Sounds Terrific

You wouldn’t settle for lousy performance from your plotter or radar. Why not hold your stereo to the same standard?

- Jason Y. Wood

One of the best parts about owning a boat is best captured in the words of a fast-food ad campaign: Have it your way. You’re the skipper—you’re in charge. After all, you do the work on the boat, and you get everyone home safe. You set up your helm electronics the way you want.

Your boat is a reflection of all you hold dear. And maybe you like to add music to the experience—your music. And you want it to sound good. No shame in that. Maybe you’ve noticed that some boats have plenty of sound-system horsepower, but it’s misdirected and ineffective. What can a boater do to solve this challenge to improve the onboard experience through good tunes played loud? As you probably already know, boats offer challenges to creating the best sound experience. From the difficulties presented by an onboard installation to the variance of needs presented by tightly enclosed indoor spaces and wide open outdoor social areas, a sound system needs to be tuneable and tweakable to get the desired effect.

We asked the team at Fusion Electronics how we should think about boat sound systems. Since the company designs audio system components and speakers specifically for boats, rather than converting automotive systems, they have some very strong ideas about what boaters need.

First, you need to start with good-quality sound. “Good loudspeakers are not adding coloration to the music,” says Fabian Vuine, a senior development engineer for Fusion “To achieve this, they must play back all different pitches without emphasizing one over the other or distort audibly. Most speakers have some character, meaning they change the general timbre slightly and so cater to individual taste and application.” Choosing your speaker array with the help of an electronics professional should give you a better chance to create a satisfying experience. It’s the good side of the “garbage in, garbage out” philosophy.