Pool and Bar Radio Idea

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2001rotax800

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Mar 30, 2008
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Looking for input on my system idea. We built a pool shed that is 16'x'14 wide, not onyl 8' feet of the 16 is storing pool floaties and such, the other 8' is a covered area whis we are going to put a bar into. Now I want to install a sound system first that way i can have some tunes while I build the bar. So my thought were to but a set of 150watt speakers from outdoorspeakerdepot, a 400 wat amp, a Jenson waterproof boat stereo, and a 12 volt power supply to power it, that way all my electronics will be in the unweathered area of the pool shed and only radio and speakers will be exposed to the elements. Any thoughts?

poolhouse.jpg
 
I'm with anona -- if all the equipment is in the fully covered part, just drill holes for wire and mount some outdoor speakers in the bar area. I'd guess the way you are suggesting would work, but I must be missing why you'd go to that trouble. I love the pool shed design!
 
Most marine radios are worthless IMO, and none I've ever heard produce sound that would survive a 400W amp with any fidelity.
 
You said that all the electronics will be in the 'unweathered' area of the shed. My suggestion is to stay away from marine electronics unless you absolutely need them (because they will be getting splashed with water). Marine electronics focus on weatherproofing, not sound quality. There's no need for it in your situation and you'll get much better sound out of a basic stereo receiver with whatever other components you want connected. There's no good reason at all to use mobile (car/boat) audio electronics in your situation.
 
rotax,

I have to agree with the others here. If you have electricity into your cabana/shed/kitchen area,,, you can get yourself an amped receiver that'll push like 90 to 100 watts/ channel, and put a set of outdoor speakers up. From the pic you put here, it looks like your swimming area is within a reasonable area of the shed, so why will you need a 400 watt amp? You gonna be DJ-ing some wild parties out there or something?

You can get like a 100w receiver for around $100 to $150 and a set of outdoor speakers for around $100. Build yourself a shelf at about 6ft high over in the shed, and you'll have no worries of weather affecting it. Unless someone runs in there with a bucket of water, you should be good to go. That'll give you AM/FM receiver, then plug in an ipod (that's what we do) and you'll have all the music you need (i mean we have like 1100 songs on the ipod so far). If you need more, hook up satellite radio, or even pick up a cd player and plug that in.

Whichever way you decide to go, Good Luck!!

DMAN
 

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DMAN11 said:
why will you need a 400 watt amp? You gonna be DJ-ing some wild parties out there or something?
DMAN
Click to expand...

I believe he was talking about a 400 watt car stereo amp which translates to at most 50-100 watts RMS at 4 ohms (car stereo speaker impedence). Car stereo amps 'advertise' much higher than actual continuous music level output. I have an 880 watt Sony car stereo amp that could never compete with my Yamaha 100 watt home stereo receiver amp because in actuality, it's only about 40 watts per channel RMS. Again, this type of equipment should in no way be seriously considered for this application.
 
Thanks to all who have responded. I guess the only thing i must have is an audio import jack right next to the bar to hook up an ipod, or my lap top. I have all my music stored on my office computer in the basement, but thanks to wifi, i have setup a wireless network at my house so I can access all that music wirelessly with just a laptop on top of the bar. I don't mind teh alternative, but my only concern is volume control. I dont want to have to go into the pool shed to turn the radio down, some of the marine radios have floating remotes, heck that would be nice to float around the pool and be able to control the turns.

Why would adding an amp be hard on the radio/receiver? And teh reason for a 400 watt is the speakers I was looking at are 150 watts a peice, and wanted to be a little over.
 
2001rotax800 said:
Thanks to all who have responded. I guess the only thing i must have is an audio import jack right next to the bar to hook up an ipod, or my lap top. I have all my music stored on my office computer in the basement, but thanks to wifi, i have setup a wireless network at my house so I can access all that music wirelessly with just a laptop on top of the bar. I don't mind teh alternative, but my only concern is volume control. I dont want to have to go into the pool shed to turn the radio down, some of the marine radios have floating remotes, heck that would be nice to float around the pool and be able to control the turns.

Why would adding an amp be hard on the radio/receiver? And teh reason for a 400 watt is the speakers I was looking at are 150 watts a peice, and wanted to be a little over.
Click to expand...

Ok, so help me understand this a little better. You have all your music stored on a computer inside the house. This music is accessable via wireless network. You'd like to use your laptop outside at the caban/pool bar to access the music and play it through a secondary pair of speakers that will be mounted outside. Am I correct on all this or am I way off? If I'm understanding you correctly, I think you have a great plan and it can be done very nicely and affordably.

First of all, as far as the equipment that you're looking at, we need to know more information. Perhaps you can post a link to the speakers so that we can see what you're talking about. I think you may have a misunderstanding about amplifiers and speakers, their power ratings, and how they can/should be matched. And for that, you can easily spend as much time trying to education yourself as you have about your pool. But to keep things simple, you'd probably be best served by a simple 2 channel stereo receiver in the 50 - 75 watt RMS / channel range connected to a properly matched set of speakers. Trust me that with a setup like this, you could be blasting music to uncomfortably loud volumes where people wont even be able to carry a conversation comfortably.

Ok, nonetheless, there are also very good options to achieve the results you want for volume control, although I'd probably get the idea of a floating volume control out of your head if you want something that's quality and affordable. Particularly, they make weatherproof volume controls that would be fairly easy to install. (http://www.outdoorspeakerdepot.com/outd ... trols.html) You can mount this on one of the walls outside of the shed that's closest to the pool. Basically, you'd run speaker wires from the speaker to the volume control, and then from the volume control to wherever the amplifier will be. You could actually mount the volume control just about anywhere you want, even behind the bar - so long as you can run wire from it to both the speakers and the amplifier.

Since there are so many options for speakers and amplifiers, I'd have to know a little more about what you're needs are to make any more recommendations. But suffice it to say, you can get an adequately powered 2 channel stereo receiver from a place like Best Buy for as little as $99 and your choices for speakers are plentiful.
 
2001rotax800 said:
Thank you niceguymr, Here are the componets I am lookng at, and yes you are correct on my plan.


Speakers:
http://www.outdoorspeakerdepot.com/arch ... tdoor.html

Radio:

http://www.islandmarineelectronics.com/ ... _1747.html

Amp would be what i could find as long as it matched the speakers, I was leaning torwarsd 400 watss so I would have some "headroom" with it, Thanks.,
Click to expand...

Without actually hearing the speakers, they look fine. I've never actually heard of that brand nor do I know anything about their quality, but that doesn't mean much b/c there are lots that I don't know about. What I can tell you is that when you go with lesser known products, you're taking a risk. Just make sure that wherever you buy them from has a reasonable return policy in case you turn out not to like them. One brand of outdoor speaker that I am more familiar with and could highly recommend are the Polk Audio speakers. You can find great deals on them from time to time at NewEggg.com. But please don't misunderstand me - I'm not trying to steer you away from those speakers - just encouraging you to make an informed decision. Look for reviews whenever possible but take even those with a grain of salt.

As for the radio, I kinda see where you're going with this. You like the look, style, features, and function of the marine radios -and possibly feel they go well for your system b/c of the outdoorsy nature. Let me just say that while you will certainly be able to achieve what you want, you'd be able to do it much better with a home electronics system. It might now have all the cool looking style and some of the bells & whistles of the radio you mentioned, but the sound quality will be much better. Marine audio electornics such as the one you mentioned are designed to power marine type speakers - which are simply weatherized car stereo speakers - different from the OSD ARC1s that you mentioned above. The best thing for the speakers you mentioned above would be a home audio receiver in the 50-100 watt RMS range. And by the way, I see the specs on those speakers is 150 watts. B/c it doesn't say the words RMS or 'Continuous Power', you must assume that it's referring to peak power and that the speaker's true handling capability is only about maybe 50-75 watts RMS (or continuous) On the flip side, a receiver that's rated at 50-75 watts RMS would be perfect for speakers like this. Oh, and not to confuse you furthere, but all these number and their relativity to eachother changes when you go from home electronics to marine electronics and switching from 4 ohms to 8 ohms. It can be really complicated, I know.

So back to that Jensen Receiver... Just to run that system, you'll need a way to convert 12VDC to 110VAC. And you'll need to do this for the amp that you're considering as well. This throws things into your setup that you really don't need unless you are dead set on this particular type and style of equipment. Quite frankly, it's hard for me to advise you on using this type of electronics set up b/c I would NEVER advise anyone to do it unless they happen to have no money at ll and this equipment was a gift that they had to us. Then I'd figure out a way to make it work - or convince them to sell it and use it to buy better equipment. I'm really sorry to say that there's really no reason to be putting a boat stereo system in you cabana/bar house area unless you simply have no other choice. Between what you'd spend on the power convereter, amplifier, you could end up with a good quality, better sounding system using a nice home stereo receiver. Allow me to make just one recommendation (purely as an example)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6882115146

This Yamaha Receiver will give you EVERYTHING YOU NEED in terms of stereo, radio, multiple source inputs so you can listen to an IPOD, TV, CD, Whatever you want - EVEN YOUR LAPTOP. I has a build in HIGH QUALITY amplifier with enough power that will blow the sound quality away with what you're currently looking at. The list of features goes on and on.

You can keep this stereo inside the cabana or safely enclosed behind the bar and connect whatever you want to it. You can have the volume control mounted separately as I mentioned in my previous post and you can put that anywhere you want. And that's all you'd need.

Don't minsunderstand me - I'm not pushing you to this one receiver. There are dozens of other brands of similarly equiped units that will deliver you similar performance. You can go down in quality significantly and still do better than the 'marine' system you're looking at. And of course, you can go waaaaayyy much better too. And with this home receiver type set up, you don't have to worry about power conversion, or buying a separate amp. It's all built in and it's better.

So here's my recommendation, however feel free to get as much feedback from other people as you can. I might also recommend you check out AVSForum.com which specializes on all things audio/video related. They will dive much deeper into you request and possibly confuse you more, but they know what they speak of.

So again, my recommendation is the following:
1) Pick your speakers - whichever they are, make sure you're happy with the sound
2) Buy a Home Stereo Receiver - Sony, Yamaha, Denon, Whatever. Spend a few hundred and you'll never look back
3) Get the oudoor volume controls and run the wires from your receiver to it, and from it to the speakers.

Badabing! You're set.
 
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