A boom box can make a lot of quality sound off of few "C" cells
hmm, we use a boom box at the moment (we have tried several different makes of 'boom box'). It takes 8 C-cells, and is only just loud enough if everyone is sitting around it quietly. The batteries don't last much more than maybe 6-10 hours.
A big deep cycle battery is something really heavy to be camping with.
I'm not bothered about the weight, its not going to have to be carried in a rucksack. The hydrogen does worry me slightly. Especially around fires, gas stoves etc (isn't hydrogen highly explosive...?)
The thing we're overlooking here is, do you really need so much power?
the only reason that I was looking at a car battery was that my scout unit used to have one the things I want to build, and that was powered from a car battery, so it seemed like the obvious choice (also, I am trying to power car cd players, speakers etc, so i would need 12v)
Driving deep bass to huge subwoofers takes an inordinate amount of power nonetheless. Do you need this? Are you thinking of driving monitor speakers? In this case, the size of the battery's not bad compared to the size of the speakers?
I suppose I could not bother with the sub, and just have some normal speakers, if it will increase the power consumption a lot.
Not monitor speakers, just standard car speakers (well, a bit more powerful than standard car speakers, but nothing out of this world)
What area are you trying to project sound over?
err, well quite loud, as the sound is easily lost in the open air, and loud enough so that other people on the campsite can hear us (we have a reputation to keep up).
What quality of sound? How many hours of continuous use?
err, just reasonably high quality, so that when we turn up the volume it won't distort... and preferably i would like it to last at least for 10 hours without needing recharging, but it would probably only be on for around 3 hours at a time (although I
could recharge it after each 3 hours, trekking it the car park with a great big battery in your hand is
really inconvenient)
Thanks for all the idea everyone - I really appreciate the input and feedback
Tim