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Higher End Audio at 12/24V for boats

Discussion in 'Technical Discussion' started by goplay, Apr 17, 2006.

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  1. goplay

    goplay Senior Member

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    Is anyone familiar with audio/video electronics for boats that are higher fidelity than the typical and that run on 12V/24V? Obviously lots of choices for AC run high end audio, but I would like to be able to operate the audio without the generator running or shore power.

    The default would be to use the typical car/marine head units but are there other choices out there? Are there high-end versions? Is the Linn (on the Aston Martin) available aftermarket?

    One option I am thinking of is building a media-center PC (since I have a very large uncompressed audio library) with a DC supply instead of AC, and use car/marine DC audio amplifiers. The downside is the user interface will require some sort of display and it won't be as intuitive for the average person as a normal stereo.

    Thanks!
  2. Billy1119

    Billy1119 Senior Member

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    You have many options for high end DC audio equipment, largely from the auto market. A few questions first to narrow it down some:

    1. Inside or outside?
    2. Speakers outside, amps indside?
    3. How big of a system are we talking? One room, entire boat?
    4. Sub(s) or no sub(s)?
    5. What kind of 12V (since most all is going to be 12V) battery system is currently in place?
    6. Charging ability while engines running without generator?
    7. Price point?

    These will help with the direction or what type of equipment you go for. There are many types of head units available in the high end market that would work with a AUX input coming from a media PC if you did want to go that route. You can get high end sound cards with RCA outputs for the PC that would connect directly to a line-in on the head unit if you wanted to do it that way. If you were to have amps, you could actually bypass the headunit completely using just the computer as the signal source. Like you said, this would not be as user friendly as a simple headunit, or maybe even a 60 gig iPod (sound quality may suffer some). There are many options, so let's narrow it down some and then go from there. Have a good one!
  3. goplay

    goplay Senior Member

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    To answer your questions:
    - inside primarily (I can always add another amp for outside)
    - one room sound sound levels not the issue rather, sound quality
    - probably a sub because I suspect the speakers I would want to install would need them
    - house batteries are TBD, but I believe there are four in parallel
    - charging with engine only TBD (good idea)
    - less price sensitive

    For background, I am pretty familiar with what is possible in homes and at the high end. For example, my home server is a terabyte NAS in a raid configuration (created myself), with LINN amps, dCS D/A and B&W Signature speakers.

    This is a new boat coming in the latter part of the year so I have the opportunity to mod either before or after delivery.
  4. Billy1119

    Billy1119 Senior Member

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    Okay, so I guess I'll come back with more questions for right now.

    Is this only for audio, in which case there would only be stereo sound, or were you wanting to use it in conjunction with the video and have surround sound?

    Sounds like you know what you like and have good taste regarding home audio. There is always the option of using home audio components with DC to AC converters, then you would be using components you were familiar with. I would suspect, however, that this would decrease your efficient use of your limited power, as DC amps are typically pretty efficient (depending largely on class).

    Okay, also, are you wanting to fill an entire space with sound, or are you looking to focus the sound in a particular area. In other words, are you worried about imaging when in a particular location? How are you thinking of mounting these? Are you thinking separate enclosures like home systems, or mounting them in existing walls etc.?

    Depending on these things, you could go with home audio speakers and DC amps if you wanted. The main problem I see with this is most home speakers are 8 ohm, where car amps are typically rated at 4 ohms, so you'd have to spend extra bucks to get a higher wattage rating to account for the drop in power when connecting to 8 ohm speakers.

    If we determine you still want to use car audio speakers and amps, then I'll get into specifics about those. I must warn you though, I've been a little out of the car audio loop for the past 2-3 years, but at that time knew what was going on in the industry. So, I'm not necessarily up on all the latest and greatest, but I know most of the companies and consider myself to be pretty knowledgeable overall.

    Get back to me on some more specifics, and we'll go from there.
  5. Billy1119

    Billy1119 Senior Member

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    Just wanted to add, it depends on the battery bank, efficiency of the amps and how much juice we're actually pulling, but with 4 batteries, you're not going to be able to crank your system for hours without giving those batteries some juice via either the generator or the engine alternator/generator(s). The amps still need power (very important obviously), and you need power to be able to crank the boat back up (not as much of a problem if you have a separate bank of house batteries and cranking batteries).

    How long were you thinking of running without any charging?
  6. goplay

    goplay Senior Member

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    Bill,

    Thanks for the responses. I am leaning to PC with a DC supply that I would build, and thus could provide music storage as well as drive the plasma display for movies. External car audio amps for amplification.

    Guess there isn't any great solution for really quality audio. Speakers will ultimately be the biggest problem with the space limitations on a 62'.
  7. Billy1119

    Billy1119 Senior Member

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    I'm not planning on leaving you high and dry, but time's very limited for me at the moment. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have a little to spare to give you a detailed response.