If your family and friends enjoy wakeboarding or waterskiing, you may have considered adding a set of wakeboard tower speakers to your boat. These marine audio speaker systems are designed to project sound to the person at the end of the tow rope rather than fill the boat with sound. Their design is often unique, and the speakers used are different from those mounted in the hull or a storage compartment. Let’s take a look at some design considerations for wakeboard tower speakers.

Wakeboard Tower Speaker Purchasing Considerations

The first thing you’ll need to decide when shopping for wakeboard tower speakers is their size. The size of the speaker has several benefits and a few drawbacks. The first consideration is how high your wakeboard tower bar is above the floor of your boat. If the bar is only 6 feet high, adding a 10-inch tower enclosure will result in you and your boatmates hitting your heads on them when you’re moving around. Tower speakers from various reputable companies are available in 6.5-, 7.7-, 8-, 10- and 12-inch diameters. Before you head off to a store to audition the speakers, check to see how much clearance you have.

The next consideration for speaker size is weight. It should go without saying that adding weight to your tower bar can, if the weight is significant enough, affect the stability or handling of your boat. Now, a pair of 8-inch wakeboard tower speakers isn’t likely to be noticeable. However, four 10- or 12-inch enclosures could easily weigh 60 pounds or more. If you have a 24-foot wakeboard boat that can take on a few thousand pounds of ballast, this is less of an issue than on a 20-foot boat with more limited weight-gaining abilities.

The benefit of larger-diameter speakers is their efficiency. A well-engineered 6.5-inch tower speaker might produce 88 dB SPL of output (at 1 meter) when driven with 1 watt of power. Moving up to a 10-inch speaker, that number can jump to a crazy 97 dB SPL. The smaller enclosures would need to be fed with 2.8 watts of power to produce the same output. At higher volume levels, the difference is more significant. To replicate the output of the big speakers getting 20 watts, the smaller, less-efficient solution would need to handle 159 watts of power. If you’re limited in how much power the electrical system on your boat can supply, then the efficiency of a larger speaker is quite worthwhile.

A second benefit of larger speakers is that they can often handle significantly more power than their smaller brethren. This added power handling typically translates into an increased maximum output level. You might consider a pair of 10-inch cans instead of four 8-inch speakers. The term “cans” is industry slang for a wakeboard tower speaker enclosure.

High-Efficiency or Full-Range?

There are two schools of thought when designing wakeboard tower speakers. First, some companies use somewhat of a conventional marine audio speaker in their enclosures but optimize them with less compliance (softer spider and surround) to play lower better when installed in a small enclosure. These enclosures are more a full-range solution and often produce reasonable midbass output.

The second type of power speaker uses a midrange driver that’s more like what you’d find in a concert or public address speaker system. These drivers have very light cones with shorter, lighter voice coil windings. These designs are quite efficient, but they don’t produce much midbass because the drivers have minimal excursion capability. As a result, if you try to crank up the bass on this type of speaker, it will distort and sound terrible. It could also be damaged easily.

Tower Mounting Brackets

When shopping for a tower speaker, you need to take a close look at the mounting system. A larger tower speaker could weigh 20 to 25 pounds. Consider the abuse it will take as your boat pounds over waves to fling the kids off a tube or other inflatable. That poor speaker enclosure could be subjected to several times its resting mass because of these g-forces.

The mounting hardware must be designed to perfectly fit the tower bar on your boat. You need to know whether your tower bar is round or oval, and you should have an exact measurement of its diameter or circumference. Most high-quality tower speakers have machined or cast aluminum brackets with rubber inserts. Your specific application may require that the speakers be angled relative to the mounting bracket. Consider the mounting options and inspect the mounting brackets at the store before purchasing to ensure that they’re robust and well-engineered. The last thing you want is for the speakers to be pointed at the sky or down at the water because they can be adjusted the way you want.

Marine Tower Speaker Lighting

If you’ve been paying attention to the marine speaker market over the last few years, you know cool lighting is all the rage. Most reputable companies have RGB LED lighting built into the speakers, and many have lighting upgrades for their tower speaker enclosures. If you want your speakers to look funky or cool, ask about the lighting controller options available for them. Most lighting controllers come with a radio-frequency remote control or Bluetooth connection to a smartphone app. A few will let your installer connect the output of your radio to the controller so the lighting can change with the beat of the music.

If you plan to upgrade all the speakers on your boat to units with lighting, be sure the controller has enough power output capability to drive them. Also, look for integrated lighting solutions that are 100% waterproof with an IPX6 or higher rating.

Wiring Considerations

A clean and tidy wakeboard tower speaker installation will feature well-concealed wiring. Ideally, you don’t want speaker wires zip-tied to the outside of the wakeboard tower tubing. Talk with your installer about how they’ll run wiring and whether they’ll add weather-tight quick disconnects if you need to remove the tower for winter storage. Many tower speakers will include a Deutsch or Amphenol connector integrated into the fiberglass or plastic housing for speaker and lighting connections.

Additional considerations for tower speaker wiring are the wire size, construction and quality. For example, if you have a pair of 10-inch enclosures that will receive up to 250 watts of power from an amplifier, you could be wasting energy if the installer uses an 18-gauge wire. Therefore, we’d suggest that at least 14 AWG wire be used for high-power marine tower speaker installations.

Second, make sure the wire is high quality. Because it will be used in a high-humidity application, you’ll want to avoid copper-clad aluminum wiring. Avoiding aluminum wiring is even more critical if you use your boat in salt water. The ideal choice is a tinned copper wire. The tinning helps to prevent corrosion.

Depending on the design of your wakeboard tower, you may want to look for a speaker solution with wiring that is completely concealed. Many boat-brand-specific towers route the wiring up through the center of the mounting bracket. Check into this before you go shopping.

Weather-Resistant Designs

At the very least, your tower speakers will be exposed to the harsh sun for the entire summer. If you live in the South, they could be outdoors all year. Choosing products constructed with weather-resistant materials is crucial to the performance and longevity of your tower speaker system. You’ll want to make sure that the enclosures, wiring and speaker components (woofers cones, tweeter diaphragms and surrounds) are all designed to handle prolonged UV exposure. Confirmation that the products have passed a testing standard like ASTM D4329 is a minimum.

If you’re using your boat in salt water, then corrosion mitigation is also a concern. The ASTM B117 is a salt-fog exposure test that will tell you if components will corrode or discolor when exposed to salt water.

You’ll also want to ensure that the speaker system is water-resistant. An ingress protection rating of at least IPX6 is a good starting point.

Auditioning Wakeboard Tower Speakers

If you’ve been a longtime reader of BestCarAudio.com, you should be able to predict this last speaker-purchasing suggestion. You will want to audition the speakers you have in mind for your boat. Since this type of speaker will often be played at high volume levels, that’s how you want to audition them. We suggest starting by standing as far away from the speakers as possible and ask the product specialist to play your favorite music at a high volume. While you’re looking for output capability, what you want to capture from this experience is how clear the sound is. The speakers will sound garbled and unclear if they are overdriven because of too much bass information. The demonstration might need to include some setup for high-efficiency speaker designs.

Ultimately, you want to know what you’re buying to understand how they will sound when installed on your boat. If there is any harshness or muddiness in what you hear, you’ll want to keep shopping.

Upgrade Your Boat with New Wakeboard Tower Speakers

If you plan on spending a day on the water, having a great audio system can make things even more enjoyable. Your friends and family members at the end of the tow rope will love enjoying the music through a set of wakeboard tower speakers. Drop by a local specialty mobile enhancement retailer today to find out about the speakers they have available for your application.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

One of the most gratifying features of modern marine radios is the ability to upgrade them with various remote control options. Many conventional car radios are compatible with steering wheel audio button interfaces or an infrared remote. Marine radios take this to an entirely different level with options for remotes that include color displays and even integration with chart plotters and multifunction displays. Let’s look at some specific options for marine radio remotes.

Marine Remote Requirements

If you’re buying a new radio or want to add a remote to an existing system, the first thing you’ll want to check is that the remote is designed specifically for marine applications. They should be completely water-resistant, with at least an IPX5 water-intrusion rating.

The remotes should be constructed with UV-resistant materials so the plastics don’t fade, chalk, crack or discolor after prolonged exposure to the elements. In addition, testing standards such as ASTM D4329, ASTM G154 and ASTM G155 confirm that the manufacturer has tested their products under extreme UV conditions to ensure that they will function reliably and continue to look great.

Finally, if you use your boat on the ocean, a saltwater lake or a river, the remote should resist damage from these conditions. Again, look for ASTM D5894, ASTM B117, ASTM G85, ISO 9227 or JIS Z 2371 testing to ensure that nothing will corrode prematurely.

One of the most overlooked requirements for marine electronics is that the devices meet the American Boat and Yacht Council (ABYC) C-1500 or SAE-J1171 Ignition Protection standard for marine products. In short, this testing confirms that, under regular operation, the device in question will not ignite an air/fuel mixture and cause an explosion. This testing is more specifically intended for fuses, fuse blocks, circuit breakers, motors and switches used in engine compartments in the presence of fuel storage. But radios, remotes, lighting controllers and amplifiers should also be ignition-protected devices. The last thing you want is for your boat to explode when you try to turn on your radio.

Basic Marine Radio Wired Remotes

Since their inception almost a quarter-century ago, most marine radios have included options for often elaborate wired remote controls. For example, if you had a boat with the radio mounted near the helm or at a navigation station, your installer could add a secondary control on the swim platform, in the cabin or up on a flybridge. In addition, most marine radios use wired connections to these remotes for consistency and reliability. While this can increase the time required to add these remotes to an existing audio system, it helps ensure reliability and seamless integration.

The most basic wired remotes have dedicated buttons for volume adjustment, track and preset selection, source selection and the ability to turn the radio on and off.

Marine Remotes with Displays

As an upgrade, many marine radio remotes include an LCD screen that displays station, track or volume information. Some solutions go as far as including color displays that mimic the information on the radio with album art display from digital media files. In addition, these remotes are often compatible with hide-away radio options with no built-in controls or displays.

NMEA 2000 CAN BUS Remote Options

Another important remote option for marine radios is the ability to connect to a multifunction display or chartplotter in the helm or a nav station. Companies like Garmin, Simrad and Raymarine include options on these displays to control a hide-away radio system or interface with a more conventional marine radio. Access to source selection, volume control, track and station selection are available. Before installing a solution, it’s crucial to check that both the radio interface and the multifunction display (MFD) are compatible. Not all radio brands are compatible with all MFD manufacturers, and some have proprietary protocols outside the NMEA 2000 data structure.

Remote Upgrade Considerations

Here are a few things you’ll need to keep in mind as you and the product specialist you’re working with design the entertainment system for your boat. First, for most brands, there’s a limit to the number of remotes that can be connected to a radio. Typically, they can’t support more than three, but it’s worth checking the documentation of the model of radio you have in mind.

If you use more than one remote with a radio, you’ll likely need a Y-cable for each additional remote. In most cases, remote cables are designed specifically for each radio manufacturer, so your installer isn’t likely going to be able to mix and match parts. The same goes for remotes – you can’t use a Rockford Fosgate remote with a Hertz Marine source unit.

Additionally, remotes often have maximum cable length limits, with most being limited to 100 feet. If you’re planning multiple remotes with long cables, suggest that your installer mock up the system on a test bench before they start cutting holes and running cables.

Upgrade Your Marine Audio System with a Remote Control

Being able to control the stereo system in your boat from the swim platform, the helm or the cabin will ensure that you can always listen to your favorite music while on the water. Drop by a local specialty mobile enhancement retailer today to inquire about the remote control options available for your boat.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

 

If you’re shopping for audio upgrades for your boat, motorcycle or side-by-side, you’ll often hear the term “marine-grade” thrown around. While the definition depends on the product category and the manufacturer, in most cases that product was designed with enhanced features that will allow it to last longer when used outdoors. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the standard marine-specific features that let the speakers, amplifiers, source unit and wiring get wet or dirty and continue to function.

Speakers Designed for Outdoor Applications

If you have your local specialty mobile enhancement retailer upgrade the entertainment system in your boat, you’ll want to choose speakers designed specifically for outdoor use. Such companies as JL Audio, Hertz, Clarion, Wet Sounds, Kicker, Rockford Fosgate and many more offer speakers sized from 5.25 through to 8.8 inches in diameter and subwoofers from 8 to 12 inches that use materials that have been chosen to resist the destructive effects of ultraviolet energy from the sun. Likewise, these speakers are typically built around a plastic basket rather than a metal one. They may also incorporate water drainage channels into the grille.

Plastic and rubber designed for outdoor use don’t dry out as quickly as conventional ABS materials. The result is speakers that won’t fade, chalk, crack or turn yellow after only a few months.

When shopping for marine speakers and subwoofers, you’ll want to look for two common test standards. The first is the ASTM-D4329 UV exposure test. Products that have passed this test have been exposed to extremely high ultraviolet radiation levels in a test chamber. To pass the test, the materials can’t suffer from any significant degradation levels, even after 200 hours of exposure.

On a typical sunny day, the sun provides roughly 0.1 to 0.35 watts per square meter. The ASTM-D4329 test can expose products to as much as 6.5 times as much UV energy to accelerate the test process. If materials are going to fail, the intense exposure will make it happen quickly.

The second standard you’ll see with respect to speakers and subwoofers is ASTM-B177. This standard is a salt exposure test that ensures that the components used to construct the speaker won’t corrode. Test subjects are placed in a machine that exposes them to a spray or fog of typically 5% sodium chloride (NaCl). This is equivalent to almost twice as much salt as would be found in ocean water. To pass the test, the subjects need to complete it without any signs of corrosion.

Marine-Grade Source Units

Thanks to companies such as Clarion, radios explicitly designed for marine applications are now commonplace. These source options fall into two categories: marine radios and water-resistant marine radios. The marine radios are, for the most part, a car audio unit that has been modified with an upgraded display that’s easier to see in bright sunlight and a corrosion-resistant coating on the main circuit board. Some of these products also add a connection for wired remote controls, and they may include weatherband radio channels as well. More and more marine solutions offer NMEA-2000 interfacing so that they can communicate with multifunction displays from Lowrance, Garmin, Raymarine or Simrad.

The second class of marine source units is those that are designed to be weather-resistant. These products may be based on the same car audio-based circuit board but have a completely new front panel that’s designed to get wet and handle long-term UV exposure. The face of this class of radio should pass the same UV and salt testing as speakers. The front panels, when installed properly, should also have a water ingress IP rating. We’ll explain IP ratings shortly.

In most cases, the main chassis of these radios are not water-resistant. If the face of the radio isn’t sealed perfectly against the mounting surface in the boat, or if water leaks in from another source, the radio can still be damaged. If you are looking for a radio that can stay outdoors in the rain or get splashed by waves when boating, this is the type you want.

What Are IP Water and Dust Ingress Ratings?

IP codes, formally known as Ingress Protection Codes or International Protection Ratings, describe a product’s ability to resist the ingress of solid particles (dust) and liquids (water) under regular use. The letters I and P are typically followed by two numbers that describe the resistance levels.

Using the information above, we can see that a product with a rating of IP68 can handle being used underwater for short periods. An iPhone 11 has an IP68 rating. If you’re shopping for a radio for your boat, motorcycle or side-by-side, the front panel will need a suitable IP rating. If you plan on submerging your side-by-side, that’s a whole different ball-game.

It’s also worth noting that a product that passes the IPX7 and IPX8 test may fail the IPX6 test. The specifications may be offered in parallel as IPX6/IPX8 – these are known as dual ratings.

Amplifiers, Fuses and Wiring

Several amplifiers on the market claim to be water-resistant. The JL Audio MX-Series marine amplifiers carry an IPX7 rating, and the Wet Sounds Stealth Micro amp claims a “completely sealed die-cast aluminum chassis for maximum protection against water and dirt intrusion.”

When you’re shopping, be wary of the difference between water-resistant and waterproof. Water-resistant products may only have an IPX rating of 3 where waterproof is likely level 7 or higher. You’ll want to look for amplifiers that have all the wiring entering and exiting the heat sink sealed in a plastic or rubber grommet. A removable panel should protect any controls on the amplifiers with foam or, preferably, a rubber gasket. Take heed: Just because an amp may be classified as waterproof, it doesn’t mean the wiring you’ve used with it will function reliably while submerged.

Speaking of wiring, and we definitely should – marine applications can be particularly challenging on speaker wire, power wire and interconnect cables, especially in saltwater conditions. Many wire manufacturers offer tinned copper conductors so that salt won’t cause the copper to corrode quickly.

A bigger concern are fuse holders and circuit breakers used in marine applications. The American Boat and Yacht Council sets the standards for safety in the North American marine industry. They have several requirements for lighting, battery switches, storage batteries, electrical propulsion systems and AC/DC electrical systems on boats. Of particular interest to our discussion is the ABYC E-11.4.15 standard that requires electrical devices that may be operated in an area where fuel or other combustible vapors are present to have an Ignition Protection rating. The test standard for Ignition Protection is SAE J1171. Devices that have passed this test will not ignite combustible gases.

In most cases, these devices are operated in a chamber filled with a highly explosive gas mixture. To pass, the gas must not ignite or explode. It’s our understanding that a spark is created in the test chamber after the standard testing is complete to confirm that the gas mixture was suitably combustible. The device under test may or may not survive this confirmation step.

If you have wiring, batteries or electronics added to an engine compartment or in the same space as fuel storage, all devices must have J1171 Ignition Protection certification.

Choose Your Outdoor Audio Upgrades Wisely

If you’re planning to have an audio system installed in a motorcycle, boat, golf cart or side-by-side, spend some time researching the suitability of the products suggested by your local specialty mobile enhancement retailer. Water intrusion protection, UV resistance and much more combine to ensure that your investment in a high-quality entertainment solution will last for many years.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.