Bass shakers (Aura / Dayton / Buttkicker) question and experience thread

I recently took another look at bass-shakers, and have been playing around with making my gaming chair a vibration machine. I live local to the Parts Express warehouse, so on a whim one day I decided to pick this bundle of a 250w plate amp and 4 Aura AST-2B-4 Pro Bass Shakers:



I installed all four units inside the back of my game-room lounge chair, which has a pretty solid all-wood frame:





After I got done with this, I decided that bass-shakers are the secret to happiness, and I fell in love with the things. The Auras are only rated for 50w RMS, so with the gain at about 70% these worked GREAT for movies and music using a 250w plate amp. But these units are most responsive at about 32-34hz, and responsiveness drops quickly outside of that range. I wanted slightly more low frequency response, so I leveled up and also bought a Buttkicker LFE paired with a SA1000 mono AB amplifier.





I mounted the Buttkicker to a 3/4 piece of Birch plywood, and sealed the bottom of the chair cavity so that the Buttkicker was oriented in it's default upright position:






It looks a little janky underneath, but it's solid as hell and looks fine in front of my TV. Theres a 15" Dayton sealed sub right behind the whole setup to offer a tad bit of little real SPL to the room.



Anyway, DAYUUUM, the Buttkicker obliterates the performance of the Aura units. The Buttkicker is responsive down to like 5Hz all the way up to 30-32hz, which compliments the Auras exceptionally. The 18-24hz range played on the Buttkickers with that SA1000 will shake your walls down if you don't use some kind of kinetic isolation feet on your furniture, but it's insane how quiet all of this is from other rooms in my house (unless you don't use isolators, in which case it'll shake everyone in the house). For real, the Buttkicker is amazing.

I highly recommend giving these a shot if you want your home theater to come alive, it's immersive as hell.

I do have some questions from other shaker users. It seems like the Buttkickers will operate on anything from 400w to 1500w. I have seen my 1kw amp clip at 60% gain when driving the Buttkicker, so I know that the Buttkicker driver would eat more juice than 1kw if I had more to spare. Here's my questions:

1. Does anyone here run a Buttkicker at 1500 watts, and if so, how does it perform? If you do run it at 1500 watts, do you use an AB amp, or possibly a bridged D class Amp? Does a D amp affect fidelity at these low of frequencies on a shaker (or would you even notice)?
2. Sometimes, and this appears to happen outside of clipping, a subsonic <20hz frequency will cause my Buttkicker to "hammer" like someone with metal fists is knocking on my door. I really doesn't sound normal. Is this actually clipping (as reducing gain will drop the effect), or is this the equivalent of over-excursion on the Buttkicker piston? Anything I can do to mitigate this with my EQ on the SA1000, such as drop DB on real low frequencies?
3. Has anyone used this in a vehicle in lieu of under-seat subs, paired with maybe a smaller actual subwoofer (like an 8 or 10), to simulate a ton of in-cab bass?

Thanks for taking a look at this post, and sharing your experiences. I was a non-beliver of the shakers/rattlers, but ever since putting some in my gaming setup, I don't think I'll ever be able to go without.

 

You may not get a lot of responses here unfortunately. However, I might head to my 2nd favorite forum, AVSforum.com , if you haven’t already. Lots of buttkicker threads there!

 

Thanks! A little off topic for here, but I was thinking about adding some of these to the Taco. Just wanted to test in-home first

 

I won’t necessarily say “don’t” do that, but I would be sure to do a lot of research first. I have 3 main concerns when I try to picture it in my head

1) safety. I am not sure what exactly it takes to trigger the airbags, but I know there are sensors under the seat. I wouldn’t want the vibration to make the truck think you just hit a brick wall

2) space. Those things may not fit under the seat. There is only a few inches of clearance. And you’re trying to fit it under there with all the sliding rails and everything.

3) effectiveness. In a home theater scenario, you’re typically isolating the seat from the flooring. In a truck, the seat is very much attached securely to the body. So you’d be trying to vibrate the whole body of the truck.

 

Yea, these are all good points. The airbag thing, I'd like to hope those sensors ignore a bit of oscillation, since I have a bunch of subwoofers in the truck already. The space would be an issue, but I would take the seats out and mount the transducers directly into the undercarriage, which would grant me the extra 2-3 inches I'd need for clearance. But you're dead on about the seats being mounted to the frame, which would mean the shakers would directly shake the whole damn truck. Not sure how bad that would be for... well... everything attached to the truck. Probably best to stick to the subwoofers for the low end feels.

I actually had to turn the Buttshaker off tonight because I am starting to worry about my floor. I live in a 100 year old house, and although it's in great shape and well built, these things shake the hell out of the room. I need to figure out a better solution to isolate the vibrations; probably going to have to make some kind of riser.

Thanks for the advice about the truck.

 

No.

Im pretty familiar with these as I’ve done service at locations that use them. We don’t use anywhere near that much power to drive Buttkickers. I’m talking maybe a 3000W (bridged amp) to push a row of 15-20 of them, not a single Buttkicker.

These things have physical limits too.

Keep in mind that all of these devices are meant to augment LF, not replace it at all. We used to do the same thing about 20 years ago using hydro subs, and the original intent was to create an experience that mimics a room with a ton of sub without transferring too much of it into adjacent spaces. The hydros used wavelength sorcery and I think the benefit was marginal, but mostly they were a nightmare to service because I was having to fill the bladders and replacing drivers sucked because they were sealed inside the box, and they blew drivers constantly.

Personally, I hate them. They add noise that shouldn’t be there, they are a lot of maintenance and let’s be honest, they are gimmicky, just like those hydros were. Any sound system I designed never came close to needing additional tactile sensation for LF.

People like them though, so they get installed, and it’s annoying because it’s an entire additional rack of amps and a fuckload of series/parallel, and making jumpers is annoying when you are wiring 200+ devices, especially for something you don’t believe in.

 

Man, sorry to hear about your bad experience with these. I'd probably lose my mind trying to series parallel 20 drivers to 4 ohms too. I get your point of view, but man, I think shakers add a hell of a lot to games and movies. I still use a sub, but now I can turn it down to a level that's not pounding my cabinets open.

That's crazy that you powered 15-20 with 3K. That seems like you used the pucks as opposed to the piston driver, otherwise I can't imagine how well they were being driven. I push 1K into the single LFE, and it's eat it all. It typically only "knocks" when the amp clips or it gets punched with some heavy subsonic from a Bassatronics song or something. Otherwise it's all smooth.

I know they are considered gimmicky by many, but I can't see how you would make a flight/racing simulator without using them. They also make playing sit-down VR crazy immersive.

 

I find having a low steep crossover with the bass shakers helps to mix the shakers with the subwoofer. You don't want them shaking all the time for just about any bass (that does get tiring). I have a 4th order Linkwitz–Riley crossover (24dB/octave) set to 50Hz just for the shakers. If they are shaking, it is because there is some deep bass present. I have four of the Dayton BST-1 shakers mounted under my three-seat home theater couch. I like what they add to the experience.

 

20 years ago I put one 25w aura bass shaker in each of my front two seats of my Honda prelude. I hooked up a 2x25 amp to both bass shakers. It was awesome but intense. I wish I had a separate remote volume knob on the dash for the 2x25 amp.