Practical Boat Owner — November 2017

P

laying music on board can

be somewhat polarising. On

one side of the fence sit the

purists, who like to lose

themselves in the sounds of

wind and water. On the other are

those who find that listening to music

enhances their enjoyment of a good

sail, whether it’s slipping along gently

in a Force 1 or blasting downwind in a

Force 6. It’s also a good cure for

seasickness. There is another

troublesome band who enjoy

cranking up the music to the

dismay of all around them, but

we’ll leave them out of it for now.

The fact is that music on board,

whether through cockpit speakers when

sailing or piped down below to enjoy

with a glass of wine and a square meal,

is popular. Most people just pop down to

Halfords and buy a cheap car stereo,

but in recent years marine stereos have

emerged. Often designed for use in wet

environments like RIBs, they are

fine-tuned to overcome the noise of wind

and water, are waterproof and some can

link into your chartplotter to allow you

control from the cockpit.

We collected together seven stereos

and put them through their paces. This

is a selection of what’s available – other

options, including black boxes, are also

to be found.

How we tested them

We made up a temporary MDF

washboard for my Impala 28, and

mounted the stereo heads in this,

wired into the boat’s existing speakers –

a pair of 6in car speakers in the cabin

and a 4in set of Fusion cockpit speakers.

This isn’t a high-end setup by any

means, and for a lot more money you

can invest in a significantly better

pair of speakers – but we wanted to see

how each system would cope with the

demands of a small boat on typical

small speakers.

We went for a sail in blustery Force 5

conditions to see how each unit

sounded on the water, before retiring to

the mooring, putting on the kettle and

listening to each down below.

We picked a few tracks from every end

of the musical spectrum. For jazz,

Wynton Marsalis’ My Funny Valentine;

rock with Pink Floyd’s Money, The

Rolling Stones’ Start Me Up, and AC/

DC’s Thunderstruck; classical with

Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and

JS Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor

• and finally, Blur’s Parklife to see how
  they sounded with pop.
  This eclectic mix showed up some
  interesting differences.

7 Marine

Stereos tested

Ben Meakins puts seven of the best marine stereo

systems to the test on a typical sailing setup

GEAR