In the latest episode of On My Dock, Boating Magazine’s editor at large Randy Vance upgrades his stereo system with the help of KICKER Marine Audio. The experts at KICKER suggested more powerful amplifiers, specifically the KXMA900.5 - three amplifiers in one. The KMXL 8” speakers and the KMF 10” subwoofers were also installed, producing an impressive sound over the winds and waves. If you’re looking for an audio upgrade that will enhance your time on the water, watch now.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 Hi, I'm Randy Vance, and thanks for joining me today on my dock.
00:14 Now, what I'm going to be doing is a stereo upgrade.
00:17 Now, the system I had in my boat is going on four years old.
00:21 While it still is all perfectly functional,
00:23 the speakers have been out on the weather all that time
00:26 and are starting to show some of the effects of that.
00:29 I also want to upgrade it, increasing the amp power
00:32 and getting a better boom out of my subwoofer.
00:35 So what we did was we went to the folks at Kicker
00:37 and asked them what they thought we should do.
00:40 Well, the first thing they suggested, since I wanted more subwoofer power,
00:43 is more powerful amplifier.
00:46 They suggested the KMX-A900.5.
00:50 Now, the beauty of this amplifier is it's basically three amplifiers in one.
00:54 You've got a zone one amplifier, a zone two amplifier, and a zone three,
00:59 or the subwoofer amplifier.
01:02 That's perfect for this setup.
01:04 I'll use zone one on the lower speakers.
01:06 I'll use the subwoofer or zone three for the sub,
01:09 and I'll use zone two for the upper speakers.
01:12 Now, since space was limited in the hard top,
01:15 we went with the KM65 6.5 inch speakers.
01:18 These are LED lighted.
01:21 Each speaker comes with both a gun metal and a white grill,
01:24 and we'll be using the white grills.
01:26 They perfectly fit the holes from the old speakers,
01:29 so there's no adjustments there necessary,
01:31 except to add the terminals to connect the speakers.
01:34 Now, the next element in our refit are the KMXL 8 inch speakers.
01:39 These are 4 ohm speakers, but there's a special feature.
01:43 They're called horn loaded speakers, and that's
01:45 because there's an equitangential horn in every speaker.
01:49 You don't just have a tweeter dome.
01:51 You have a tweeter powered horn that gives you
01:54 a full range of rich tones, and it's
01:57 surrounded by a woofer to give you those deep bass tones.
02:00 Now, these 8 inch speakers are far more robust
02:03 than the old ones, and they required a little bit bigger
02:05 hole, but we could use the KSLR LED rings,
02:09 and that sets those speakers out a half an inch.
02:12 That makes the cage around those speakers
02:15 fit the hole without any additional cutting.
02:17 Now, these speakers also use Deutsch connectors,
02:20 and they have a built in LED RGB controller.
02:24 All we had to do was connect that harness
02:26 to the old speaker wires, and we were ready to go.
02:29 Now, the last speaker element on this project
02:31 is Kicker's KMF 10 4 ohm subwoofer.
02:35 This is a very robust subwoofer, has a larger cage,
02:38 and we did have to widen the hole on this install here.
02:43 It's LED lighted and comes with white, which we're using,
02:46 and a gun metal grill, which we're not.
02:49 Finally, we got to the amp.
02:50 The existing controller, a radio if you will,
02:53 had all the outputs labeled so we could easily
02:55 move the RCA output cables to the appropriate inputs
02:59 on the new amp.
03:00 Before we connected the speakers,
03:02 we made gain adjustments to the amp.
03:04 Here's how.
03:05 On the controller, we adjusted all the tone and balance
03:08 settings to neutral.
03:10 We raised the volume on each zone to 75%.
03:14 Earlier, we downloaded test tones from Kicker's website
03:16 to a USB drive and plugged them into the controller.
03:19 For zones one and two, our upper and lower speaker sets,
03:23 we dialed down the gain on each zone to zero
03:25 and set the crossover filters to off.
03:28 Then we played the high frequency tone for zone one
03:31 and two, and we individually adjusted the gain dials
03:34 hidden on the front of the amp until they lit up.
03:37 Then we backed them down just until they went off.
03:41 That properly sets the controller output
03:43 to the speakers.
03:44 To adjust the sub, we dialed down the gain to zero
03:47 and set the high and low frequency crossovers
03:50 to their highest settings.
03:51 We played the low 50 kilohertz frequency tone for the sub
03:55 and gradually turned up the gain until the adjuster knob lighted.
03:58 Then we backed it off again until the light went out.
04:02 It's now time to connect the speakers.
04:05 The E-box above provided tight quarters
04:07 for mounting and ultimate adjusting the amp,
04:10 so we fabricated a bracket that eased securing and removing
04:12 the amp.
04:13 We glued it down with polyurethane adhesive.
04:16 Once we got all of the zones named, top, deck,
04:20 and subwoofer, then I went in and adjusted
04:23 the volume of each.
04:25 What I wanted to do was balance the speaker here
04:28 so close to our heads with those lower on the deck.
04:31 I wanted to take full advantage of those horn loaded speakers.
04:35 Then we brought in the subwoofer at a level that was pleasing
04:38 and had a pretty good thump.
04:40 Now the whole danger of this system
04:42 is that when you get it all finished,
04:44 you're pretty proud of it, and you really want to crank it up.
04:46 And around here, you know how noise travels over the water.
04:50 So we headed out, turned on some Aerosmith, some Kenny Loggins,
04:54 cranked it up, listened to the wind and the waves,
04:57 some really good rock and roll.
04:59 I'm Randy Vance for Kicker Marine Audio,
05:02 and that's how you put in a stereo.
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05:11 [MUSIC PLAYING]
05:14 (music ends)