n00b to marine audio. need a system for under $1k

[mustangmelish]

Hey guys, I need some help with a system for my boat. its an 04 Sea Ray 21'.

I need tower speakers, amp(s), and speakers throughout the boat for under $1000. I'm sure ya'll get these posts all the time, but I couldnt find one that answered all of my questions.

For the tower speakers i was looking at the kicker KMT6's. From what I read, these are a great bang-for-your-buck speaker. I was going to get a pair of those for the tower, but I need help picking an amp to run those. I know that one of them runs at 150RMS, 300 peak, but I don't know how to match that up to an amp. What Ohms do they run at? How much power will i need per channel on an amp? Any recommendations?

Also, what speaker, amp combos do yall suggest for the speakers throughout the boat? Ive done a little car audio (but that was with subs, so its easy to match up a class D amp to subs). How many watts per channel am I going to need to correctly match up to a speaker?

Thanks for the help!

[turbohoje]

a side question: what do marine speakers get you?
can regular speakers go in a tower? will they take the weather/abuse?

does a cheap tower can chew speakers for this reason?

[Brit Rider]

$1000 bucks? Easy!

Kicker KMT6 Tower speakers - $250
Kicker ZX650.4 Amplifier (120w RMS x 4) - $500
Kicker KM620 marine 6.5" speakers x 4 (wire 2 speakers to each channel, giving you 60watts RMS per unit) - $140.00
Amp wiring kit - ebay - about 30 bucks..
Speaker wire - ebay - about 20 bucks...

$940.00 + change for some gas!

How's that sound? Bare in mind that is all pretty high quality stuff... nothing budget in there... could go cheaper if you wanted to, but equally, we could go much more expensive too!!

(Pricing is all based on product from IkeSound.com - but there's stack of other discount vendors out there).

Hope that helps!

Mike

[Brit Rider]

oh, also worth mentioning, that those Kicker KMT6's run close to 3ohms in real-life, so the 120watts RMS from that amp will likely actually run almost exactly 150-160watts RMS

What head unit are you running?

[mustangmelish]

[mustangmelish]

[BrentC5Z]

Brit Rider, Dead on!

[browneye253]

[Brit Rider]

browneye253,

This setup would runt he tower speakers and 4 in boat speakers.

I'd do this as follows.
channels 1 and 2 would be sent to the tower, giving them a full 120-150watts RMS each - this is right on where they'd like to be. I'd cut the bass boost ont he amp to zero and throw the low pass on (Blocking low signals) - this will get you plenty of loud and clean sound.
Channels 3 and 4 would then be split between 2 speakers each in the boat. You can wire this in either series or parrellel - depending on how much power your speakers want will decide which way you wire them.

The cool thing about this setup is that all inboat speakers will be on the rear balance of the stereo whilst the tower will be on the front... so you can toggle the radios fader between front and rear to adjust how loud each 'zone' of speakers is in relation to each other.... it may be that you don't want the tower speakers on (Whist cruising into a marina for example, or late at night) - so you'd just put the fader all the way back so that only the in boat speakers see power.

et voila! Job done

oh, and p.s, if you want to learn the basics of car audio (Which is pretty much the same as marine) have a read of this awesome website - http://bcae1.com/

[jasonba1]

Hey mustang PM sent

[mustangmelish]

thanks for all of the replys guys, they have helped a lot!

[Brit Rider]

mustangmelish, Lets see some pics once installed!