What would you buy buttkicker or crowson?  

I am playing with the Crowson right now. At first, just to try them right away, I hooked them up full range. It was OK. Then I took the time to re-arrange things so I could connect it to a separate amp using the LFE out of my surround receiver. Much better.

The Crowson sit right under the rear foot of your couch or chair therefor transferring the tactile sensations right to the frame of the seating. It just feels more realistic to me. I would look for shakers that you can attach to the frame of the seating instead of just the springs of the seats. It gets more of the chair involved for a more realistic sensation. I would use the LFE output if possible. I just finished watching the first Lord of the Rings and the information transfered from the LFE output to the tactile transducers was awesome. Hopefully your surround processor has an LFE output or a variable output. I am just using a spare 100 watt receiver to run the Crowson.

The nice thing about the Crowson is that you do not have to mount anything. It just sits under the foot of your chair. But like I said, if you are going to add a shaker, try and get something that you can mount so that the information is transfered to the frame of the chair.

AS Hoops alludes to, I think it depends on your application. I have two Buttkicker LFE's... one in each riser and it ROCKS. I can not say these are the be-all end-all of tactile transducers but for my application and budget they are working out nicely.

As a side note.... While the carpet was being layed on the risers I was worried about the day that the buttkickers stop working. It will take a substantial amount of work to "get to them" since they are mounted underside of the riser in my basement theater... no overhead access to them. I also did not build an access door but any future failure may dictate that I create access doors to get to them.

Take care,

Elmer

I have not tried the Crowson, but assuming they work okay, I'd probably get them for the convenience of set-up factor. That said, I have BK2s and LOVE THEM. Also have Aura Pros and like them.

I was going to mention the Aura's..Very awesome for the price!!Iv'e got 6 now, and plan to add more later,but they rock, and are not hard to install at all.I agree to, you must use the LFE channel for maximum impact!

brickie

How big of an amp are you using for 6?

I'm using an Onkyo I found at the flea market.Has really worked otu sweet for me..So many say to get 100 watt receivers, but it's just not necessary.That said, if you can,sure why not! I believe my Onkyo is rated at 50 watts per channel, and the volume is way less than half! It does not take alot of juice at all to get those shakers going!!

brickie

I am highly considering the Crownson's because there is really no place to mount the Aura Bass shakers on my chairs (trust me on this). The Buttkickers I can use on my riser but the folks in the first row will have nothing which leaves the Crownsons. The only thing I don't like about the Crownson's is the cost as I will need six of them.

Are you guys ordering your Crowson's direct from them? I already have felt what Buttkickers do, so I've decided to pick up one Crowson and see what it's like. But my local stores don't carry them.

If I like it, I'll order more - if not, then worst case is I order a chair without a Buttkicker on it and put it on the one Crowson I do have - and then I don't sit there. :D

Also - Hoops... do you have the chair kit AND the couch kit? I'm doing nine 090's, but am just a bit curious as to how the two units differ, and if that difference is noticable.

I have the couch kit. The couch kit is just two units instead of one. I am actually using one each for a couch and a love seat. I haven't used two for the couch yet. For a row of seating you would probably have to use one on each chair unless you get a brand that bolts together, which most don't. Or put it under the chair you're going to sit on and forget about everybody else!

I watched the 2nd Lord of the Rings last night (I know, I'm probably the only person that hasn't seen them yet) and the effect of the transducers was incredible.

I have Aura Pros sitting at home to try out as well but haven't hooked them up yet. My couch and love seat have a covering underneath so I would have to take that off to mount them. Too lazy I guess. The Crowson was too easy. For the money the Aura sounds like it might be OK but I just can't imagine getting the same effect just mounting them to the seat suspension as the Crowsons give by being directly under the foot and delivering the information to the frame of the seat. You would think that the Aura wouldn't be able to transfer as much information because of excess movement. But I will give them a try.

I personally use the Buttkicker under my theater seats and I use buttkicker amp to drive one and the other one is shared. I really like the result a lot after I upgraded to the buttkicker amp since now it really kicks in. I have tried receivers to other amps and the result is just not the same.

Not sure if anyone have the same experience as I did.
The Crowson looks pretty cool but the price is kind of high.

Bill

I find that the LFE output does a lot of that. In the 2nd lord of the Rings (I keep referring to that because I just saw it) there were subtle sounds through the transducer as well as thumping sounds! When the dude (sorry, can't remember his name) on the dragon came flying over the swamp, it was incredible. I swear I felt the rush of air as well as the couch rumbling bass from the wings flapping.

What we need is hydraulics as well as transducers for the seats! Something in each leg so we can feel motion as well as the rumble. I guess that's what the D-box does for a platform. Oh well, we're never satisfied.

I ordered a single Crowson on Monday, to be shipped via 2-day air. They shipped it yesterday via overnight - hopefully it'll be waiting for me when I get home tonight. Looking forward to trying it out!

I ordered a single chair kit so I can figure out if I want to go with Crowson's or Buttkickers all around. I know what Buttkickers can do, so I figure this is a "cheap" experiment before I commit to a pretty hefty purchase - regardless of which route I go. (nine seats)

Supercop,

My Halo C2 does in fact have an output specifically for tactile transducers.... It filters out everything above 20hz.... pretty nifty idea. Of course it also has a mirrored subwoofer output that could also be used if you wanted to use the higher freqs...

Take care,

Elmer

EDIT: After re-reading your post... I like your idea...

Waiting for that review!!

Brickie

Here's the review - short and sweet.... I'm sending it back. It could be that I had an underpowered amp on it, it could be that I only had one on my couch when I tested it out, it could be.... it could be that they just don't offer much of anything different from a Buttkicker or a Clark. I sat in a chair with a $100 Clark recently, and the sensation was remarkably more intense and refined than what the Crowson offers.

But that said - if someone's looking for an effective shaker with a fast and simple install, the Crowson fits the bill. I personally don't think it's worth double the price of a Buttkicker or triple a low-end Clark.

Plus I bought a Paradigm Servo 15v2 tonight - so hopefully that'll do the shaking for me. :D

You really should look intoo those bass shakers..Price point vs performance factor is awesome!!

brickie

I had 25w Auras in the couches in my last system powered by a small Radio Shack amp - and I would agree that the bang for the buck factor there was impressive.

I think that if I don't get the "shake" I want from my sub once it's set up and properly calibrated, I'll either put the 50w Auras or the entry-level Clarks in the chairs, or Buttkickers on the risers.

I currently use 4 clark silvers and find the effect totally amazing.

I'm pretty new to this forum and will probably get blasted for this - but I disagree with Mr. Squid. Last January at CES in the main hall I sat in the Buttkicker demo, the Clark demo, and later that afternoon in the Crowson demo. They were across town in the high-end audio section. The first two were powerful but not nearly as defined. There was no doubt in my mind that the Crowson's were faster.



I have a Couch Kit which I’ve been using for about a month now. With the A200 amp it rocks the house. I tried using a pro audio amp before that but the input sensitivity was too low and forced me to pump up the volume too high. They offered to send me a little pre-amp for free to match signal strengths but I ended up buying their amp instead which I'm really happy with.

RIT, are you using them full range like they recommend or with an LFE output. I tried the Clarks full range and at first it was cool but then the buzzing feeling was annoying.

I do feel that the Crowson is faster as BChap says. And by being directly under a rear leg it seems to tranfer information better.

My reciever is an older Yamaha. I have an old Onkyo as the transducer amp being fed off the LFE of the Yamaha.

I have a leather couch that sits on a chunk of carpeting on concrete in an unfinished (home theater in progress!) basement. I'm assuming that the transducer may work better because of being on the concrete floor. But I don't have to crank up the Onkyo that far to get great results. I have also read that the Crowsons can get hot. But after watching several movies and feeling them during and after the movie I have never felt any heat.

I think they work better sitting on a harder surface to trabsfer the effect to the chair. I think MrSquid should try and tweak his system to get a better effect off of it.

I am going to play with it on other seating over the next couple of weeks and will report back what I find.

I got the effect, but personally I don't think that what I felt was worth the premium price behind them for my situation. (and I was running it on hardwood flooring) If I was considering pricey chairs like Cinematech's or Salamanders, these would be standout choices because of the non-invasive installation.

As a side note, these things are SOLIDLY made. And if the ordering experience I had was typical, Crowson is a class act company to deal with - and that's ALWAYS nice to find. :)

If I get a chance this weekend, I'll try to hook it back up and see if I'm more impressed with it after trying different chairs on it, different movies and different volume levels off the amp. Who knows - maybe I'm just missing that one crucial element to the true experience. :D

Hoops, yes i use them full range out of my Yamaha 995 receiver. If the "buzzing" you are referring to was signal above 90 HZ , then yes i do feel that . I am satisfied with the performance but i can see where an equalizer would be helpful. I did try them through the LFE channel and yes all that signal above 90 HZ was gone but so was the panning effect of the bass which I really enjoy...Rit

MrSquid,

It's possible that some movie sound tracks put more effort into them. I guess to be fair, I only have tried the Crowson with the 1st two Lord of the Rings movies. Which had awesome sound tracks and LFE effects. I was throughly blown away by what the transducers did. But I'm sure that with a different movie it could be an average effect.

But like I said, I am going to experiment with them over the next couple of weeks.

Never enough time! It took me this long to see the 1st two Lord of the Rings!

I have a Buttkicker 2 mounted under a platform with the rubber isolators. The Buttkicker 2 is powered by the Carvin DCM 1000 amp bridged into mono from the subwoofer output on my Pioneer 49tx. I will say that I am not real impressed. Can't really feel the effect very well. Do I need a preamp from the Pioneer into the Carvin?

I'll answer my own question: YES.
I went out and purchased the Radio Shack mini-stereo preamp (SA-155). Wow. The whole platform is now rockin'. I had to adjust the volume a bit on the preamp, but now I am shakin' perfectly. Only took me two years to figure this piece out. :(