HLCD's on a budget
 

Is there ANY brand of HLCD speakers that are decent that dont cost a grand?
I got all Memphis in boat stuff but you cant really hear it at wakeboard distance without drowning everyone out in the boat. I already bought a surfboard and my wife a wakeboard and ordered all the johnson pumps to get rid of the over the side crap. So if i tell the wife im gonne spend another 2000 on stereo stuff i might be divorced......:eek: Any suggestions on decent speakers and an amp for a little cheaper?

I would take a look at the Pro 60's in the classifieds. Seems like a good price and they have RGB rings on them already!

If you are interested I have the following:
Rockford Fosgate P400X2
Krypt 6.5" HLCD
and an old set of Samson cans if you are interested....
Amp and speakers were used only a month before I sold the boat they were on. Cans are older but still work. Let me know and I can make you a good deal. They are just taking up space.

"I got all Memphis in boat stuff but you cant really hear it at wakeboard distance without drowning everyone out in the boat."

HLCDs are hella friggin loud in the boat too. And the cheaper ones also generally sound like arse in the boat compared to a direct radiating speaker.

If you already have Memphis throughout your boat then look at the Memphis 6.5" HLCD. At $450 per pair loaded in pods with collars, they're tough to beat on value. Don't expect them to perform like an 8 or 10" HLCD but they will project as well as any other 6.5" HLCD. Also, at 2-ohms, a pair are inexpensive to drive with a moderate two-channel amplifier. For two pair you would use a four-channel amplifier....backwards from the approach you might take when powering the more common 4-ohm tower speakers. 100 watts of honest power per speaker will do it.

I am running the Krypt 6.5" HLCDs with a Precision Power P600.2 Amp. They sound Great!

I would also plan and budget for some form of volume level control for the in-boat speakers. This will allow you crank up the tower speakers and turn down the in-boat level. The head-unit "FADE" works, but can sometimes mean scrolling through menus on the head--unit, where as an actual volume controller can be finger tip.

I saw some of the memphis ones at the dealer i used for the inboat install. Just didn't think they were true HLCD's. I guess i can go back and see what they say they can install some for. Thanks guys. Do they truly only require 100 watts RMS?

I think the rev 10s are a pretty good bang for your buck

Hey Robert can you PM me a price? I can get back to you when i get home. Can't get to messages at work, wakeworld isn't IE 9+ compatible yet.

Yes, it is a true HLCD. It has a smaller tweeter diaphragm and smaller compression chamber than some others but it is an HLCD and frankly is pretty balanced.
And yes, only 100 watts RMS if that's real honest power. But you can push that number a little farther.

Are the Krypt speakers good? Will a single pair be good?

I can hear mine clearly while wakeboarding at 65 feet behind an Axis. It will depend on Amp, engine noise and wind noise, but it's very realistic to get good sound from the 6.5" HLCDs.

Tom......Do you have FAE on your axis? And how many do you have? Just a single pair or 2 pair?

Single Pair, No FAE.

Thanks Tom....Good to know........maybe the CFO will let me get them.

Reality? No and No.

The Kicker and Memphis are the most balanced sounding 6.5" HLCDs. Other than that, the better tower HLCD products, such as Wetsounds and HollowPoint, have discontinued their 6.5" HLCD offerings for good reason. Everything else is pretty much brutal when it comes to sound quality.
A single pair of 6.5" HLCDs can be heard at wake range but with no more surface area than a single pair of 6.5", they will have to be pushed inordinately hard and will not sound good. You'll certainly hear the horn at wake range but not much lower midrange and little to none in the midbass. And that scenario isn't helping your 'in-boat' listening situation.

For under a $1K budget without amplifier, I would look at two pair of Memphis, one pair of Kicker with the second set of midbass drivers, a larger 8" surf speaker like the Wetsounds Icon8 or pick-up a pair of larger HLCDs on the used market.
The classifieds are loaded with small HLCDs where the owners were driven by budget, didn't listen to reason, soon became dissatisfied, and eventually sold to upgrade.

We're not all audiphiles with huge budgets. I think I'm into my setup for under $500. I really don't care for great sound quality. I just want to jam out to my favorite songs while I take a set.

I'll probably upgrade eventually, but there just wasn't any way that I was going to spend more than I did this go around. Just didn't have the disposable cash on hand.

Kicker km6500s all day long. You can get the set of 4 and nice black enclosures for under $400.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Kicker-KM650...dfb3b1&vxp=mtr

I just recently installed the Krypt 7.7" HLCD's on my boat. I have not listened to them on the water yet but compared to my old Kicker KMT-6's they sound a lot better and are much louder.

I'm running them off a RF M400-4D bridged so they get 200watts each.

You can find the cans and speakers on Ebay for under $500. They do need at least 150 watts each though so don't underpower them.

You could try Exile XM7s. They are being discontinued so Exile had a couple pair for sale pretty cheap. Might be worth a shot.

I have a pair of kicker 6.5 midbass/horns on my tower and the kicker amp to push them and I can barely hear it at 70' back. with no FAE. I think a FAE may help and that is my next purchase.

As David mentioned it can be brutal in the boat. I love loud music but when I switch the tower speakers on its deafening in the boat. At idle you can truly hear the speakers 300' behind the boat and it sounds amazing. I have 4 of the kickers in the boat as well and they sound awesome for the price.

What about the Jl m770's

Or the Pro 60's?

Have you thought about PA speakers? The brothers run them in the grills on them donks.... They sound pretty good from several hundred feet away and are 8 bucks a speaker.... Doesn't get cheaper than that. I was thinking of doing it and hiding them in my speaker cans behind a grill and you'd never be able to tell. Might make some river neighbors unhappy untill I make 3 bends.

I guess the Rev10's is the way to go, just suck it up and do it right? I just hate that this crap costs as much as it does. And why do we even consider it? Do we all have the awesome stereo's in our cars or daily drivers? Of course the kidos are ALL FOR the big speakers LOL....go figure.

Be there done that and tried to cheap out and it doesn't work. Save up for some used HLCD's or buy rev10's and be done. I have spent way more on two boats trying to do it the cheap way than a set of REV10's with PPI 900.4 powering them. That's what I'm running now and it's very loud and clear.

If you want cheaper find some used Pro80's for 500 buck or ExileXM7 or XM9's and throw them up there. I would go any cheaper than that, it would be a waste of money.

Well if i decide to go with the Rev's is the 410 the way to go or just a pair of 10's? Im guessing that ill get a 420eq too, using the fader gets a little old.

If you only want to pay for 1 410 or 2 Rev 10's, I would go with the Rev 10's. It will look better on your tower and will give you the volume and sound your looking. If you use a 410 and mix it with anything else the other speakers will not keep up with the 410 so they are useless more or less.

Does angling them up slightly really help them not blast out the people in boat? Or is that just wishful thinking? I saw a thread on here or over on malibucrew where they did that and said it helped.....anyone else try this? I didn't think sound was all that directional esp. the lower freq's.

It helps, yes. Also helps throw sound to rider instead of into your wake. But it's not the difference between being in a library or a stadium.

It's not the lower freq that cause people the pain. The HLCD speakers do project sound in a direction and therefore there is a difference by angling them correctly since the boat will normally have some elevation with the nose up pointing the speakers up a little for boarding and over the rear occupants will help.

All frequencies are directional to a degree, although increasingly less directional as the frequency becomes lower. Tower speakers do not play low enough with enough amplitude in those lower frequencies to be in the highly non-directional realm. And higher frequencies have a much broader polar pattern in very close proximity. That pattern certainly narrows with frequency and distance. Angling upwards definitely will help but it's not a total fix as mentioned above.
The discomfort for those in the boat, and especially those occupants at the rear of the cockpit, can be an extra sensitivity to upper midrange & lower treble frequencies just as much as the overall amplitude. That's just the nature of the human auditory system. You experience discomfort sooner at some frequencies. You can easily reduce those frequencies with equalization but at the cost of projection.
Because of the horn, HLCDs are a little more directional than conventional direct-radiating speakers with dome tweeters for example. A dome will have a little broader dispersion near field and that energy as a result will also dissipate in less distance. But that is a small difference in the big picture. The big difference between an HLCD and a conventional coaxial is the sheer difference in amplitude. That which is considerably louder at 70 feet is considerably louder at 5 feet. At 70 feet a large difference in power is compressed. Not the case at 5 feet. It's not uncommon for a horn loaded compression driver to have 10 dB more output minimum over a conventional dome. And a 10 dB difference is exactly like 10 times the amplifier power.

So the worse thing you can do on the tower is get a smallish HLCD where the 6.5" midbass driver has no chance of keeping pace with the aggressive horn tweeter. They wouldn't use a horn if they didn't want the extra acoustic power.
Of all the 6.5" HLCDs, the Kicker and the Memphis have some balance as a matter of design. No matter how many you run, a larger quantity of smaller HLCDs will not equal the warmth and midbass extension of the larger cone surface area and larger pod displacement of the larger HLCDs.

So i guess that last post sums it up. @ pair of the memphis will not sound as well as a single pair of Rev10's. I think after this past weekend i might have the wifey sold on the Rev's, but i still don't have the official OK yet. She's starting to cave a little though sao there's hope.

That's 2 pair....sorry