I haven’t made very much progress so far in adding a powered subwoofer to the boat. I’m trying to determine if I really want to spend the money and amperage to add some more punch to my boat sound system. So I’ve been experimenting by bringing my M&K 125 watt, dual 8 inch Subwoofer from home. This unit is a little overkill for the boat, needing to be plugged into 110Volts, weighing 40 LBS, and costing $700 on the street. I set the CD Player’s subwoofer output to on. Set the high and low pass filters to 125 HZ, to divide the sound between the Bose speakers and subwoofer around this point. At first I thought the Line level inputs to the subwoofer would not work because even with the sub gain turned all the way up, it was very subtle. I thought I might have to use the speaker level inputs and use the sub’s high pass filter to route sound to the Bose’s. Then I discovered a subwoofer level control on the CD player. It was set to 1 of 15. That solved the problem. The sound is good. On the boat, I’m interested more in decent power than absolute fidelity, especially in the cockpit. Environmental sounds tend to overwhelm the music in this area. I only put out the external Bose speakers when I’m going to be out for longer periods, like on a weekend cruise. So the interior speakers do fine for day sailing, even when listening from the cockpit. You do have remote control for your CD player don’t you? Anyway, down below the sound is very full, with tactile bass. I listen to a lot of blues music, where the bass is important. In the cockpit, the sound is very balanced, but still has good power. But outside the boat, the bass dissipates quickly. I think of the subwoofer as more of a vibration machine than a speaker. In fact it vibrates some panels, kind of like when the engine’s running. It needs to be loaded by surrounding surfaces to be really effective. The Bose speakers seem to really benefit from having the low base load taken away from them. I’m looking at a higher end Bazooka marine model or a Kenwood that I saw referenced in an earlier thread’ but I don’t know how they would perform. I want good output with low distortion like the M&K, but I’m not sure how effective these twelve-volt models are. I’m not looking for the “young guys in the small Honda thumping away at the stoplight” sound. I think the M&K’s maximum power draw of 1.8 amps (it has a two amp slow blow fuse) translated to 12 volts would be around 15 amps, and that sounds a little excessive for my batteries as a constant draw. Anyway, I agree, keep this forum going!
