Hi Cindy,

Wow, the techno geek in me loves these types of questions. There's two
approaches that I took. The "I need one now so I'll go cheap" and the "I'll
wait and carefully select all the right components, watching boat dollars
fly out the window."

I took the former.

I found a CD player for about $100 that has a USB port on it and an AUX
port. A 1 gb memory stick is $10 at Micro Center. That's almost all the
digital music I have. I put the stick in the USB and there's more music than
I need for a day. No skipping. Low power consumption too since we're not
spinning a disk. It's a great setup. Downside is that since it is an
el-cheapo it flakes out occasionally and will actually skip songs,
regardless of whether it is the USB, AUX or CD.

I have it installed where the P.O. cut out an opening on the settee side of
the nav station. This makes the unit protrude into the 'desk' but that
hasn't been a problem for us. It does seem to get a little hot tho. The
antenna is simply attached and coiled up in the desk. No doubt that could be
better, but there's only one radio station down there to listen to and we
are able to pick it up. The speakers are some pretty nice ADC external mount
units mounted in the corners above the settees. These were installed by the
P.O. Only problem is that sometimes when getting up from the settee, you
might bump your head. I'm sure there are many other locations that would be
better, but in general the higher up the better.

Now, if I could go with the latter, here's one way I fantasize about doing
it:
See the discussion on SFF (small form factor) PCs earlier. I'd definitely
look into that and hook it up to a 15" LCD flat screen mounted on the
bulkhead above the salon table. I'd have small speakers located throughout
the boat for high frequencies. Low frequencies would be handled by a good
sized woofer possibly placed under the nav station with a grille placed on
the side facing the galley. In addition, I'd have speakers outside too. If
my dodger was up, I'd mount the speakers within that enclosure somewhere.
All of these speakers would be driven by a fairly powerful amplifier driven
from the computer's line-level output. I'd want to have the ability to
control it remotely from the cockpit too.

Of course, were money not an issue, I'd be interested in products that were
designed for the marine environment. These are coated to resist saltwater
intrusion. I'm curious, though, whether there are any folks out there using
plain 'ol car stereo equipment in that environment without any problems.

Rick Beddoe
s/v Soņadora, 1978 Baba 30
Minneapolis, MN
http://sail2live.com

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-baba-l@ballreich.net [mailto:owner-baba-l@ballreich.net] On
Behalf Of Cindy Ballreich
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2007 7:18 PM
To: Baba Mailing List
Subject: [Baba-L] stereo installation?

The boom-box never lived up to expectations, so we're thinking about
getting an "auto stereo" style AM/FM/CD/Aux unit and installing it on
Mandisa. We're interested in hearing from others who have done this kind
of thing. Specifically, we'd like to hear about Baba 30 installations,
but also from other boats as well. Where did you mount it? How did you
wire it into the system? Did you do any kind of a trim treatment? Are
you happy with the location you chose or would you move it if you had it
to do over again? Where did you mount speakers? And any other comments
you'd care to make.

Thanks in advance!

Cindy
s/v Mandisa
Baba 30

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Received on Sun Jan 28 19:07:01 2007