Boat build help.

[The Camry]

Ok so here is the plan. 4 (8in) or 4 (10in) or 4 (6x9s) hanging from the tower. Whatever drivers we would use would be in properly designed and sealed(water environment) boxes.

The goal here for the tower speakers that have high efficiency, would run well in .5-1 cuft each sealed (this is a total guess at enclosure size we'd build.) and are not obnoxiously expensive or at least have a good warranty. These should be almost entirely SPL speakers. We are looking to get loud but not sound harsh. I dont need to hear the timbre of the background sounds of the guitar, this isnt a sound quality build but im not looking to just have loud *** speakers because those get harsh quickly. Balance here is key. As for rms. That is to be determined. So either very high efficiency or able to take a ton of power.

The tower speakers are going to be on when were out of the boat doing water sports, not when were just sitting in the sun and kicking back. For that part, were focusing on the 4 6.5s in the gunwales. The issue here is this. These speakers are running IB and have almost no separation of front and back wave and building boxes for them is out of the equation because of the design of the boat. If you look in the first picture. you can see one speaker in the back right and the other is directly next to the driver seat. This is mirrored on the other side as well.

For these im considering using some Polk Audio DB651. Ive used them in someones cheap install before and they sound fairly decent. They can take a decent amount of power and are "marine certified" whatever that means :3

As for the sub, and oh yes, there will be a sub. We are gonna run a 15 and glass it into the bow. Im not sure where to go with this. He is an old car audio guy and thus wont stand for anything that doesnt have fantastic lows. So im thinking of a good sundown driver with good excursion.

Amplifier wise is where i am rather uncertain. I dont want to get anything really nice because a marine environment destroys amps in a short time and thus price will be cheap-middle range(vague i know). We dont need great channel separation or anything of the sort. Really im thinking a full class D topology all around and Something along the lines of a 2 channel amp with 100+rms to the tower speakers. a 2 channel amp with 100rms to the in boat speakers and 1000rms to the sub. Id like to keep it to 2 channel amps because of bridging(heat) and because of easy replacement if it goes.

From what i know of you guys, PPI is the way to go for cheap watts when you dont care about sound quality. Thats the only option i know of to put on the table ATM. Let me know if you guys have any more questions that'd help.

This is a hardware advice thread. Normally this would be easy to answer and id never make a thread about it but because its a boat environment. It changes things up a little.

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[garychoffmann 10+ year member]

I just installed 2 rockville marine amplifiers. They had more power and cleaner than I thought they were going to be. Oddly enough I used polk mm 6x9's throughout and it sounds good. 8 total so none of the speakers are overworked to get pretty **** loud.

 

[n2audio 5,000+ posts]

Tower speakers are a challenge.

They take a ton of abuse mainly because they're driven HARD a LOT, and to make matters worse, because of their location it's almost impossible to detect clipping -- so amp adjustment is crucial.

We put a pair of bazooka 8" coaxials on our tower primarily because the fiberglass enclosures were going to be convenient to work with.

They work, but overall I haven't been that impressed with them. One was damaged after only a few hours of use. They're getting around 80w rms each. We can hear them while we're on the wakeboard, but not with enough quality that it really matters.

I've been on another WB boat that had 4 RF 6x9's that was pretty impressive. I remember once blasting it while we were getting boards on and ropes out and someone turned it down to talk and soon after several people on the swimming beach a few hundred feet away started yelling at us to turn it back on. It was LOUD.

As for speakers -- When I think good quality and affordable marine audio I generally think of JBL/Infinity. If you can get 4 6x9's and 100w or so each on the tower I think you'll have all the SPL you could need. Not sure what you meant by 0.5-1.0 for the boxes -- was that for all 4? I think about .25 cf each would work well for 6x9's.

Why the 2 ch amps?

Bridging at 4 is the same stress on the amp as running parallel for 2.

 

[the727kid 10+ year member]

You may be over thinking this... it doesn't take much to get a boat very loud.

One set of this will probably be more than you need: KICKER | KMS67 Tower System