Equalizer

[smitty75]

Just wondering what equalizer everyone is running. I really like both the WS420SQ and the Exile ZLD, just not sure I want to drop another $200-300 this season. Already bought towers, cabins, and sub, running out of cash and still looking to get a new prop before the season starts.

All I'm really looking to do is control the tower, cabin, and sub levels. One of my amps came with a level control for the sub channel, but I would rather have 1 device to do all three. Doesn't matter to me if it's a fade style, or actual individual volume controls.

[KG's Supra24]

I think there are several of the fader style options available from the car audio industry.

The Clarion unit is the one I've seen mentioned on boating forums the most. I think PPI and NVX also make some. All should be under $100.

You might do a search for people using the Clarion but I think this is it ....

http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_6655_Clarion-EQS746.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=paid_search&utm_campaign=paid_search_google_pla&scid=scplp3597236&gclid=CL3O0YP8mb0CFVFp7AodY1YAfg

[sandm]

looked long at both of the above and decided on the exile zld. the ws at the time appears to be a much more robust unit and offers some added flexibility in how it fades but also paying for a mic which I see zero value in(my opinion). the zld was half what the ws was. several told me about waterproof circuitboards and the such but the reality is a full season gone and the unit performed flawlessly and did exactly what I needed it to do.

[jmvotto]

I owned them both and like the simplicity of the Exile zld, I was always tweaking the WS unit to get the best sound.

[smitty75]

I was looking at this one as the price is nice, however I saw a few complaints about the sub frequency control and only being able to adjust to 80 dB. I only have mine set at 100 now, so not sure I would see a difference or not. I saw a few other odd brands on amazon, all seem to do the same thing but I'm sure quality isn't the same.


I think there are several of the fader style options available from the car audio industry.

The Clarion unit is the one I've seen mentioned on boating forums the most. I think PPI and NVX also make some. All should be under $100.

You might do a search for people using the Clarion but I think this is it ....

http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_6655_Clarion-EQS746.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=paid_search&utm_campaign=paid_search_google_pla&scid=scplp3597236&gclid=CL3O0YP8mb0CFVFp7AodY1YAfg

[sandm]

from what david from earmark has posted in the past, most are made from the same design and from the same factory. I know that the zld is similar to others but I feel the extra cash was worth the service from Brian if I did have an issue with it, but so far it's performed flawlessly..

[smitty75]

Yeah, the exile group are good people. Bought my entire system from them, just didn't consider the equalizer at the time. I gave them a call today, but looks like they won't have any in for a little while. I may just get something like in the attached photo as it seems similar and I can have it by the end of the week. I'm trying to have my boat all ready to go by the end of the weekend so I can get it out of the garage and back over at the lake. http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/03/18/2u2e4uny.jpg

[beej77r]

So my question is, are these going to be good enough for marine life?

[smitty75]

I doubt these cheaper ones are marine rated, not sure about the exile or wet sounds. My boat stays pretty dry, I've had amps and a radio that were not marine and never had any issues. But that's a good point, I guess all it might take is being caught in a rain storm.

[David Analog]

I doubt these cheaper ones are marine rated, not sure about the exile or wet sounds. My boat stays pretty dry, I've had amps and a radio that were not marine and never had any issues. But that's a good point, I guess all it might take is being caught in a rain storm.

The Wetsounds EQ is conformal coated, the front control pots are sealed behind the face, and the top of the chassis is sealed. Great construction quality. This is your most protected unit for marine. However, if any piece of electronics, marinized or not, is exposed to water directly so that it gets inside, while the unit is 'On' and current is flowing, its bad news. So if you get caught in rain, turn off all your audio electronics and do not turn them back on until you have had an opportunity to fully inspect everything. Oftentimes you can escape permanent damage. Also, Odin with Earmark Marine has a restoration procedure if your electronics do get wet.

[MLA]

The wet Sounds is absolutely a marine built piece of equipment. EQ's and head-units tend to be more out in the open, so going with a marine unit with a conformal coated PCB has its advantages, but it goes far beyond that.

The WS-420SQ has chassis mounted RCA jacks on the back. the others have the RCA's soldered to the PCB and passing through the rear of the chassis.

The WS-420 has dual zone equalization, the others have single. So the 420 allows you to fine tune the in-boat and tower zones independently of each other. On the others, what ever adjustments you make to the front zone, effects the rear zone, or in-boat and tower zones if the fronts been relabeled.

The 420 has 3 independent volume zones. This is different from front/rear fade.

The 420 has 6 discrete outputs as opposed to dividing the front/rear level through the fade.

The 420's level adjustment are under the cover, so no holes in the top of the chassis where water can enter.

The 420 has true sub volume control and no adjustable low-pass filter, which is not needed with modern amps.

[Boonejeepin]

I went with the Clarion for $56 since Exile is sold out of the zld. Works great so far.
http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/03/18/tuny6upe.jpg


Interested to see what Exile has on the horizon. Will most likely upgrade the eq and the cabin speakers.

[E4NASH]

The wet Sounds is absolutely a marine built piece of equipment. EQ's and head-units tend to be more out in the open, so going with a marine unit with a conformal coated PCB has its advantages, but it goes far beyond that.

The WS-420SQ has chassis mounted RCA jacks on the back. the others have the RCA's soldered to the PCB and passing through the rear of the chassis.

The WS-420 has dual zone equalization, the others have single. So the 420 allows you to fine tune the in-boat and tower zones independently of each other. On the others, what ever adjustments you make to the front zone, effects the rear zone, or in-boat and tower zones if the fronts been relabeled.

The 420 has 3 independent volume zones. This is different from front/rear fade.

The 420 has 6 discrete outputs as opposed to dividing the front/rear level through the fade.

The 420's level adjustment are under the cover, so no holes in the top of the chassis where water can enter.

The 420 has true sub volume control and no adjustable low-pass filter, which is not needed with modern amps.


Yep! What he said

[sivs1]

Post a picture of how you have it all tied together, would love to see how you set your system up.

[Beejwest]

I'm liking this Clarion idea. Can you post a write up on here Boone?

[Boonejeepin]

I'm liking this Clarion idea. Can you post a write up on here Boone?

I am not an audiophile but the Clarion has been a nice budget solution for me. I still hope to run the Exile ZLD in the future but the Clarion is working for the time being.

The Clarion will not allow true and full adjustment of the tower and cabin speakers as it will fade front/rear (tower/cabin). I have worked around this by leaving the front/rear fade at 12 o'clock giving full power to cabin and tower. I then run a PAC LC1 controller immediately attached to the EQ and before the tower amp so I can turn down the tower when I want to.

So I can adjust the whole system volume, sub volume, and tower volume (I can only reduce tower volume when compared to system volume).

When I buy the ZLD I will be able to just remove the clarion unit and PAC LC1 and plug the ZLD in. No rewiring requires.

[trayson]

The wet Sounds is absolutely a marine built piece of equipment. EQ's and head-units tend to be more out in the open, so going with a marine unit with a conformal coated PCB has its advantages, but it goes far beyond that.

The WS-420SQ has chassis mounted RCA jacks on the back. the others have the RCA's soldered to the PCB and passing through the rear of the chassis.

The WS-420 has dual zone equalization, the others have single. So the 420 allows you to fine tune the in-boat and tower zones independently of each other. On the others, what ever adjustments you make to the front zone, effects the rear zone, or in-boat and tower zones if the fronts been relabeled.

The 420 has 3 independent volume zones. This is different from front/rear fade.

The 420 has 6 discrete outputs as opposed to dividing the front/rear level through the fade.

The 420's level adjustment are under the cover, so no holes in the top of the chassis where water can enter.

The 420 has true sub volume control and no adjustable low-pass filter, which is not needed with modern amps.

Exactly. The ws unit really offers more control than the exile. I was on a boat with the new exile and saw the cabin speakers being over driven by the bass of a particular song. I told the driver to turn down the bass on the cabin speakers. He was able to turn down the bass, but on the system as a whole. Lame. Obviously the sub and the xl9 towers could take more than a 6.5" speaker. But no independent eq by zone on the exile. The knob layout on the ws is better in my opinion. The pop out buttons on the exile were too close together since you could only turn them with the side of the buttons, where as my ws420 sq can adjust the buttons more from the top of the button.

There are wasteful buttons on the exile... Seriously, who needs to have a knob to change the phase of the sub on the eq???? Likewise, do I need to change the crossover frequency of my sub on the fly? Um, no.

The ws can do both red or blue illumination. I kinda like the built in P. A. System. I have used it to coach surfers.

Also, the ws has an aux output so I can feed my music to another boat... Like if we were rafted up and I wanted my music playing off both boats systems. (or many if you Daisy chained the ws420 's.)

The exile is a cool unit, but for the same $300 retail price, why wouldn't you want the one with eq controls for BOTH the cabin and tower zones, plus the other features it has?

Sorry, but the 420sq is the clear winner to me.

[Beejwest]

I have the opposite problem I guess. My wife gets blown out by the cabin speakers, and I want the tower louder when I surf. Would the Clarion work to fade out some cabin volume and allow higher tower volume without the LC1?

[Boonejeepin]

I have the opposite problem I guess. My wife gets blown out by the cabin speakers, and I want the tower louder when I surf. Would the Clarion work to fade out some cabin volume and allow higher tower volume without the LC1?

You could certainly fade to more tower and less cabin with the front/rear fade built into the Clarion EQ.

Connect tower to front or rear EQ output and the cabins to the outputs not used by the tower.

[MLA]

I have the opposite problem I guess. My wife gets blown out by the cabin speakers, and I want the tower louder when I surf. Would the Clarion work to fade out some cabin volume and allow higher tower volume without the LC1?

or use a simple line level control in line on the RCA going to the cabin amp. Tower amp runs at head-unit volume, while the Line line level brings down the in-boat amp volume.

A better solution would be a zone volume controller like the Kicker ZXM-RLC. its a 9V per zone line driver and does not require long RCA runs like an EQ, when the amps are on the port side. The control knobs can be panel or surface mounted.

[David Analog]

As posted above, "Seriously, who needs to have a knob to change the phase of the sub on the eq???? Likewise, do I need to change the crossover frequency of my sub on the fly? Um, no."

I actually have a real problem with a redundant sub crossover on the EQ when every contemporary amplifier already has a much better crossover built-in. Really a dumb feature IMO. There is no corresponding highpass crossover on the EQ and you can't totally defeat the EQ crossover. So even if I set it at the highest frequency in a bypass attempt in order to use the amplifier crossover I have to deal with a cascaded phase rotation (one phase alteration right atop the other). I don't want to change the lowpass 'crossover' or the 'phase' on the fly. I want to set all this up precisely at the point of system tuning. I want a very narrow overlap between the highpass and lowpass filters so I can preserve the phase integrity as much as possible. Over-lapping or under-lapping just creates nasty ripples in the response. On an amplifier you can read the crossover frequency for both filters and you know that both filter slopes & types are the same. An EQ crossover is like a box of chocolates. Just a complete unknown. When you feel as though you want to adjust the controls with every new song that is an indication that it wasn't set up right from the beginning. Heck, you already have a bass level control for moderate adjustments on the fly.

On another note, I can't imagine choosing a single EQ versus a dual zone EQ like the Wetsounds even if the Wetsounds was $100 more. The ability to adjust tower speaker tonal characteristics independently from the in-boat speakers is HUGE!

[Beejwest]

The Clarion EQ is cheaper thann the Kicker ZXM-RLC, what am I missing?

[David Analog]

The Clarion EQ is cheaper thann the Kicker ZXM-RLC, what am I missing?

Just a few bucks if you go with the Kicker.

[Boonejeepin]

Just a few bucks if you go with the Kicker.

Would the kicker provide a place to plug in an input jack from a phone or ability to turn up the gain for the input? I think that is called a line driver, not sure.

[MLA]

The Clarion EQ is cheaper thann the Kicker ZXM-RLC, what am I missing?

The Kicker is a marine unit and the clarion is a car EQ

Its a 9V per chnl line driver and the clarion likely splits its voltage between the front and rear chnls

its true zone volume control, not fade

can be panel or surface mounted

short RCA runs as the "brain" is mounted by the amps and data cables are used to connect the control knobs

[MLA]

Would the kicker provide a place to plug in an input jack from a phone or ability to turn up the gain for the input? I think that is called a line driver, not sure.

If you have a head-unit, just connect to th head-units AUX. You can also go head-unit delete, and use a 3.5mm x RCA into the ZXM-RLC.

[Beejwest]

OK, with the Kicker, help me out with my system here. I have tower and sub on an alpine PDX, and the cab on a Kenwood amp. If I use the kicker, I'd be adjusting the sub/tower at the same time, right?

[Beejwest]

Oh, and one more question on the Kicker. The wiring diagram shows the amp going into the RLC, but nothing coming back out...how do you hook this thing up, and how does it work?

Do the RCA lines from the HU still go to the amp, but need to be split?

[MLA]

OK, with the Kicker, help me out with my system here. I have tower and sub on an alpine PDX, and the cab on a Kenwood amp. If I use the kicker, I'd be adjusting the sub/tower at the same time, right?

Not necessarily. What model PDX is it and what model Kenwood? if you are not sure, do you by chance know whether they are 2, 4 or a 5 chnl amp?

[MLA]

Oh, and one more question on the Kicker. The wiring diagram shows the amp going into the RLC, but nothing coming back out...how do you hook this thing up, and how does it work?

Do the RCA lines from the HU still go to the amp, but need to be split?

The head-unit feed into the ZXM with a single stereo RCA. The ZXM has 2 zones. Each zone will connect to an amp, or 2 depending on the setup. So, like an EQ, the ZXM is between the head-unit and amps along the signal.

[Beejwest]

Cabs are on a kenwood excelon KAC-X542 6 channel. the four tower speakers and sub are on the alpine pdx 5, 5 channel.

[Beejwest]

My only problem I guess is that on the RCA inputs on the PDX-5, there are three total. Two for normal, and one for sub. Right now, I have three amp outputs off of my HU, two running to the PDX. The four main channels on the PDX are bridged and power four tower speakers. Do I need both RCA inputs into the PDX?

[Beejwest]

I'm pretty sure I've answered all my own questions lol. I just need to split the outputs from the RLC to the PDX. The sub will then ride on the volume of the head unit, as it has it's own RCA cable.

[MLA]

Cabs are on a kenwood excelon KAC-X542 6 channel. the four tower speakers and sub are on the alpine pdx 5, 5 channel.

In a quick check, that kenwood is coming up as a 4 chnl. If so, I would consider using it in 2 chnl mode for the towers, then relocate the in-boats to the PDX 5 chnl.

In that configuration, the towers would be one zone and the in-boats/sub would be zone 2. You could take it a step further and add in a simple line level controller and give the sub its own zone.

[Beejwest]

The PDX 5 is a 5 channel, hence the "5". However, one of those is the sub channel, so there are four 75w channels and the sub channel. I'm going to add a line level controller on the sub channel.

[Beejwest]

Totally mis-read your post! My bad. Let me get home from work and check it all out again.

[Beejwest]

You're absolutely right MLA. That would be the better way to go on the setup. I just remembered though that I have a bad channel on the Kenwood. Figured that out when I installed my ACR as I re-routed wires figured out how the previous owner had it wired. May have to wait to rig it like that until I buy a new amp.

[gscharf]

I have an extra clarion eq that i could sell if that is the route you want to go. I was thinking 30 with shipping. The only thing it does not have the mount brackets.


Sent from my VS890 4G using Tapatalk

[MLA]

You're absolutely right MLA. That would be the better way to go on the setup. I just remembered though that I have a bad channel on the Kenwood. Figured that out when I installed my ACR as I re-routed wires figured out how the previous owner had it wired. May have to wait to rig it like that until I buy a new amp.

You can leave the amp/speaker pairing as is due to the bad chnl, and still have a tower zone and in-boat/sub zone. Just split the RCAs from the ZXM to the in-boat amp and sub chnl on the PDX

[Beejwest]

Hooked it all up last night. Just left the sub on the sub outs from the HU. The PDX never drives the sub hard enought to worry about needing to adjust it. I just turned it down a bit on the HU and then with the two zones from the Kicker it sounds really good. Having the ability to isolate the towers is awesome! Thanks for your help on this!

[Beejwest]

Did run into one problem. One of the two supplied wires for the volume knobs is not long enough. I don't know why, but one is 6' and the other is 14'. Obviously to reach the helm they both need to be around 14'. It's weird wire too, a 6 pin type data cable. 6 pin phone cord doesn't work, and no one that I can find sells this stuff. I know literally nothing about network cable. I think it's some sort of Cat 5 or 6 cable, but with a telephone sized jack. Not a standard cat 5/e/6 sized jack. Friggin nightmare. I can't even find it online. Don't really want to get into buying a crimping tool and making my own either if I can avoid it. Of course Kicker is closed today too, so they can't help.

[Beejwest]

Toyed with the idea of moving the RLC to the helm and out of the observers storage area. That creates its own problems. I can easily tap power and ground from under the helm but then I'd have to run a remote wire back to the HU, and the input RCA lines across, then the output lines back. That's a lot of RCA line running, and a silly way to do things. I'm semi-upset that this thing came with one long line and one short. Seems counterintuitive to me. Least it's raining here and I'm not on the lake with a $89 component that I can't use...

[David Analog]

Toyed with the idea of moving the RLC to the helm and out of the observers storage area. That creates its own problems. I can easily tap power and ground from under the helm but then I'd have to run a remote wire back to the HU, and the input RCA lines across, then the output lines back. That's a lot of RCA line running, and a silly way to do things. I'm semi-upset that this thing came with one long line and one short. Seems counterintuitive to me. Least it's raining here and I'm not on the lake with a $89 component that I can't use...

I noticed that within the Earmark Marine on-line store, they have the Kicker line driver and list under the "Things to know before you order", that the unit comes equipped with a 2 and 5-meter cable. They offer a second 5-meter cable as a drop down option.
http://store.earmarkcaraudio.com/Xcart/product.php?productid=17041&cat=269&page=1

[Beejwest]

Thats good. Hopefully Monday I can give them a shout and see if I can buy just the cable. I bought off of amazon, and researched on Kicker's website and a few others, but none of them mentioned the long and short cable.

[David Analog]

Thats good. Hopefully Monday I can give them a shout and see if I can buy just the cable. I bought off of amazon, and researched on Kicker's website and a few others, but none of them mentioned the long and short cable.

Of course, that's why it's better to go with a specialist (like Earmark Marine or MLA) in the first place. Think of all the other areas of information you are missing out on that could make your system better.

[Beejwest]

For anyone that's curious, I spoke with MLA, and Phil from Kicker. They both told me a standard 6 pin phone line would work if you reversed the connections on one end. Apparently the factory reversed the order in some models of the RLC they produced without informing Kicker. Kind of a PITA, but it's fixed now. I just cut the 6 pin phone cable I bought, and crimped on a new RJ11 6C jack only 180° reverse of the other side. That fixed it. Thanks for the help, again!

[MLA]

Glad to hear you got it all worked out.