boat ipod

[juandesooka]

I have been humming and hawing about how to get music on my boat...I have a CD player, but it doesn`t fit well anywhere...and cutting holes for face plates isn`t my first choice.

A friend brought an ipod aboard last summer with a portable dock with speakers...clean, easy, no moving parts, I like it.

What I want ideally is some sort of ipod dock, that has power to the ipod and amplification to speakers. It could have speakers built in or the speakers could be separate. It would screw on somewhere, and be fully wired in. No muss or fuss.

I see lots of stereos with an ipod jack or fm radio transmitters, but I want to have a unit that doesn`t require the bulk of a cd player.

Anyone have any experience with this or suggestions...

John

 

[rico]

I have the exact setup in my boat right now, and i love it. No skipping or anything because the music is digital, and i have about 1800 songs to choose from.
I have installed 4 speakers, 2 in the front, and 2 in the back. The wires run to an amplifier. You need to buy a cable that has RCA's at one end for the input on the amplifier, and a headphone jack at the other for the IPOD out put(or headphone jack). Set the output on the amp to around the middle, and then you can also control the volume with the ipod. I have the wire for the ipod zapped against one of the pillars for my window frame, and the amp is hidden under the dash, you would never even know it was there. The system works very well. I take the ipod with when i am not using the boat because i also use it in my truck.

 

[juandesooka]

Thanks Rico. That sounds pretty good.

How big is this amp? What kind of mount do you use for ipod itself?

The ideal set up would be a dock that powers it too, but short of that, your set up sounds excellent.

John

 

[rico]

The amp i use is a 200 watt. With good power to your "good" speakers, you'll blow out any powered dock for sure, and take up less room on the boat. I actually don't use a mount. I zap strap the cable that goes to the ipod to my window frame, and leave about 1inch of cable hanging out. I plug the ipod in and because the cord is so short from the zap strap, it is really stiff and holds my ipod perfectly. I have never had a problem with the ipod falling off.

 

[dohboy]

there are many type of ipod docks that could be mounted and just plug into a cig lighter for power, and then just run the cable to a amp like rico suggests, i have a deck in my boat so i just plug into that

 

[The Fish Assassin]

I bought a combo unit from my favorite place to shop Wal-Mart. It plays mp3 disks as well as cd's, It also plays DVD's and has a screen on it, it looks like a ghetto blaster transformer when you open up the screen. It also will display pictures from your camera, it has a slot for the memory cards to fit in, It also has a USB jack for plugging in memory sticks. I bought a 16 gig mem stick, I can have about 11 movies and still have room for about 128 hours of music [8D] It was a great investment for the $150. It has a lot of versatility. It plays AVI,MPEG,MP4,DIVX, and more formats, so you could if you desired download movies of how to catch fish []from the internet and put them on your mem stick. I sure enjoyed not having my kids whine about how bored they were..lol That alone was worth the investment. It is a lot louder than your average portable DVD player and doesnt need any amplification, although when you get back to the lodge you can hook it up to your big TV and watch pics on your hd flatscreen, or just play dvd movies like a normal dvd player. I would have to rate this product 10/10!!!

Take only what you need.

 

[tyee38]

A friend of mine invited me to a trade show a few weeks back and I got chance to hear the new Fusion IP-500 ipod stereo. Impressive! I like the fact it is a dock and therfore uses no cable to the ipod.

http://www.fusionelectronics.com/no...audio-2/stereo-units-15/product-category.aspx