Those who read me know I exclusively fly C172 in Central England, UK.
I have added a Bass Shaker to my rig.
The Aurasound AST-2B-4 bolts onto a flat surface unlike the ButtKicker which clamps onto a vertical tube.
I have an old dining chair as my seat and the Aura screwed onto the underside of the plywood seat plate. Great.
The Aura is driven by a ZK-502MT 5.0. This is an audio subwoofer amplifier with two output channels ( stereo ) of 50W max each.
15V DC 5.0A must be provided.
Audio input to the ZK-502MT is by 3mm phono from the LR 3mm Audio output on the back of the PC.
I have HP Reverb G2 so I needed to allow both the earphones and the audio socket in Mixed Reality Settings.
The ZK-502MT has a Treble & Bass adjuster alongside it’s on/off Volume rotory switch. These must be balanced to desirable effect.
Outcome - I can feel every engine combustion, along with wing turbulence, flaps wash and undercarriage roughness rolling along taxiways, runway and grass airfields.
I agree I have been using bass shakers for years they really add a lot of extra bumps and vibrations. For those in Canada or USA go to parts express. https://www.parts-express.com/speaker-components/bass-shakers
Good 40 watt amp is all you need from them as well.
Exactly what I was looking for, thank you. You can spend $250+ on a commercial version or you can buy these and blow your socks off for $100. I don’t have a budget limit for my build but I don’t want to just throw away money either. $150 here and another $100 there, it adds up quickly !!
After further research I decided to go with a 24vdc power supply because their table shows if you use the 15vdc power supply mentioned above, you only get 30watts per channel instead of the full 50watts per channel.
This is my Tactile Sound Shaker System:
THREE - Aurasound AST-2B-4 Pro Bass Shaker Tactile Transducer $75 each Amazon.com
TWO - ZK-502MT Bluetooth Amplifier, 50W+50W $9.50 Amazon.com
TWO - Facmogu Power Adapter, 12OW, 5Amp, 110-240V AC to DC 24V $16 Amazon.com
One thing that works well is getting a driver card that will drive the transducer based not on the PC audio but on data derived from the sim. I have a BFF bass driver card that has an on-board amp capable of driving my single transducer to pretty intense levels with a 24v PSU, and the software connects with FSUIPC and then synthesises the waveforms based on aircraft movement and engine / flaps / gear state etc (you can customise this per-aircraft). I have the transducer installed under my seat. I drive it with 12V now and I don’t crank it because I like my neighbours, but in my next cockpit version I’m going to try to decouple the seat with rubber grommets to avoid the vibrations going into the floor structure too much.
Sadly BFF no longer sells the cards - it was a one-man operation and Covid basically forced him to shut down his manufacturing side - but if you can get one second hand from somewhere I can recommend it. I assume there are cards available that do the same thing, but I haven’t done the research.
Could you please post a picture of the card or the brand and model number? Anything where we can know what you’re talking about so we can then start researching used ones or equivalents. Thanks
Also, what transducer do you have? Using a bass speaker works for vibration but makes noise. Using an actual transducer should not make noise, only vibration which your neighbors can’t hear, unless you live in an apartment complex where everything is attached together.
He no longer sells them but the website with all the details is still available.
I’m not sure of the make or model of my transducer and I’m not going to be able to disassemble my seat to find out, but it is a tactile transducer which I bought explicitly for this purpose.
I live in what Americans would call a ‘row house’, so my house is physically connected to my neighbours properties and hence vibration is the problem. I still use it, I just don’t turn it up too far and I don’t use it late at night.
You don’t need a special card. This is not an ad. There are a couple of applications that do this using a regular sound card and a shaker. SimHaptic is an example.
You certainly don’t, no. SimHaptic is using a standard sound device to generate waveforms in the same way that my BFF card does but without a Windows sound device. Either way you will get better results than relying on something that just samples the sim audio and down-shifts it to create the bass effects.
Thought I’d update this thread to mention that I’ve moved over to SimHaptic (at least for now).
I was having problems with the BFF software - vibration turning itself off during flight. I know the BFF software has a feature to turn off when it detects you’ve hit the sim menu, but this was for FSX/P3D and it relies on FSUIPC to signal this, so I think it’s an FSUIPC problem with the latest version. However, I’m sure the FSUIPC behaviour is correct for MSFS, and since the BFF driver cards are no longer made and the software hasn’t been updated for 4 years, I think it’s unlikely I can get this fixed on their end.
Bought SimHaptic, used a SoundBlaster USB audio adapter I had lying around, and am using the BFF Shaker card as the amp (it has an audio input mode as well as a USB mode). It works OK so far though I find the vibrations quite aggressive compared to the BFF software - will have to tweak to my comfort.
I also took apart my seat base (to which the transducer is mounted) and inserted a layer of rubber matting - the kind usually used under washing machines - to dampen the vibration transmission through the rest of the structure. It doesn’t isolate it completely but it definitely reduces it a lot, which my neighbours will appreciate
I have a signal generator which I connected to the audio amp and then to the transducers. It works fine vibrating but no noise like a speaker. When I go to replace the signal generator with the PC and the sim, do I just connect it to the speaker output? How does SimHaptic modify the audio toward the transponder amp and do I then lose the regular sim sounds (airplane engine noise) going to the TV?
Have you thought about placing the entire rig on some of those exercise mats or gym tiles?
You need a second sound card / adapter just for SimHaptic. This is used exclusively for driving the transducer via an amp. You cannot use your primary sound device for this. SimHaptic generates low frequency waveforms based on sim data, and sends them via the sound card output to the amp which then drives the transducer. The rumble sound is usually somewhere between 50 and 150Hz.
Your sim audio then continues to come from your primary sound device. You mentioned a TV, so I assume this is HDMI audio from the GPU or motherboard. This will continue to work as-is.
I think I probably have enough sound isolation now, but it’s a possibility as a secondary damper.
Correct, I get the sound to my TV via the HDMI cable. I’m currently using VR goggles for fun flying but also have connected a 65" TV for when I’m not using the goggles when teaching students.
So if I use my sound output from my motherboard to the amp (it has bass and treble cutoffs) I can’t use SimHaptic that way?
So the sim uses either the HDMI HD Audio device or the audio device in the headset, depending on whether you’re using TV or HMD? It looks like the audio out from your motherboard is unused, from the picture?
If so, then you could plug the line out from your motherboard audio into the amp that drives the transducer, and assign SimHaptic to use the motherboard audio. Don’t worry about tone control, the software filters out frequencies above a user-definable threshold. Just as long as your amp will respond to input frequencies between 50 and 150Hz (which it will).
Make sure the motherboard audio is not set as the primary sound device in Windows, though. Otherwise other apps might start sending audio to your transducer. It might sound a bit weird but it’s a speaker and it will play regular audio, if a bit muffled, which is obviously not what you want.
You just can’t then use the motherboard audio for anything else once you’re using it for SimHaptic.
I just installed an HF8 Seat in my sim. Excellent sound feedback to seat. $179 USD no amp, no speaker. Plug and play thru either USB (Windows) or Audio output (all others). Easy setup.
Interesting. How does it interface to MSFS? Does it come with software that knows how to do that? Just putting the PC audio output in won’t really get you targeted vibrations, assuming the 8 transducers it has can be activated individually.
For example, if you run over a bump on the ground you would want the vibration for that to be primarily transmitted through the seat bottom, whereas engine vibration would be omindirectional.
Might be interesting to try it with the output from a dedicated sound card and power it via SimHaptic for more targeted vibration modes based on what the sim is doing.
Edit: I see you’re on Xbox, so presumably using direct audio interface, and the above wouldn’t work for you. I do see people online talking about using the HF8 with Simhub which is software for racing sims that among other things does haptics, so I guess it’s possible to talk to the HF8 over USB if the protocol is documented. I may look into this further…
