Hi All,
Well, it is getting LATE in the season and I am still not in the water.:cussing:
I usually go in by April 20th but missed my window. As such I had some time today to finally install the Fusion CP-AS1080 subwoofer I have had kicking around my shop for well over a year.
Because this sub is so compact I was able to completely hide it behind my nav station drawers where it is completely invisible, but still sounds great. The stereo is above it in the nav station so the running the wiring was pretty simple. The wiring in general is super easy.
*RCA Left & Right
*12V Power Pos & Neg
*Remote Turn On Wire
I have never been a fan of poorly installed, crappy sounding or grotesquely large & non-musical subs on boats that rattle the entire interior. I was just on one last week, and it reminded me just how bad a bad sub installation can be.. Thanks to this reminder, I chose to isolate my sub from the hull with some closed cell foam. The sub was first mounted to the foam with fender washers then the foam was then mounted to a piece of black Starboard, again, with fender washers. The sub is completely isolated by foam from the hull. This did a perfect job at stopping the vibrations from transmitting into the hull, muddying the bass, and rattling everything. I wanted a clean, tight but fuller sound that does not even let you know there is a sub on-board. I did not want the sound of a 16 year old in a Civic with twin 18" subs and 1,000,000 watts.. The piece of starboard was mounted to the hull using Weld-Mount studs..
With the drawers removed the sub can be seen. All the adjustments are at the business end so I can adjust it if needed by laying down on the floor and sneaking my hand up in where your feet go...
I am driving the sub with a Kenwood Excelon deck which gives me full control of crossover points and a tremendous ability to fine tune it to our boats acoustics. I am a recovering audiophile so while this system sounds okay to most it still sounds like crap to my ears. Still, it is 20X better sounding now that we have more range..
The remote turn on wire from the stereo energizes the sub but I also installed a switch in this line to kill the sub if we don't want it on.
Over all the sub sounds quite good for the price and size. It fills in most of those missing frequencies that you just can't get with 5" speakers & deck power... The biggest improvement was at the low listening volumes we normally choose to listen at. We now actually have some bottom end that was completely lacking before at low volume...
It is pretty easy to make enough bass on a 36' boat to fill out the sound, and this new compact form factor is pretty decent at doing just that. I really hate to even call it a "subwoofer" because it is really more like a regular woofer from the 70's.... Today I suppose when most folks are listening to glorified walkie-talkie speakers (now called satellites) an 8" woofer can now be called a "sub"....
I suspect there are far better subs out there but this one fit where I needed it to, sounds fairly tight, not muddy or mushy or thumpy and made all the difference in sound quality on-board.. I am still messing around with cross over points & EQ settings for the sub and other speakers, but it sounds 20X better than it did.... If you do add this type of sub I would stronly advise a deck that allows to full subwoofer control at the deck from the crossover points to subwoofer volume..
This is NOT a thumping home theater type of sub, we did not want that, but it does round out the bottom end well and is really quite musical in relation to its size, current consumption and price..
When cranked, way louder than we would ever listen to it, we don't listen very loud at all, the stereo and sub combined average was about 3.2A. At our normal listening volume it is at about 1.1A - 1.3A for both the sub and stereo. I am a big fan of Bluegrass and Jazz so played some today and the acoustic bass sounded fairly decent, something totally lacking previously.
If you want 16 year old, flat rimmed hat, pants around the thighs thumpin' bass, look elsewhere. If you want a sub that will fill in the missing bottom end, do that while not using a ton of energy and also not breaking the bank the Fusion CP-AW1080 is a decent little speaker, er, subwoofer...
Well, it is getting LATE in the season and I am still not in the water.:cussing:
I usually go in by April 20th but missed my window. As such I had some time today to finally install the Fusion CP-AS1080 subwoofer I have had kicking around my shop for well over a year.
Because this sub is so compact I was able to completely hide it behind my nav station drawers where it is completely invisible, but still sounds great. The stereo is above it in the nav station so the running the wiring was pretty simple. The wiring in general is super easy.
*RCA Left & Right
*12V Power Pos & Neg
*Remote Turn On Wire
I have never been a fan of poorly installed, crappy sounding or grotesquely large & non-musical subs on boats that rattle the entire interior. I was just on one last week, and it reminded me just how bad a bad sub installation can be.. Thanks to this reminder, I chose to isolate my sub from the hull with some closed cell foam. The sub was first mounted to the foam with fender washers then the foam was then mounted to a piece of black Starboard, again, with fender washers. The sub is completely isolated by foam from the hull. This did a perfect job at stopping the vibrations from transmitting into the hull, muddying the bass, and rattling everything. I wanted a clean, tight but fuller sound that does not even let you know there is a sub on-board. I did not want the sound of a 16 year old in a Civic with twin 18" subs and 1,000,000 watts..
The piece of starboard was mounted to the hull using Weld-Mount studs..
With the drawers removed the sub can be seen. All the adjustments are at the business end so I can adjust it if needed by laying down on the floor and sneaking my hand up in where your feet go...
I am driving the sub with a Kenwood Excelon deck which gives me full control of crossover points and a tremendous ability to fine tune it to our boats acoustics. I am a recovering audiophile so while this system sounds okay to most it still sounds like crap to my ears.
Still, it is 20X better sounding now that we have more range..The remote turn on wire from the stereo energizes the sub but I also installed a switch in this line to kill the sub if we don't want it on.
Over all the sub sounds quite good for the price and size. It fills in most of those missing frequencies that you just can't get with 5" speakers & deck power... The biggest improvement was at the low listening volumes we normally choose to listen at. We now actually have some bottom end that was completely lacking before at low volume...
It is pretty easy to make enough bass on a 36' boat to fill out the sound, and this new compact form factor is pretty decent at doing just that. I really hate to even call it a "subwoofer" because it is really more like a regular woofer from the 70's.... Today I suppose when most folks are listening to glorified walkie-talkie speakers (now called satellites) an 8" woofer can now be called a "sub"....
I suspect there are far better subs out there but this one fit where I needed it to, sounds fairly tight, not muddy or mushy or thumpy and made all the difference in sound quality on-board.. I am still messing around with cross over points & EQ settings for the sub and other speakers, but it sounds 20X better than it did.... If you do add this type of sub I would stronly advise a deck that allows to full subwoofer control at the deck from the crossover points to subwoofer volume..
This is NOT a thumping home theater type of sub, we did not want that, but it does round out the bottom end well and is really quite musical in relation to its size, current consumption and price..
When cranked, way louder than we would ever listen to it, we don't listen very loud at all, the stereo and sub combined average was about 3.2A. At our normal listening volume it is at about 1.1A - 1.3A for both the sub and stereo. I am a big fan of Bluegrass and Jazz so played some today and the acoustic bass sounded fairly decent, something totally lacking previously.
If you want 16 year old, flat rimmed hat, pants around the thighs thumpin' bass, look elsewhere. If you want a sub that will fill in the missing bottom end, do that while not using a ton of energy and also not breaking the bank the Fusion CP-AW1080 is a decent little speaker, er, subwoofer...
