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PostPosted: Mon Oct 27, 2003 1:00 pm    Post subject: Stereo Installation Reply with quote

From: Da_Nag™ Sent: 11/24/2002 11:32 AM

Here are my initial plans for onboard stereo. One would think this would be a simple decision and installation, and in fact, it can be. If tunes aren't that important to you, this may be complete overkill. However, with a little bit of planning and research, you can end up with a relatively inexpensive system with capabilities far beyond your typical AM/FM + cassette/CD installation.

Disclaimer - this installation has yet to be performed, but I have a fair amount of experience with this type of equipment. In theory, I know it will all work, but you may wish to wait for my follow-up report to see how well it actually went...

Here are my design goals:

1. Inexpensive. There are many better places to spend your marine electronics dollars. High-end car audio systems really are overkill; the acoustics on a boat, particularly while underway, pretty much eliminate any advantage these systems offer. Also, a marine environment is going to take its toll on a system designed to be installed inside a waterproof vehicle. Yes, there are "marine systems", but they are expensive, and are lacking in features I desire.

2. MP3 capability. The advantages of MP3's are many on a boat. First, you don't have to bring along your collection of $15 CD's or cassettes - less to pack, and one less thing for someone to steal. Also, once you've experienced the convenience of accessing your tunes via play lists, either pre-defined or created on the fly, playing CD's just seems so antiquated. I'll not spend much time in this article covering MP3 technology - there are numerous sources on the web that describe it in great detail. Suffice it to say, if you have a CD collection and a CD burner on your PC or Macintosh, you can use all the information here.

3. Flexibility and room for expansion. The ability to bring along any of latest portable players (i.e. iPod's and Rio's) and have them seamlessly tie into the audio system offers great flexibility. Also, choosing the right head unit allows you to add mass storage (CD changers, MP3 jukeboxes) down the road if you want more music capacity.

With the above in mind, here are the components I'll be installing.

Head Unit - This was the most difficult component to track down. There are numerous inexpensive head units out there, if all you want is AM/FM + cassette/CD. Adding MP3 capability (via CD's burned on your computer) narrows the field considerably; while these units are now wide-spread, most are still fairly expensive. Finally, adding audio inputs to the head unit is what addresses design goal #3 - expansion. Very few head units meet all of my design goals - in fact, at the time of this article, only one that I could find - the JVC KD-SX980. It is available at numerous discount online dealers for around $175 delivered.

In addition to AM/FM radio, this head unit has a CD player, but it can also read CD's you have burned MP3's on. Depending on the bit-rate at which you create your MP3's (higher bit-rate=higher sound quality, lower bit-rate=smaller file size), a CD of MP3's can hold 5-10 times the amount of music as an audio CD. And, it can contain only the tracks you want.

Additionally, this head unit has an auxiliary input jack on the front, where you can plug in any portable music device for playback through your onboard stereo system. It also has an auxiliary input port on the back, which provides for the expansion capabilities I wanted. Also, the radio reception is reported to be excellent.

Speakers - There are many "marine speakers" on the market. I've read varying reports as to how they sound, but those that I saw all suffer from the price increase associated with anything labeled "marine". Fortunately, I was introduced to Audiosource LS100/200 indoor/outdoor speakers when a friend of mine wired up a set on his patio (the 100's are black, the 200's white - only difference.) These speakers are very hard to beat for the price - Amazon currently has them for under $40/pair delivered. They sound amazingly good for their size and cost - I've heard worse sound coming from speakers costing 5x as much. They are enclosed, and come with a mounting bracket.

Installation - it should be simple. The head unit will be installed in a waterproof enclosure - more for aesthetics than protection. One such enclosure is a Poly-Planar WC-400, although there a probably others. As with my VHF, I'll remove any inline fuses and wire it directly to the fuse panel behind the helm.

For the antenna, I'll be trying one of the AM/FM - VHF band separators to keep from drilling another hole in my cabin, and reduce antenna clutter. I've read folks are happy with these, getting excellent AM/FM reception without adversely affecting VHF reception or transmission.

For the speakers - the wires will be routed away from all other electronics, along the port side of the cabin roof. The speakers will be tucked up in the corners in the rear of the cabin, keeping the magnets as far away from my other electronics as possible.

Cost - The above system can be installed for under $350.

The Future - The primary upgrade I have in mind is an MP3 jukebox. While having MP3's burned on a CD is a great improvement over regular audio CD's, a jukebox can hold your entire music collection - my home system currently contains over 20,000 tracks. Once such unit that would work seamlessly with the above system is the DMP3 - basically, it is an embedded computer/MP3 player with a built-in hard drive designed for cars. It has no amplifier, instead it has audio-out connections that would connect to the auxiliary rear input of the head unit above. There are a couple of these types of jukeboxes available on the market now, but the price is still pretty high - currently around $450-600, depending on the size of the hard drive installed. As with everything else in the computer/electronics world, they'll only get cheaper and have more capacity as time goes by. When they hit the price I'm willing to pay, my system will be ready for it.

From: stevej Sent: 11/26/2002 7:28 AM
Good information Da Nag, I really like the MP3 concept and noticed this avilability in car deck a few months ago. What I like to see is a deck that supports all three formats CD, MP3 and DVD. You could feed the video to one of those folding flat screen displays the ultimate in boaterhome accomodations.

Replaced my stereo about 2 years ago and ended up with the Bose 151 box speakers and a Jensen AM/FM CD player. The Bose speakers are great but spendy would not mind replacing the Jensen with that JVC you list.
Installed a Shakespear 8' AM/FM at the time and have never been hugly impressed with it. The original antenna was one of those T wires that had been mounted in the hanging locker and I just never saw that big of a difference in reception with the new system . Going for the splitter approach should be fine.

steve

From: Redƒox Sent: 11/26/2002 8:47 AM
Bill do you know about C-Crane Co.? I been scopin out this 20 Gig portable** mp3 player and a fm transmiter. One could use that sucker on anything with an FM radio, it holds like 300 CDs! and one does not have to load it with their putter either! Its a new concept to me, but as it is now, I can't listen to my CD player in rough water unless the Red Fox is practicly over-loaded to sit way deep in the water.
Good topic, this one should grow some legs!

From: LesLampman Sent: 12/4/2002 7:53 AM
Hi Bill,

We had the JVC KD-SX780 in C-Salt and it's also in our Jeep Wrangler. We really like the unit and it performs well. I think the only difference between the 780 and 980 is the Disc Name feature. In C-Salt we added the 12-disc CD changer; that was a treat.

Those speakers look interesting ... we used the 6x9 (way overkill) Poly Planar speakers in C-Salt; I swear the enclosures look identical.

We also used the Shakespeare VHF/AM/FM splitter on the 396-1 5' shakespeare VHF antenna and I though it did a really nice job. Radio reception around the San Juan Islands doesn't seem to be the best but I was able to bring in quite a few stations.

I need to learn more about MP3.

Les



From: Da_Nag™ Sent: 12/4/2002 10:39 AM
Les,

The other difference between the 780 and 980 kills my main requirement - direct MP3 capability. If you burn a CD with MP3 files on it, it can't play them. You don't get this capability until you jump to the 980 model.

Otherwise, the 780 appears to be a fine unit, for even less money. One could connect a portable MP3 player to the front input panel to get around the MP3 on CD issue.

Bill

From: C-LionRay Sent: 7/20/2003 9:22 AM
Well, inquiring minds want to know... How did it turn out?
I want to buy one that will work in the boat and the tow rig.
Lets hear more about it.
Thanks in advance,

C-Lion Ray


From: Da_Nag™ Sent: 7/20/2003 10:52 AM
Turned out great. As with everything custom, I made a few changes along the way...

I scrapped the Poly-Planar box - actually, swapped it for some potatos with Farmer Roger. In my install, the stereo enclosure was too big to fit on the top shelf. I ended up placing the JVC unit on the shelf, attached via a couple L brackets. It sandwiched in there nicely with my VHF, so you can't really see the bare sheet metal sides of the unit.

The speakers sound great with this head unit. While I've seen them mounted to the cabin top in the rear of 22 Cruisers, they would be head bangers, and too exposed to the elements in the open cabin 19. I ended up using industrial velcro to attach them to the top of my seat boxes, and left plenty of extra cable. This allows me to get them out of the weather if necessary, and also allows me to place them up front on the dash when in port. They sound better up there, but I wouldn't want them mounted permanently in this location for visibility reasons.

RE speaker wire - I used marine grade (tinned) 16g, the fully enclosed two conductor variety available at West Marine. With the ends of the wires exposed where they go into the speakers, I'm hoping to cut off this corrosion magnet.

MP3's on CD are working out great. I typically get 5 complete CD's on one MP3 CD when I burn them at 256K. You could get double this amount on a CD if you burn your MP3's at 128K, and the sound quality would probably be fine for this application. However, I'm using the same MP3's for my home system, where the better quality is noticeable.

The antenna splitter/band separator works as advertised - great radio reception, and no interference or adverse effect on the VHF.

Haven't added the jukebox yet - probably overkill.

Bill

From: C-LionRay Sent: 7/21/2003 4:16 AM

Thanks Bill I am pretty interested in the juke box.
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Da Nag



Joined: 24 Oct 2003
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City/Region: Port Angeles
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Photos: <a>Da Boats</a>
PostPosted: Sat Jun 05, 2004 8:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm in the middle of installing the Mother Of All Stereo Systems, which I'll write up in full when complete. In the mean time, thought I'd share a good deal. The speakers I'm using are on sale at Amazon for dirt cheap - $33.24 for the pair delivered.

Here's the link - I've used these before, and recommended them to a couple other C-Brats who were also quite satisfied. They put out incredibly good sound for such an inexpensive speaker - as good as many costing 4-5 times as much.

One thing I'm trying this time - the brackets that are included with them are cheap and flimsy, and using them forces the speakers out about 2" from whatever mounting surface you choose. After spending a few days thinking of alternative ways to mount them, it hit me - just glue the dang things to the cabin top.

I put a liberal amount of 4200 on the top of them, and stuck them up there. Given the success folks have had with with this type of install for shelving and other plastic mounts, I'm expecting they'll hold fine. They've only been up there for about 12 hours, but they feel very solid. This also has the advantage of tucking them up out of the way as far as possible - there's no chance of knocking your head on them, even when sitting down at the rear table seat. There's still plenty of room behind them for the wire connections.

If it fails, I'm only out $33, and I can clean the 4200 off the cabin top. However, these things are very light, and I'm guessing the plastic housing will adhere to the cabin just fine.

Two pics are in the Electronics section of the photo albums, starting here. I temporarily removed the supports under them for the photos - it's probably best to leave them supported for 24 hours or so to get a full cure.

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Chivita



Joined: 04 Nov 2003
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City/Region: Hansville
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 3:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bill,

Thanks for the info on the speakers, but what interests me even more is if the 4200 will form a strong enough bond to support them in rough conditions. If you have a chance to test that bond in the next couple months, can you let me (or all of us) know how it worked?

THANKS!
Chivita Dave
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