD kicked in and overcome every kind of CD players. This system is the best sound system I ever had. Some people were busy jazzing up their car with car speakers while others were spending more and more money on their personal boats and ferries

Captain YARRR

Really great thread, I'm learning a lot!

A lot of people run Wet Sounds where I'm at (Lake Travis) and they certainly are loud as hell, but I think the clarity leaves something to be desired.

This Spring I looked at a boat that was running Crystal 6.5s through a Monster amp with three 12s. I didn't know music could sound that clear and loud. I was blown away. Does anyone know anything about that setup? I'd really like to get similar sound on whatever boat I buy.