Everyone wants their stereo to sound great, under a myriad of conditions and of course to make the most of their gear and operate it at maximum performance. Sounds pretty good eh? Well, here’s the secret… that statement means something different to just about everyone on the water. So what really does this elusive term, “tune” mean and how can you apply it to your setup.

To answer this question I look at it like a Pyramid. The tuning is that small block of the puzzle that’s on the top--the smallest piece. It’s built on a wider foundation of other ingredients that all come together to form the pyramid. Think that sounds crazy? Well, lets take a look piece by piece and work our way up.

On the ground level, I look at system design, goals, and budget. Breaking it down sometimes into upgrade chunks. And once this is in place, it all starts with the backbone – power, ground and fusing. Ya, all the un flattering expensive, hidden away stuff that nobody see’s. We need proper distribution, Batteries with reserve power to meet the demands of the system performance. We might need to upgrade the factory speaker cable before doing tower upgrades. We might need to start with putting in place a Perko switch to isolate the stereo current consumption.

Working our way up to the mid level of our stereo foundation / pyramid, we need to take a hard look at our current gear… what we got, what we want, and what we can afford. We need to select the gear or upgrades on how they will fit into the big picture. I cant tell you how many calls I get from guys asking how they can keep up with the Johnson’s with a 5 channel amplifier they found on Ebay for 75.00 bucks. Fact is… It’s just not going to do a super job because its trying to do to much. Or the calls from people wanting to drop 2K+ on a new tower setup but they have no subwoofer. The mid level of our pyramid is critical if we want to get to the top. Selecting amplifiers that are matched well to the speaker load, and the shear number of speakers connected to an amplifier are very important things to pay attention to because they have real world impacts to the fidelity, dynamic range, and later down the path… tuning of a boat stereo. There are numerous configurations and to say one is more prudent than another would be false. However, most of the time, the path usually leads to a 3 amplifier setup which allows for dedicated audio amplification for each zone – cabin / tower / sub. I advocate amplifying the cabin speakers first, then adding a subwoofer setup, and last a tower setup.

Another fundamental building block is the source unit. Utilizing one that offers 4-5V of output will instantly yield better results down the signal path of the stereo. In simple terms, having big time fancy 3 amp setup is pointless without a good source feeding them.

I’ve probably forgot a few of the building blocks, but 6 interruptions from little kids tonight…. It’s a wonder this post hasn’t self deleted. So feel free people to chime in.

Putting it all together… So you want to tune your boat, you say? Ok, fair enough, what I do is go down the list… looking at all the foundation, to see whats missing. In short order I can tell where the deficiencies will be without ever turning on the stereo. For example….

Example: This setup has a 25.00 headunit….
Thought: Probably going to have compressed or clipped audio into the amplifiers. Basically putting a governer on the overall performance.
Solution: punt that thing and feed your amps with something quality. Atleast get a line driver

Example: This setup has a 2500 tower setup and no sub anywhere on the boat.
Thought: Probably going to be missing 2 octaves of musical information and crossover points are running to low and loudness gimmicks are engaged on the deck.

Example: This setup has a 15” woofer with 2K of power on it but the deck is driving the cabin speakers without an amplifier inline. Think I’m kidding? I’ve seen it on 80K tow boats before.
Thought: who’s the Jackwagon that came up with this idea! It’s going to sound totally out of whack and no tone adjustment on this planet will help it.
Solution: power the cabin setup so it can get closer to the sub performance.

I could probably write about 20 more of these examples and they don’t always spell buy stuff. Sometimes it means making sure we have a volume control for the tower setup. Sometimes it means looking at the digital media and making sure its higher bit rate. There is no short answer on how to tune a boat. It’s going to be different for each individual setup based on the gear they are running and the locations its installed. Since we don’t live in the perfect world, for 3 amp systems and such, it ultimately comes down to working with what you have and making informed adjustments to optimize and blend the gear you have.

I caution you all… as Mandley will testify, it becomes a grand game of, “If I change this… will it effect that? And how much…”

Call me Jaded, but adding Eq’s into a boat setup, often has more draw backs than benefits. If the operators would leave them alone after the initial setup, I’d be all for it. But 99% of the time when I visit fiends, customers and the general boating public on the water, the EQ’s all have smiley faces on them and I just have to shake my head. My view of tuning a boat is to re-setup the gains, freq sweep the subs, adjust subsonic filtering, eliminate bassboost, appropriately integrate crossover slopes to flatten out the over all system tonally. From there one can shape appropriately if an EQ is involved or fatten up the bottom end somewhat and most importantly, setup the overall max volume of the stereo so it wont damage the individual components.

My advice is this: For those of you that don’t want to roll up their sleeves and work on their own stereo, choose to work with an installer that has spent lots of time on many different boat stereo installations. Experience is the key! For those of you that are DIY types, you are directly supporting a company when you buy their brand of gear. With this in mind, you should ask them for specific guidance on how best to set it up and tune your overall system for peek performance. Some companies specialize in this and others don’t have a clue from a technical point of view (no, I wont name names).

In representing a manufacturers perspective, I see a lot of people bend over backwards to save a buck or two on gear only to have zero after purchase support. It’s that support that will help you tailor that final building block of your stereo pyramid – Tuning for Max performance!

Just my 2 cents.

-Brian
Exile Audio