Marine Audio
Head unit replacements start at $500 installed. Full builds start at $2,500. Most are done in one to two days.A head unit swap is the right job when the speakers are fine and the source unit failed — or when the boat is older and the stereo is what’s holding it back. A current marine head unit is often the best money you can put in an older boat: wireless AirPlay that doesn’t crush the stream the way Bluetooth does, plus a sealed dash and a unit that will survive the water. It will not make the boat louder. It will make what you already have worth listening to.
We install Wet Sounds, JL Audio, Fusion, and Kicker. That gear is built for sun, spray, and vibration, and it holds up for years — not a season. They’re the lines we’d put on our own boats.
A full build is a different job. Towers, a subwoofer, amplification, and how many zones you want to control, that’s what moves the number. It scales with the boat.
Why it costs more than car audio
UV-stable housings, sealed electronics, tinned marine wire. No factory harness to tap. No headliner to hide a run. Most of the labor is wiring you never see. That’s where cheap installs fail — the connections, not the speakers.
Subwoofers
There are two ways to think about a sub: bass you can feel, and bass that completes the music. Small speakers cannot play the bottom of the song. A full system without a sub can be clear and still feel thin.
We set it up for how you actually listen — hard on the water, or accurate at cruise. Enclosure and placement matter more than cone size. Own amp. Not a bare sub in a ski locker.
Tower Speakers
More output, more wind, and the listener is usually behind the boat. They get their own amplification so they play back to the water — sports, or sitting at the sandbar. There are two styles. Coaxial towers are a woofer and tweeter in one housing. Wider, more musical, better when people are in the boat and behind it. HLCD (horn-loaded compression driver) is built to throw. Louder at distance, more cut through wind, the one you want when the party is off the transom. We spec to how you actually use the boat, not whichever one is louder on a brochure.
Digital Signal Proccessors
Plenty of boats don’t have one. A well-wired system without a DSP is still a great system. A DSP is what takes a great system to incredible — crossovers, EQ, time alignment, and level per zone, so everything works together. A DSP is wired between the head unit and amplifer, and allows us to completely change and adjust the way each individual speaker sounds and performs.
Think of it like this: Watching a movie at home off of your TV speakers vs watching that same movie with a high fidelity surround-sound system
Get a Quote
Tell us what the boat is and what you want out of it, and we'll tell you which job you're actually looking at. Or call 936-727-3117.