Wakeboard Boat Speakers

[lbz99smp]

Hi,
Hopefully someone may be able to help me out. We are currently looking at some new speakers for the tower on our wakeboarding boat. The idea of the speakers on the tower is to project music about 80ft back behind the boat while wakeboarding so the rider can listen to the music while they ride. Most speakers avalible for this application are purely car audio speakers put into tubs and attached to the tower. This doesnt work very well and the music is not clear at the rider. There are a few companies now using pro audio speakers as they are designed to project sound. such as nvs ......

http://www.nvs1.net/tower_speakers.html

I have done a little research on pro audio speakers and would like to use a 10inch coaxial speaker. After digging around abit I cam accross theses. P.Audio BM Series 300 Watt 10" Coaxial Transducer.....

http://www.cannononline.com.au/catal.../c94/c315/p926

ideally I would like the speaker to produce good quality clear sound 80ft behind the boat without blasting the people in the back of the boat.

I guess the question I have are
- is this speaker foing to produce good quality clear sound 80ft behind the boat or am i not on the right track?
- do i require a cross over for this type of speaker.
- will the speaker run effectivly off a 12v car amp.
( i plan on have about 160w to each speaker)

Any help would be greatly appreciated....I dont know a great deal about pro audio speakers and i cant seem to find any help locally.

attached are some pics that might help.
thanks.

[noodle_snacks]

I was looking at using some of these for PA use, it seems that the 12in -3db point at best is about 150hz, are my simulations correct? If so you'd need some subwoofers for bass duty with coaxials

[sreten]

Hi,

at 80ft behind the boat you need some highly direction speakers.

In PA speak this means long throw rather than short throw.

A tube is a very crude attempt to make a long throw speaker as
experts in PA (which I'm not) will tell you. I think you need some
form of extreme throw horn loading or a multiple array of drivers.

The multiple array is only phase consistent on axis, and the more
drivers you use the longer throw it produces, it has to be a fair
size to be able to project any bass, the same is true for the horn
loaded speaker.

Note the tower speaker you reference doesn't project sound itself
in any special way, when arranged in numbers on a pole they will
form a line array, which projects vertically but has wide horizontal
dispersion.

/sreten.