Forum Discussion

pbeverly's avatar
Oct 13, 2018

2019 Grey Wolf - Outdoor Speakers

On our maiden trip discovered that the outdoor speakers sound really bad. Indoor ones are great. The outdoor ones are tinny and static sounding. Really not listenable accept to drown out loud talking neighbors.

Is this typical or a bad installation?
  • From reading these forums over the years, I would have to say poor quality/sounding outdoor speakers are typical. Having said that, my outdoor speakers have a great sound, with good clarity. Mine are a marine type speaker, but not sure of the brand.

    Jerry
  • Typical, cheap junk. You can replace them with better quality speakers but they have to be shallow mount marine speakers. You run into problems because the wall is not very thick 1.5 inches in most case.
  • pbeverly wrote:
    On our maiden trip discovered that the outdoor speakers sound really bad. Indoor ones are great. The outdoor ones are tinny and static sounding. Really not listenable accept to drown out loud talking neighbors.

    Is this typical or a bad installation?


    Maybe they talk loud to drown out the cheap tinny outdoor speakers:h
  • Besides being the cheapest that can be found they most likely wired them reverse polarity.
    Forest River is notorius for it as well as wiring the exterior pair to the right channel of output 3, and the interior pair to the left channel of output 1. The Amish, and Forest River especially, are far from qualifying as audiophiles lol.
  • As colliehauler said, if you replace the speakers make sure you use marine type speakers. They are designed for wet locations. But the speaker may not be your problem.

    One of my outdoor speakers had a buzzing static sound that made it practically unusable. I discovered that the sound was not the fault of the speaker but rather the surround for the speaker. This particular speaker protruded into an overhead cabinet in the kitchen. It was covered with a thin plastic box stapled to the inside wall of the cabinet. It gave the speaker some physical protection but it vibrated when the speaker was being used. I ripped off the plastic box and substituted one I made from heavier plywood. Problem solved. Perhaps this is really your problem and not your speaker.
  • Concur with the possible polarity problem. Pull one speaker, swap the wires on the terminals and put it back in and check the sound. Opposite polarity on the speakers will cause cancellation of many frequencies, distance & frequency length dependent, if the same signal is sent to both speakers in the sound mix.
    Some sound FX units in the past had a Kareoke mode where it would take the normal human speech frquency range and make one of the stereo signal sides opposite polarity in that range only. The result would be most music would be normal but the vocals would be significantly squashed out (also middle acoustic guitar sounds).
    So try that before replacing the speakers.
  • Dealer confirmed that reversed wiring a good possibility. So I will take them off and see.
  • rightlaneonly wrote:
    pbeverly wrote:
    On our maiden trip discovered that the outdoor speakers sound really bad. Indoor ones are great. The outdoor ones are tinny and static sounding. Really not listenable accept to drown out loud talking neighbors.

    Is this typical or a bad installation?


    Maybe they talk loud to drown out the cheap tinny outdoor speakers:h


    And the noise police have chimed in with their first snarky comment.
  • MAJOR RANT here, Please stay at the other end of the campground from us with your cheap tinny speakers, I hate it when people play their music loud enough for all to hear thinking that everyone likes the same kind noise. Your soothing lullaby is usually fingernails on a chalkboard to me. I'm a classical musician so there ain't much you can play that sounds decent. Why are you heading for the great outdoors and bringing along your annoying indoor residential noises to ruin the tranquil ambiance for others?

    Shoot, myswell keep going, how about you all in your big 5'ers and Class A's with big sound systems playing movies at night while the rest of us suffer through explosions and screams from your 2 hour movies? Sound really carries at night so you should use headphones. Please have mercy.

    Ok, I'm done.