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Hello to all,
I am a boatbuilder in Maine. We are building a coustom 38 ft. powerboat. I'm trying to design the audio system and I need some help.

Here is the layout and some details:
-There are 3 cabins in the boat that will have speakers. The "aft cabin",
the "pilot house", and the "forward cabin"
-2 speakers in each cabin
-Volume controls are needed in each cabin.
-The cd player, amp etc. will be in the aft cabin
-obviously it is a 12 volt system

Here are some specific questions:
-Can you simply put a volume control (knob) in the speaker cords?
-I have seen remote relays used in home stereo systems. The way they work is a remote sensor is hard wired to different rooms in the house. They allow you to use your stereo remotes in any room. Is this technology available or applicable to a 12 volt car audio type system? This would be the ideal solution.

My first concern in wiring the boat. I need to determine if I need to run a control wire (for volume) along with the speaker wires. It would be great if I didn't have to and I could put a volume control in the speaker lines.

Thanks a lot.
-Eli

The optimal situation would be to run a separate amplifier in each cabin. With each amplifier, you should have two options, an RCA volume control (such as this one: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... eName=WDVW) and a switch on the remote wire to turn the amp off or on.

If this is too much, then you will be able to run one pair of speakers off of the head unit then power the two remaining off of a 2-channel amp and use two (speaker wire) level controllers. There is no safe way to run 6 pairs off of a head unit.

As for the stereo remotes, they do make the infrared receivers for that purpose.

Thanks William. Using the head unit for the aft cabin speakers and a separate amp for the other two cabins was just what I was thinking
I looked at the volume control link, it is very large and gommy. Is is so large because it is absorbing the juice in order to control volume? How do those kinds of controls work?

I would apreciate any links to online sources for the kinds of accessories discussed in this thread. The only bookmarks I have at this point are like Crutchfield etc...
Specificly if anyone out there knows where to look at / order infared recievers.

Thanks everyone I really,really apreciate it!!

I'm no electrical engineer, but I do believe that the potentiometer needs some other hardware for it to work properly. I was really only using that as an example, you may want to use a different model.

I would make sure that any leveling device you use can support the amount of voltage passed through it. This is more for if you were to use speaker wire from an amplifier rather than RCA's though.

Partsexpress.com should have infrared receivers for a good price, I would check there.