195S Audio Upgrade & Wet Sounds Soundbar Install

[TheArk]

The OEM audio in my '23 195S was a bit of letdown. It reminded me of what factory car stereos sounded like in the early 90's - hollow and baseless, but with a fancy brand name slapped on the speaker grills. Trying to keep the budget low (got too many hobbies ...), I set out to upgrade the factory audio with hopes to accomplish the following:

• Improved sound quality
• Audible while under power without drowning out a conversation.
• Decent sound when hanging out behind the boat without blowing out the eardrums of anyone still in the boat.
• Factory look

The factory system in the '23 195S has the following:

• Hertz HMR-20 Digital Media Receiver.
• (4) Hertz HBX 6.5 Speakers (rated for 45 watts RMS)

The receiver is fine in terms usability, but is completely inadequate when it comes to driving the factory Hertz coaxial speakers. The factory speakers are acceptable, but not great. They definitely would benefit from a discrete amplifier, but they're still lower quality than the Wet Sounds speakers available in previous model years.

I came up with the following plan to accomplish my goals:

• Add two more cabin speakers - more speakers lets you play the music at lower volume, but the sound is distributed better / more evenly. Personally, I think this should have been stock on the S trim level for the 195.
• Add Tower Speakers - there's not really a lot of real estate on the back of boat to add rear speakers, so the tower is the next best place to add rear facing speakers.
• Add amplification for all speakers - the factory Hertz receiver just isn't up to the task.

I ended up selecting the following components for the upgrade:

QTY​	Item​	Price​	Total Price​
3​	Hertz HMX 6.5 C Speakers (pair)​	$143​	$429​
1​	Wet Sounds Stealth 10 Core 10-Speaker Sound Bar w/ Tower Mounts​	$450​	$400​
1​	Kicker 8" Sealed 4Ω TB Subwoofer​	$210​	$210​
2​	Infinity M704A 70W x 4 Class D Amplifier​	$150​	$300​
1​	MTX Wet 500.1 Mono Block Class D Amplifier​	$175​	$175​
1​	Amplifier Wiring Supplies & Other Miscellaneous​	$300​	$300​
		​
		Total​	$1,814​

So ... not necessarily cheap, but definitely on the lower end of some of the audio builds I've seen on here. I could have bought another set of the OEM speakers (~$50 on eBay) and skipped upgrading all of the speakers to save a bit of cash, but after comparing them without amplification, they HMX 6.5s were significantly better than the OEM speakers in the lower frequency range, which is what I was hoping to augment to begin with.

More to come ...

 

[TheArk]

Speaker Upgrade

A key part of my upgrade plan was adding two more cabin speakers. The "S" trim should have been standard this way. With more speakers, you can play music at a lower volume and everyone gets a better listening experience, all while still being able to hold a conversation.

I wanted a set of speakers that looked fairly OEM. I liked the JL Speakers with the slatted grill, but I couldn't find them in black and the they were too pricey. I'm not a big fan of the Wet Sounds Recon grill options (kind of reminds me of the German roundel) and the Revos are too pricey. I had Infinity speakers in my old boat and liked them quite a bit, but the 6.5" Infinity Kappas have a much larger cut out and I didn't want to have use a jigsaw to expand the factory speaker cut outs

I saw that the Hertz speakers were cheap on eBay and I kind of liked the idea of the visible branding matching between the speakers & head unit, so I picked up three pairs of Hertz HMX 6.5 / C speakers:



I'm not super in love with the grill design and I couldn't find any with the black stainless grill insert, but they aren't a huge departure from the factory speakers and I think the stainless grill adds a bit of opulence to the otherwise bland black speaker.





Installing the third pair in the cabin went incredibly smooth thanks to a 5" whole saw:







I ran loomed 14-gauge copper speaker wire to all of the cabin speakers and used the same factory connectors for each speaker. Running the wiring to the front speakers seemed like it was going to be a pain, so I spliced into the factory speaker wiring in the starboard helm and used OEM style connectors there:



The new speakers unfortunately did not have the same bolt pattern as the OEM Hertz speakers.



Overall, I'm pretty happy with the Hertz speakers. No idea how they sound compared to the Wetsounds & JL offerings, but they are clear, punchy, and have great low frequency response. When I first heard them with the amps powering them, I contemplated whether I even needed the subwoofer. Alas, for other reasons, the subwoofer is still necessity.

With a motor turning a jet drive at 6,000 rpm and waves splashing all around, is anyone going to be that discerning that they could honestly say the Wet Sounds or JLs have that much better sound quality and are worth twice the price? I think not.

At some point, I'd like to find some kind of foam material to fill the side cavities - it's a hollow void in there and unlined with any kind of sound deadener - a perfect cavern for unwanted sound to resonate. I think filling / lining those cavities with some kind of sound absorbing material will significantly cut down on the interior noise in the boat.

 

[TheArk]

Amplification

This is one I went back and for on for a while - not only selecting the amps, but where to put them.



In the end, the Infinity amplifiers had positive reviews and were significantly cheaper than the JL and Wetsounds options, so I chose them to power the cabin speakers and soundbar (more on that in a bit). While the amplifiers seam to outperform their advertised specs when put on an amp dyno, they do have some shortcomings:

• There's no way to duplicate the channel inputs, so you have to split the source between the front and rear channels
• The pre-out combines the front and rear input channels and is affected by the gain settings. It was unusable for me.

I don't really have anything to say good or bad about the MTX subwoofer amp. It does it's job as advertised.

The big conundrum was where to cram all of this. There were three options as I saw it:

• Starboard helm (close to source)
• Portside aft storage (close to battery)
• Starboard aft storage (semi close to battery and not too far from the head unit)

I had reasons for not picking the starboard helm:

• We use this space A LOT
• Wasn't really enough space to mount all three amplifiers easily - that's a lot of weight to hang from that fiber glass.
• I didn't want to relocate the table storage provisions.
• We often throw wet life vests in here.

And more reasons for not choosing the port side aft storage:

• We use this space A LOT
• It's a great space for long items like paddles, pool noodles, rolled tubes, all stuff I don't want smashing into electronic equipment.
• There's too much contorting for me toward the rear of that space.

I picked the starboard aft storage and here are the reasons why:

• For us, this is the least accessed storage area in the boat and is fairly small compared to the other storage areas.
• This area has the fewest wet items tossed in it.
• Fairly short battery cable run.
• Reasonable source cable run.
• Fairly easy to run cables.
• Somewhat ventilated given it's proximity to the engine bay.

In terms of placement, there were a few things I wanted to accomplish:

• Didn't want amplifiers mounted directly to the floor
• Wanted to be able to easily access them in case an amplifier died or there was a wiring issue
• Be able to easily set the gains
• Wanted to have everything wired prior to mounting

So I came up with this contraption:





I used Deutsch connectors for all the connections short of the battery cables. This allowed me to connect everything outside of the storage compartment so I could test the connections and set the gains easily without having to contort myself inside a small storage compartment. Once mounted in the storage department, hooking everything up was as simple as plugging in the connectors.

I made another board with stainless drilled studs and screwed that into the floor. This allowed me to slide the whole assembly in there and secure it with cotter pins:



And there's still a decent amount storage space left - can easily place some emergency flotation vests in there:



Were I faced with this decision again, I'd relocate the table storage to another compartment and put the amplifiers in the starboard helm storage. I'd make a tall mounting board that's supported by a mount on the floor of the compartment and secured at the top to the back of the helm.

 

[TheArk]

Soundbar & Subwoofer

The main reason I'm posting this whole build: the Wet Sounds Stealth 10 Core Soundbar.

As mentioned earlier, I wanted more sound behind the boat without having to crank the interior speakers so loud that it's unbearable to be in the boat. We do some watersports, but I'm not a huge fan of blaring music for the whole lake to hear all day long. We love sitting on the back of boat or chilling in the water on pool noodles. Just wanted some decent sound quality immediately behind the boat.

There's not a lot of room at the back of the boat to mount a decent set of speakers and the wiring run looked like it would be a pain in the ass. So that left tower speakers. I really don't like the look of tower speaker pods - they're just not aesthetically pleasing. Then there's the fact that they hang down a significant amount and if you have to drive with tower down (we go under a lot of low bridges to get from one lake to another), the speaker is right in your face.

I was intrigued by the Wet Sounds Stealth soundbar offering:



They have two options - one with an integrated amplifier and one without amplification. I went with the non amplified bar for a few reasons:

• Lighter
• Easier to replace an external amplifier were it to go bad
• Less cabling to run
• Sealed - IP67 rated
• Low Profile

The bar itself is very well built. It's a sealed aluminum enclosure weighing ~ 20lbs. It has t-slots both top and bottom and the grill can be removed and rotated, so if the wiring orientation is opposite of what you need, you can flip the grill and rotate the sound bar (which is what I had to do).

Installation wasn't terrible; however, the Wetsounds 2" tower mounting brackets made mounting the bar to the tower kind of a pain.



They work ... but if the clamps were split vertically rather than at the soundbar mount, they'd be much easier to work with. Also, I had to cut up a tire inner tube and place it inside the circular portion of the brackets in order for them to grab the tower securely,

The cord is pretty thick - ~ 1/2", so I had to cut a 3/4" whole in the tower in order to get the cord and a grommet in there:



By the way ... I read a number of different solutions on how to run wires and extract them from the tower. Some used a coat hanger to guide the wires, others used a looped zip tie placed through the hole in order to grab the wires.

Easiest solution I found? Fish tape and a $5 grabber tool from Ace. We struggled with magnets, zip ties, and pliers, entirely unsuccessfully, until I remembered I had this cheap grabber tool I bought a while ago when I dropped a part inside a car door and didn't want to pull the entire door card. This tools has been a life saver for me.



Press the plunger and out come these delightful little metal claws, perfect for grabbing the fish tape inside the tower tube.

Used a 1/2" ID x 3/4" OD grommet with an 1/8" panel gap to run the cabling through:



Another challenge with the soundbar install -running the wiring into the hull. I ran the wiring on the port side of the boat as I didn't want to interfere with the anchor light wiring that's run on the starboard side of the tower. One problem - the hole for wire passthrough is not drilled on the port side. I originally ran the wiring through the same slot that the tower stop cable is run through, but quickly found interference when the tower was fully lowered:



So ... time to run the wires the right way. There wasn't a lot of clearance to get a drill in there, so I had to use a right angle drill with stubby 3/4" bit (and later a normal length bit - there's a lot of material to drill through):



And now the wiring was run the way the tower manufacturer intended it to be run:







So how does it sound?

I had expectations for this soundbar - they weren't high necessarily, but I will say that Wet Sounds needs to do better.

Remember the giant boom boxes that were hoisted on shoulders and carried around in the 80s? Well now a little JBL bluetooth speaker that is a 1/10th the size puts out higher quality sound at impressive volumes. The bass that comes out of a tiny handheld bluetooth speaker these days is impressive (considering their size and power). Home audio soundbars, while nowhere near a proper 5.1 sound system, are equally impressive. Good driver design, integrated subwoofers, passive radiators really help. So, considering the Wet Sounds soundbar's size, driver count, and amplifier power, when you hear the soundbar initially, you're likely to be disappointed. Wet Sounds has some work to do here. It gets loud and it's clear. In mid and upper frequencies, it sounds great; unfortunately, you get only a whiff of bass - you're going to want more. Don't buy this unless you plan to add a subwoofer.

The good news is ... I planned to add a subwoofer.

I previous had a first generation Infinity BassLink in my old boat. It was awesome - great sound out of compact size and with the integrated amplifier, super easy to install. Plus it was sealed, so you didn't have to worry about critters nesting inside. Subsequent generations of the BassLink just never lived up to sound quality and output of the first generation.

So I went with a Kicker 8" TB sealed subwoofer.



I like it for the following reasons

• Sealed (critters can't nest in there)
• Has subwoofer and passive radiator
• Compact enclosure
• Easy to mount vertically or horizontally.

I went with a 4Ω model as it should work well with the MTX Wet 500.1 mono block amplifier (300 watts into 4Ω, 500 watts into 2Ω) and if I ever wanted to add a second subwoofer, I could run them in parallel with the same amp.

I was undecided on the position of the subwoofer right up until the end, so when I did my speaker wire runs, I also ran wire for a subwoofer up to the port side helm storage (used the windshield mounting bolts to zip tie the wire run):





We use the port side helm storage a lot, so I decided against mounting a sub in there for now and mounted the sub near the amps in the port rear compartment:



With the sub added, the soundbar sounds great. Given the MTX amplifier merges the left and right channels, I piped the cockpit audio source (zone 1) into the left channel and the soundbar audio source (zone 2) in the right channel. Now the bass is perfectly matched to whichever zone is louder.

If I were to stick with just one sub, I’d go for the 10” 2Ω option. However, you can hear a definite decrease in bass when going from the cockpit to the bow, so two 8” subs mounted in separate locations is likely better solution … We'll get a season in and see how feel before adding a second sub.

Audio is clear with plenty of bass behind the boat and if I really need it loud, I can engage the cockpit speakers for more volume (and bass).

If you really wanted to go all-out, instead of mounting four tower speakers, you could mount a Wet Sounds soundbar flanked by two 8" woofers mounted in tower enclosures. That plus a dedicated subwoofer would probably be a pretty rad setup ...

 

[TheArk]

Miscellaneous

One thing that helped me not only while working on the tower, but also while underway going under low bridges - a PVC tower support post:





It disconnects in the middle so it can be stored easily. Very handy for storing the boat with low overhead clearance.



While I was messing around in the port storage compartment, I decided to solve another pet peeve of mine. We store our two person tube deflated in the boat. When someone wants to go tubing, we inflate the tube using a high-pressure Airhead pump:



The pump inflates our two-person O'brien tube pretty quickly (maybe 60 seconds?) and also helps to deflate the tube. One issue with that pump - it draws quite a bit of amperage, so it's designed to be attached to battery posts.

The 195, while spacious for its class, is still a small boat. I can't stand making guests get up and try to huddle in a small corner of the boat while I screw around in the battery compartment to hook up an air pump.

Solution:



I added an SAE port on the port aft storage forward wall with 10-gauge stranded copper back to the battery.





Now we can connect the pump without a guest having to give up their seat temporarily. Plus, it's very easy to connect a battery tender to the battery.

We might be pushing the current limits of that connector, but the pump doesn't run for that long. We'll keep an eye on it.

Wrap Up

Really happy with upgraded sound quality inside the boat. There's no need to crank the stereo so loud that we can no longer each other. Sound quality is an order of magnitude better than the OEM setup.

We're pretty pleased with the way the soundbar turned out both in sound quality and aesthetics. Again, I think Wet Sounds has some work to do in improving low end frequency response, but as long as you plan to add a sub, you should be satisfied with the sound bar. JBL already plays in the marine space, perhaps they'll apply their portable technology and innovate in this area someday.

A key takeaway for here for anyone trying to keep the budget really low - I think the best bang for your buck would be the following:

• Add two additional cockpit speakers - you can find matching stock speakers on eBay for ~ $50.
• Add a 4-channel to amp to drive the cockpit speakers (leave the bow speakers powered by the head unit) - probably ~ $250 for the amp and wiring supplies.

You'd get a massive improvement in sound for ~ $300.

Now it's time to isolate and resolve some rattles and squeaks - the dash glare shield is first on my list.

Next up is a dual battery system (we have a jump pack on-board until then).

 

[Btsnhos]

Looks great, what battery setup are you going with? This is my setup, works great and lasts for days.

 

[TheArk]

Looks great, what battery setup are you going with? This is my setup, works great and lasts for days.

That's a nice setup - definitely overkill for my needs. As I mentioned earlier, I've got too many [expensive] hobbies ... we're planning to enjoy the memorial day weekend by land, air, and sea (motorcycle ride, airplane ride, boat ride).

My dual battery upgrade will also be done on a minimal budget. Planning to add a standard Interstate deep cycle battery and the Blue Seas Mini add-a-battery kit:

​

I had this kit in my last boat and it was pretty slick.

I'll keep the current start battery and replace it when it dies.

 

[Btsnhos]

That’s a good system if you don’t use lithiums