Shakers - Simple/Cheap Hookup - Visual Guide - Page 67

Well I was actually able to get one mounted up the one of the chairs. Pics sometime tomorrow.

As far as input on the receiver that is powering them goes. Do I run it into the 5.1 sub input? Just a left on a audio input. Put a 2nd splitter to split left and right on a audio input?

Which input you use is directly related to what speaker channel(s) you use to power the shakers. And that relates to how many shakers you install (to get proper resistance, ideally 8 ohms). This is probably a question worth looking at past "how to" posts in this thread, as it's the most basic yet important part of connecting it up.

Something to ask you guys who are using multiple shakers per seat/sofa.

I currently have 2 shaker pro's mounted to my 3 seater sofa. Each is powered by either the L or R channel off an old Yamaha stereo receiver since it happens to be 4ohm stable.

Q: Why are you guys mounting so many shakers your seats?

At 25% volume, my sofa has plenty of thump for 3 of us on top of the sofa. At 35% my house whole living room starts to shake. I haven't gone higher than that since I share a wall w/ my neighbour and i'm afraid at 50+% both our houses will shake...

Am I just sensitive to the shakes or is there something fundamentally very different between our setups?

The more shakers you have, the more evenly you can disperse the thumping. Imagine one shaker large enough to shake the whole sofa. You put it in the middle, and the middle person gets 80% of it and the other two get 10%. Or you could put six in it at 1/6 the power, and have more even dispersion. That's one reason, at least.

My 777es has a 4 ohm 8 ohm switch. So its on 4 ohm. Bout to fire this up for the first time. I guess Jurassic Park T-rex scene will be a good test.

Here is how I mounted a aura bass shaker pro to one of my barka loungers.

There where 6 holes along two of the bottom support beams

I got a 3/4 ply wood cut to 9x13
6 2 inch 1/4 bolts
6 hex nuts
12 washers
#8 1 inch wood screws

Drilled 1/4 holes into the wood using a brad tiped 1/4 bit and bolted that up to the chair. Screwed in the aura to the wood. And aimed the wires at the back of the chair.

Clark Synthesis TST239 Transducer---Suitable Amp?
I was wondering if one of these can be powered by a Harman Kardon 3490? Since my HK 3600 doesn't have two sub-outs I would have to get a Y-splitter to seperate the LFE signals. One to my subwoofer the other to the CD input of the HK 3490. Then I would connect the transducer to the left or right connection of my HK 3490 and all would be set.

I'm also I'm assmuing I would need an FMOD. Perhaps 70 Hz low pass?

I had started a thread but it got no replies.

I need help with my shaker. Hope I get some useful info here. I have an aura pro bass shaker and I don't know how to hook it up to my receiver. because the sub and receiver connection for the sub doesn't have +/- connections on it. It has a single prong plugin wire. My receiver is an Insignia NS-HTIB51A. I have the shaker hooked up to my center speaker wires but it doesn't work very well. How do I hook it up to my sub?

First, I think you need at least 2 shakers or even numbers of more shakers for the wiring to work. Do some searching on this thread to find out how to wire them to a separate amp... see below.

The shakers need to be be powered by a separate amplifier/receiver. Your primary receiver cannot power the shakers. Some people use an old receiver to power the shakers or a dedicated amplifier such as these subwoofer amps from Parts Express http://www.parts-express.com/wizards...omo=&srchAttr=.

The Parts Express 25 watt plate amp is probably enough for 2 shakers, and the 70 watt amp would power 2-4 shakers.

To send the signal to the amp/shakers you will need a Y-splitter from the subwoofer out on the back of your receiver. One subwoofer cable to your subwoofer as normal, and the other subwoofer cable to the amp/receiver that is powering the shakers.

When I got 2 shakers and a PE amp 9 months ago, I did a lot of reading in this thread to understand how to hook up everything.

Here is another thread on Bass Shakers: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=392656

Hope that helps.
Gary

Great thread! I'm going to jump in with my set-up details and maybe garner some feedback too.
My room is designed to actually be a home gym, and to convert to a 6-seat home theatre within 15 minutes. I'm using these inflatable recliners - very comfortable indeed! This allows me to move all equipment into a storage room (where it's normally kept anyway), and bring seating into the area, inflate it and off we go to 120" screen and 9.2/11.2 speaker goodness.
However, ever since I tried a buttkicker in my media room, I've been hooked on tactile transduction! I decided I needed something similar in the home theatre. The challenge is that I will need to bass-shake from one to six seats in single seat increments. i.e. if I only have three guests, I will only bring out three seats. etc. Here's the plan:

I'm building six, small, lightweight platforms, one for each seat, made of plywood and 2x3 for a frame. These will have rubber isolators on each corner, and will be sitting on a dense foam tiled floor too. I have a mixture of 4 Aura bass shakers (non-pro) and 4 K-Woon bass shakers, each approximately twice as powerful as the Aura ones. Onto two of the platforms, I will be hooking up a pair of Aura shakers for an 8 Ohm load on each. These will be a fair bit taller than the other four platforms, since they will act as a "back row". The four low-profile platforms will contain one 4 Ohm K-Woon shaker each. The K-Woons are lower profile than the Auras, so they're suited for this. Each of the platforms will have a banana-plug wall plate affixed to it, and I will be constructing a number of custom-made cables that will allow various seating permutations.

The K-Woons platforms will always be hooked up in series pairs to present an 8 Ohm load. Hence I could configure any number of seats from one to six, and always have between one and four 8 Ohm loads. The amplification will be done by a Yamaha RX-V663 7.1 receiver, which is capable of all-channel stereo, supposedly up to 90W RMS. The main AV receiver providing the signal is an Onkyo TX-NR5007 9.2 receiver.

The two sub outputs from the Onkyo will be split, each going to one sub and one channel of a stereo input on the Yamaha. My room's speakers go down to 50 Hz, and I'll probably crossover to the sub output at 60 Hz on the Onkyo. Thus, the Yamaha will never see anything higher than 60 Hz. I will use the Yamaha in "All channel stereo" mode, as both input channels will be receiving the same signal anyway. This will allow me to use up to 7 channels - for up to another 6 seats (in the future?) using 4 Ohm shakers. I've run 7 speaker cables from the media cabinet under the floor to a vertical support beam near the seating. This contains wall plates with banana plug connectors. The custom made cables will connect between this beam and the platforms. Thus, I should be able to quickly set up between one and six seats, with bass shaking thrown in.

I hope this makes sense without diagrams, which I could add later. I'd love to hear any feedback, good or bad, about what I plan to do. The first prototype single-seat platform will be made on Friday. I hope it'll work as well as I think it does in theory!


[EDIT] Since this post, many plas have changed and I went buttkicker crazy, buying multiple LFEs, BKA-1000A amps and another BK Advance wireless kit. New set-ups described in a post a few down from this one.

I am looking to add these to my set up. So if I'm understanding everything correctly... could I just simply buy the Dayton 70W Subwoofer Amplifier and connect it to my NR-1008s second Subwoofer out connection. Then simply connect the Aura pro bass shakers? How specifically do I need to connect the shakers to the Dayton amp?

Thanks!

You just use regular speaker wire to connect the shakers to the Dayton amp.

Cool! So I guess I'll be able to control the volume from the amp... awesome! Will I be able to get 3 running with that set up? I have 3 seats on my couch. So 3 would be perfect!

Just make sure to wire them in series to present a 12 ohm load to the amp.

If you wire two in series and then those in parallel with the third, the total impedance seen at the amp will be 2.67 Ohms, which should be okay - check that the Dayton amp can go down to 2 Ohms first though.
Alternatively, get four shakers and put two under the centre chair; you can then wire them in series-parallel and be able to present a perfect 4 Ohm impedence to the amp.
And yes, you'll be able to control the volume from your Onkyo receiver for all your regular speakers, of course, and also the intensity of the transduction by the shakers. You'll have to play around to get the right balance of default sub output and Dayton Amp setting to give you great, distortion free shaking!

Ah! So 4 would be better than 3?! Cool. Would it be safe to say that the Dayton 100w would be better to get than the 70w one? I'm ready to pull the trigger on this. Just wanted to get into on these questions I had.

4 in a series /parallel configuration would be best, along with the 100 watt amp.

Great! Just placed my order with Parts Express. Hopefully they come this week. It can become my weekend project. Only ordered 2 for now. I'll get 2 more later. Thanks for the info guys!

Personally, I'd go with the $99 240w model to make sure the peak power is there. Plus you never know when you want to go with a mire powerful transducer in the future.

Btw, I've compared the non-pro aura shakers to the eBay k-Woons. The K-Woons are much better by far, and can be had for $140 for four.

Oops my post was just a few mins too late.

lol yep! Their website says you can't cancel your order once it's been submitted also. Oh well. I'm sure from what I have now, (ie nothing), to this, will be a huge difference.

Thanks!

Where can I find the 240w model for $99? It's $140 there at PE.

Ah, if I'm not mistaken, it was on special for almost the whole of last month at $99.
You can see it discussed here.

Yes, it will still be great! Good luck!

Quick question regarding the buttkickers.

I have a BKA-300 and two advances.

1) Is it possible/safe to hook up two BKA advances to the amp without overloading?
2) If so, how would I wire the two advances to the amp?

Don't want to invest in a bigger amp/BK1000 if I don't have to yet.

I'm not sure. I wondered this myself a lot. What I found is that my "wireless" BKA-300 and Advance had to be turned down A LOT to get the right effect, and it's still able to shake a sofa and love seat with 5 adults on it (they both share the platform that comes with the wireless kit, with a corner leg of each resting on it.)

So power wise I'm sure it's not a problem. I'd look into whether the amp can handle a 2 Ohm or 8 Ohm load.

I just checked: Power Output: 300 watts rms @ 4 ohms / 150 watts rms @ 2 ohms - 120V / 240V Convertible

You should be okay wiring them in parallel then, to get a 2 Ohm load.
Each Advance will see 150W RMS, which is fine since their specs are:

Nominal Impedance:
4 ohm, inductive
Power Handling:
75 watt min. /
400 wats max.

However, I won't take responsibility for any damaged equipment or seismic destruction of your home town.

Guys, I'm going through a tactile transducer kick right now. I have two home theatre rooms and have bought a butt-load of these things for testing and possibly doing future installations.
So far I have:

1 wireless BK Advance kit (<- that got me hooked) It's in the media room where it does very well shaking a loveseat and a couch.

4 Aura Bass-shakers (25W RMS, non-pro). These seem to be tougher to drive. They worked very well with the BKA-300 amp, but with my Yamaha receiver, they need to be turned up to +12 db for a satisfactory effect. They're in series pairs in order to present an 8 Ohm load to the Yamaha.

4 K-Woon Shakers (40W RMS). Not very much more than the non-pro Bass-shakers, butt [sic] they have one hell of a kick, and do very well down to their specs of 20 Hz. They certainly add more to a soundtrack than my 28 Hz capable 12" sub.

3 Buttkicker LFEs, with 2 of the BKA-1000A amps and a third BKA-1000A on its way. These are going onto two single seat riser platforms in the basement theatre. These things are almost too powerful. I have two of them connected in parallel to one BKA-1000A and it's turned to just 1/3 of the way up. So, I may end up with a spare BK-LFE and two spare BKA-1000As.

1 more wireless Buttkicker Advance kit is on its way. I found the Advance more refined in some ways than the LFEs, and more than adequate to shake an individual riser platform. Plus, since the wireless amps are remote control operable, have different Eq settings for music, movies and games, and can be wired so that an IR command to one is registered by all the BKA-300 amps that are daisychained together, that I might use this for the larger basement theatre. I'd then move one of the LFEs to the media room to replace the BK Advance kit that's currently installed there.

All speaker wiring to the shakers goes under the floor and emerges into a vertical support beam near where the seats are. The wiring goes to 7 banana-plug connectors mounted on two wall plates in the beam. So that room is ready for a whole slew of tactile transducers if necessary.

I'd be happy to share any of my experiences with the wiring, platform making and performance of these shakers and transducers. I learned a lot from this forum, but then discovered a lot more by simply spending the money and trying them out over the past few weeks. Now I'm in the position of having too many transducers and amps! My contractor and I have done a lot of tests and there's still a lot more to do, but if I can save someone else some money with the right recommendations, I'm all for it. Admittedly, I have no experience with the Clarke Synthesis transducers though. I'll post pictures of my set-ups when closer to completion if anyone's interested.

Thanks for the feedback and checking into it fitbrit.

I'm going to give it a try (Running them in parellel) to the BKA-300.

Might also give Guitihammer a call and see what they say. Looks like, in theory it should work fine.

I received my 100watt Dayton amp... but how do I hook it up to my receiver? I have two subwoofer outs on my NR1008 receiver, so I hooked up the RCA cable to the receiver. Then the Dayton amp has low level input/output L/R, which I would connect to either L/R inputs... then I guess I would connect the shakers to the "to speaker" posts?

I'm so confused... sorry. I'm wondering if maybe the amp is damaged....??

Looking at the picture on Parts Express you can hook up an RCA to one of the low-level inputs on the Dayton. If you have an RCA splitter, you can hook it up to both inputs. The bass shakers will then be hooked up to the "To speakers" speaker posts on the Dayton.

In other words, exactly as you wrote down!