Bass Shakers

[Jason]

I just brought this up in another unrelated thread, but thought I'd share.

Most if not all AVR's are of the 7 channel variety. But many of us only use 5 channels of the amp. These avr's are usually configured to have the option of running the 6th and 7th channel as a multi-room option as well.

This is something I did years ago, and it worked better than I could've imaginged.

I configured the 6/7 channels for multiroom. I ran a y cable from the LFE channel (so it was already crossed over) to a spare input on the avr. I then assigne the multi-room source as the source I plugged in the split lfe into.

I ordered 2 of these and mounted them to the frame of the sofa. When I wanted the shakers, I just turned on the multi-room feature, and voila....I even had separate volume control from the same main remote, to control the shakers independent of the main volume.

Just thought I'd share....it's a relatively cheap tweak that is fun. I posted this years ago over on av123, but I haven't heard of many that have tried it. It worked amazingly well.

[Deathjester]

Great tip, I plan on doing something similar, but a friend told me to go with Clarks..

Is there anyone here that has had extensive experience with multiple shakers and can offer some advice?

[Jason]

Great tip, I plan on doing something similar, but a friend told me to go with Clarks..

Is there anyone here that has had extensive experience with multiple shakers and can offer some advice?

There are a few different tactile trasducers available. Aura was one of the first ones out there and was marketed to the car audio communitiy almost exclusively. Clark Synthesis (richard clark) has superior product. They are measured in pounds of force created per watt. It's been so long since I looked into them, but some of the clark models can produce in excess of 4-5 lbs of force per watt. Multiply that times 75 watts....:thumbsup:

In my application, it was more of a trial thing, just to see if my concept would work. I found that even with the 80 hz lfe x-over, I wanted them even lower. I used another el cheapo solution for this, and used these in line to the spare input to get a lower LP freq for the shakers than just the LFE cutoff

The 2 aura's were plenty to have a nice effect. One thing I found odd, is that I had them mounted to the frame under the sofa, but wasn't getting what I expected. I wired one of them out of phase with the other, and holy molee.....the sofa shook alot. It would've been probably uncomfortable with richard clarks units. Their capability can be measured in multiples over the auras. Then there the Butt Kicker which is king...but is also most expensive, as it's sold as a kit with amp and all.

Interestingly the Clark models are waterproof as well and can be mounted underwater in a pool, so you can hear the music while your head is under water. The upper end clarks used to be used on military simulators for tanks, and even some aviation sims. here's Clarks website...I haven't been there in a while. They will have significantly lower frequency response than the cheaper Aura's so the additional felling in the infrasonics would be cool.

I just though I'd share this as there are many of us that have 2 amp channels that go completely unused. And for a small investment, you can take advantage of those unused channels and add tactile transducers that you usually only see on higher end dedicated rooms.

In the end...it was one of those things that was super cool at first, but my enamor with them wore off fairly quickly. They are not appropriate for some movies. Transformers....sure. That's what's nice about my method of using the 2 room feature of the AVR....I could turn them on and off as my tastes dictated. Your significant other probably won't want them on when she watches "Sex in the City"

[jvgillow]

I helped my friend set up his Denon 7.1 receiver with some bass shakers in this manner. He's only got 5.1 physical speakers, and I wasn't 100% sure if we would be able to use the 6/7 channel for shakers but it ended up working great.

[snock]

That is a really great idea! :clapper:

[Jason]

Great tip, I plan on doing something similar, but a friend told me to go with Clarks..

Is there anyone here that has had extensive experience with multiple shakers and can offer some advice?

Also wanted to point out with multiple shakers.....they don't really require that much power, especially the Clark Synthesis, so if you want to use many of them, just use a wiring combination of series and parallel to achieve the desired impedance level.

But do experiment with phasing. Like I said, I only used 2, one on each end of the sofa, and in phase you could barely feel it. I switched one out of phase, and holy earthquake batman!!

Using the 6/7 channels is so cool because of the remote volume control from your main remote.