How a Exile system comes to be

[rdlangston13]

now the whole "i hope they get our boxes mixed up" makes a little more sense!

[Brianinpdx]

You know, there is a lesson to be learned from this. I cant tell you how many countless emails I receive about people wanting (or even just thinking about) upgrades to their system. They all want advice. And the questions are always different but along the same theme.

Some things to think about along the audio journey.

- Break your system down into zones. This makes the the individual areas easy to evaluate separately from each other. Often times when you do this, it becomes clear that one area is more dominant than the other. For example what good is a $2K tower setup, if your running your cabins off of deck power.

- My recommendatory advice is usually like this...

Cabins Make sure you get your stock speakers some power. Deck power is not a great thing. sometimes just re-powering what you already have can be a significant upgrade. It also gives you the opportunity to focus the crossovers to HP-highpass and limit the amount of low freq the cabins have to reproduce.

Sub - many boats dont have a factory sub setup and even if they do they are more often inadequate given the upgrades going on in other areas. You dont have to be a bass head to benefit from having a woofer. Remember, any subwoofer is going to give you almost an entire octave of sound that you cant reproduce without one.

Towers - I usually suggest making tower upgrades last, once the cabin setup is complete and a sub setup is in place. If you do the other way around, the tower seetup can become dominant very fast.

In the grand scheme of things, we are after dynamic range. When all the zones work together, this feat is achieved.

Just my 2 cents

-Brian
Exile Audio

[moombadaze]

gotta ask this-what the heck is a "octave of sound"?



Gotta love UPS and tracking numbers

[Brianinpdx]

cant beat this explanation..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octave

The real point here is that it increases the reach, or the ability to reproduce a wider sound range by adding in the subwoofer to a system that has none.

Think about it.... remember the last time you listened to some sound system and it sound like a tin can? thats because its compressed. If one where to open or expand the reach of their speakers ---dedicating subs to lows, and mids to upper frequencies, you ultimately expand the dynamic range. And its a very pleasurable effect on the human ear.

-Brian
Exile Audio

[moombadaze]

Thanks, and thanks for not being to tech with the answer so I could understand

[mmandley]

Mmandley-plan to have your phone ringing off the hook soon

Np man ill be here to help how ever i can. That goes for anyone installing stereos or a lot of other upgrades to the boats.

I have upgraded a ton of stuff other then my stereo in my boat. Ill help how ever i can.

[moombadaze]

What does it mean when you guys say "run the cabin speakers on high pass"?

[mmandley]

What does it mean when you guys say "run the cabin speakers on high pass"?

On the Amps you have switches.

High Pass means only Mids and Tweets frequencies

Low Pass means only Bass Frequencies.

Think of a traffic cop when he says only Low signal may pass here.

You never want your cabin in FUll range < all frequencies > because you will literally beat them to death with bass. Car speakers are ran like this but they are very low wattage and stock systems were designed like that. Any higher end speaker will want a specific frequency.

This all goes back to the why you need a sub woofer in the boat conversations.

This also goes back to why you need a large sub woofer. Like in my boat i got so much power to my cabins i need a large sub to balance all that out and make it sound really musical. You can over sub a system just as easy as you can over tweet a system. My boat is all about balance. I want it to sound as good at 10 on my dial as it does at 30 shaking everyone. No one part of my stereo is over powered and its perfectly balanced sounding. Some people get that dreaded tweeter scream at super high volumes but i don't. While others have the bass from hell at low volumes. Well this all mean you need to balance the frequencies a bit better.

[kaneboats]

I found this page of definitions on the Crutchfield site, link below, including this one. Not too technical while still explaining some of the terms and the concepts:

. . .
Built-in Crossovers
Crossovers consist of both a high-pass and low-pass filter. Often used to keep high-frequencies from reaching a subwoofer, a low-pass filter allows only frequencies below the crossover point to be amplified. A high-pass filter allows only frequencies above the crossover point to be amplified — useful for keeping low bass away from small speakers, so they can play more efficiently. Crossovers are usually listed as variable or selectable. Continuously Variable means the crossover can be freely adjusted to any frequency between the listed end points. Selectable means that you can choose from several preset crossover points.
. . .

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-WngTD4m..._glossary.html

The part I've been hammering on here for a while now is "useful for keeping low bass away from small speakers, so they can play more efficiently." Until you have the subwoofer you don't really have to worry about high pass or low pass. But, once you add it, you need to know this.

I guess my next question for the pros is what do you set your tower speakers on? Do you get enough lows from the subwoofer to keep them on high pass? Or does this really depend on your subwoofer? Or is there a hard and fast rule on this?

[EarmarkMarine]

kaneboats,
Your tower speakers, no matter what you have, are a comparatively big speaker in a small pod. This inordinately raises their resonance and increases there impedance so that the amplifier delivers less power as the frequency lowers. Also, at some point you will have other challenges that I guess you could say are more mechanical in nature. So withdrawaling from the technical for a moment let me use more of an analogy. As you accelerate the volume towards low frequencies there are certain electrical and mechanical factors that are simultaneously putting the brakes on the output. You are wasting valuable power by trying to push a speaker beyond its effective point. As you narrow the amplifier's bandwidth and narrow the tower speaker's responsibility the tower speaker will play louder, play cleaner and project farther. If you have a pair of WetSounds Pro485s then the point of diminishing return might be at 80 Hz. If you have a very small tower speaker in a very small pod then the best point might be 125 Hz. One speaker may have a sealed midbass cone while another may not and this is another determining factor. So each speaker and amplifier relationship is going to be different. You may tune a system according to a fixed prescription but not at a specific frequency. You can tell alot by ear.

David
Earmark Marine