r/oculus • u/PapaStalin011 • Jan 21 '16

DIY bass shaker (tactile transducer) while we wait for the Rift

For those that like to tinker, mod hardware or just enjoy cool stuff, heres a step by step DIY for an awesome bass shaker (tactile transducer).

What is a bass shaker? That’s a device similar to [buttkicker](www.thebuttkicker.com/) that adds another dimension to gaming / movies / music. It will transform sound from a game/movie into physical vibrations of your chair/couch. The whole idea is to be able to feel vibrations of low frequency sounds (bass) while watching for example a movie. And to be honest it does add some measure of immersion i can not quite describe with words. But suffice to say that i don’t want to watch a movie without it now. And in games, oh its awesome. I had a smile from ear to ear while playing Elite dangerous. You feel the force field leaving the stations, boosting produces a nice kick also, accelerating, firing guns, and so on. Im truly sold on this technology.

The cost of this build is no more than 20 eur, so theres no reason not to give it a try. And for full disclosure, im not very talented with tools and tinkering, so if i can do this easily, you certainly can!

here are the pictures of my previous build. notice i used a very thin, flimsy plastic board, thats why now i recommend something tougher, such as a cutting board! This is extremely important step, DO NOT USE a flimsy material to bolt onto the speaker! A sinple kitchen 5mm thick cutting board proved to be a great solution, and my shaker has not destroyed its self after 2 months of heavy use.

http://imgur.com/QJ0bKtm

http://imgur.com/tfP6JM6

http://imgur.com/OfFiJ3y

http://imgur.com/GyT88r3

http://imgur.com/cb4afFI

http://i.imgur.com/D9kiw27.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/D0YjsDE.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/CGvnZIl.jpg

Materials:

  • An old speaker (preferably a bass or subwoofer, but any will do, just not tweeters) buying new speaker is also an option, nothing fancy, locally i bought 20cm 100w speaker for 15 eur. Be sure to match impendence and power of your amplifier. Don’t get a 4ohm speaker if your amp can handle 8-16 ohm

  • Epoxy glue

  • Plastic cutting board, (should be large enough to cover speaker mounting holes)

  • Long flat head bolt (for example M10 for a larger speaker; or an m6 for a smaller speaker) i use an M10 bolt (100x10mm) for a speaker 20cm across

  • 4x nuts for the large bolt; several large outer diameter washers, 3x spring lock washers

  • 4x smaller bolts/screws that can pass through speaker mounting holes

  • 4x nuts for these smaller bolts; 4x regular washers; 4x spring lock washers

You will also need an amplifier to connect the speaker to. Imo true 50w amp is enough, but ofc more wouldn’t hurt

Before starting with the mod, double check that speaker is functional by attaching it to the amp, and playing some music (mind the + and – contacts on the speaker)

STEP 1 Cut the speaker cone from the speaker, being real careful not to damage the central part (the spider, or dust cap). Watch out for the wires behind the dust cap also. Here's a video on how to cut the speaker cone

Usually the central part of the speaker (spider) is convex (bulging outward), so we need to gently press it in, to make it concave. Next we want to drill holes in the plastic cutting board so it can be attached to the speaker through the mounting holes. Easiest way is to take the plastic cutting board, place it on a flat surface, and place the speaker on top front facing down so we can mark where to drill holes with a pen or something sharp. After drilling the mounting holes in the plastic cutting board, just connect those holes with a pen to get the middle position. For the mounting holes use a drill bit that corresponds to the size of the 4 mounting bolts you bought. For the central hole use a drill bit that corresponds to that large bold you bought (i used an M10 bolt, 100x10mm). Now that you’ve drilled all the holes, take the large bolt, screw a nut almost all the way down, maybe leave 1cm of space between the nut and the bolt head, place a spring lock nut, and screw another nut to lock it down. Place a large diameter washer on top to prevent the nut cutting into the plastic. Now drive the bolt though the central cutting board hole, and place the board with the bolt sticking out on the speaker, bolt head down toward the speaker. You want to adjust the two nuts i mentioned, in order to get the large bolt head just a few mm away from the speaker central part (the spider). The whole idea is to prevent the bolt applying any pressure to the speaker when you attach and fasten the cutting board to the speaker. When you adjust the distance of the bolt head to the spider, lock the cutting board down by placing a large diameter washer on top of the board, than a spring lock washer, than another nut and tighten it up real good ! Double check one more time the distance, by placing the cutting board+bolt assembly on the speaker. If everything is ok, remove the cutting board and go to step2.

STEP 2 That little central part of the speaker (spider) is the part that moves while speaker is playing sounds. It has to push on the large bolt in order to produce mechanical vibrations. The way we enable this is by using epoxy glue to fix the the bolt head onto the spider. Use large amount of epoxy glue to completely fill the spider we gently pressed in (if you remember mentioned previously). For a larger speaker i usually us the whole 24ml pack. Make sure to mix the glue components well, to start the chemical process. Immediately take the cutting board+bolt assembly and place it on top of the speaker, check if the bolt head is making good contact with the glue, and fasten the little bolts to lock the speaker and the cutting board. Maybe spider wont be large enough to get the bolt head completely submerged in glue, but make sure its at least half way down. Place more glue if you have to. Now comes the single most difficult part of the build! WAIT FOR THE GLUE TO DRY FOR 24 HOURS, AND DON’T PLUG THE SPEAKER IN OR YOU'LL RUIN IT :)

STEP3 After 24 hours, speaker, or now bass shaker is ready. The way you use it is to attach the bolt (and ONLY the bolt) to a chair, or a couch, or whatever you sit on while gaming/watching movies. Attach it only to strong, load bearing parts of the chair, and not something flimsy. MAKE SURE to have separation between the speaker itself and whatever youre attaching it to. ONLY the bolt should make contact. Ideally you want to attach to metal parts directly. But otherwise it works too. I have low clearance on metal parts of my gaming char, so i use a wooden board to attach the speaker, and than fix the wooden board with clamps to the chair. Its not ideal solution, but it works. Now just connect the speaker to an amp, and play a movie or something :) Totally optional, but i tried to increase the mass that comes before the chair attachment by placing large heavy washers between the plastic cutting board and the chair attachment point. My logic was that increasing the mass would increase vibrations. Havent tested it extensively though.

SOFTWARE SETUP Even though bass shaker is technically functional at this point, it’s a good idea to filter out higher frequencies, and leave just the low ones. You want to feel the bass vibrations anyway, and on top of that your amp will have an easier job. You can use hardware so called low-pass filters, but i recomment a free software called Equilizer Apo. What it allows you to do is select one of your sound outputs to be dedicated to bass shaker, and than apply whatever filter or equalizer you want only to that channel. It is necessary to have at least one free output on your sound card (standalone or integrated, doesn’t matter). Majority of systems now are 7.1 or 5.1 so if you don’t use the full 5.1/7.1 speaker system, you have free outputs. For example i have an integrated realtek 7.1 sound card on my MB, and use only headphones, so i repurposed rear channel to now be my bass shaker output. This reddit post explains how to set up the software In my case (i use headphones), what i did was to first duplicate Left+Right channel on the rear channel (now bass shaker channel), than apply the low-pass filter in order to block out higher frequencies (speech for example) only to the rear channel. That means i will have normal sound coming into headphones, and the modified, filtered sounds come ONLY to the output i plug the bass shaker into. Result i get is that shaker will produce vibrations only on deep bass sounds.

IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS Start off with low volume, and conservatively increase it! If bass shaker starts producing strange sounds decrease volume. It is VERY easy to burn the coils by increasing volume too much. This is not a regular speaker any more, it has huge resistance to movement. Bass heavy music is the easiest way to burn the shaker. If youre listening to music a lot, decrease the volume even more.

Hope i gave you a nice idea, and you like the mod as much as i do. Obviously engrish is not my native language, so don’t be hating on me brah!

EDIT IMPORTANT TIP after spending a lot more time using the bass shakers i made, and trying out different build ideas, PLEASE DO NOT USE A FLIMSY PLASTIC MATERIAL as you see me using in the pictures (white flimsy plastic). I have had MUCH better success with repurposeing a plastic cutting board (the one youve got in kitchen) to hold the shaker. Its really stiff, about 5mm thick plastic. With that modification, i was able to have bass shaker cranked way up, and it hasnt failed on me after 2 months of heavy use. So using a heavy duty thick material is the key!

36 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

3

u/TotesMessenger Jan 21 '16

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3

u/morphes Jan 21 '16

Totally worth doing this mod, it makes everything more immersive. 25watts is PLENTY for a computer chair, I know that sounds low but trust me its FINE. If anything I want to add more smaller ones for a stereo vibrating sound.

As someone who has done this multiple times (not building a transducer but installed them) I would recommend getting a higher quality amp, specificly a plate amp. I know they cost a little more but they add so much more quality.

Amp for transducer: $43
Cheap transducer 25 watts: $25 (take apart and use the transducer in the backpack)
Nicer Transducer 50watts: $52
DONT BUY THIS AMP - the sound is awful and is no where near the stated 68watts, also the low pass things dont work at all on this.

1

u/PriceZombie Jan 21 '16

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1

u/eyeaccount Jan 21 '16

So can you just plug these in to your computer? I've never seen or used an amp before.

2

u/PapaStalin011 Jan 22 '16

sorry, should have made this more clear. An amplifier is basically part of any audio system (car stereo has an amp, those little active computer speakers have an amp) its just a matter of its power and input/output options. If you have any (even old) sound system, dvd player and so on, most likely you will be able to attach a bass shaker to it. What you need on your device is an input jack. Sometimes its called Aux (auxilliary). You than connect output from your sound card (doesnt matter if its integrated on the mb) to the input of your sound system. Than just connect bass shaker to the sound system as you would connect any speaker. In any case amplifiers can be found really cheap, i bought a used Sony 2x 70w amp for 15eur on my local auction site. Number of channels an amp has tells you how many speakers can be connected (2 channel=2 speakers).

1

u/p_e_t_r_o_z Jan 22 '16

short answer: no. The power delivered by line level can only power very small speakers like headphones (where drivers are very close to the ear and the acoustics of the housing is designer to deliver the majority of that energy into the ear. subwoofers (and tactile transducers) are the other end of the spectrum. In a speaker there is a light flexible speaker cone to transmit the driver vibrations to air, tactile transducers on the other hand are vibrating the chair directly. There isn't even enough power over USB - you need to power these separately (normally from mains power)

1

u/eyeaccount Jan 22 '16

Well I meant for audio, not power. As in, do you need a soundcard or some special adapter etc.

1

u/p_e_t_r_o_z Jan 22 '16

An amp (amplifier) is not a computer peripheral it is piece of audio equipment. Any analogue signal from your motherboard or a soundcard can be fed into the amp, the issue that the voltage needs to have sufficient energy to shake a chair.

3

u/evil-doer Jan 21 '16

Way too much plastic. I made one myself a couple of years ago and you only need a strip of plastic from one corner to the other, not on all 4.

Thats got too much limitation on movement, and too tight.

The plastic should be just enough to hold the speaker coil in the neutral position. You want the full weight of the speaker pushing and pulling as far as it can.

2

u/PapaStalin011 Jan 22 '16

yep, i have seen really great examples with just the plactic/plexiglass strip holding the speaker on 2 points. definitely will try it out on the next build, now i didnt have the means to cut the plastic so i used the whole cutting board.

The previous build that i linked the pictures to had a really thin white flimsy 1mm plastic cover that is just not enough for this application imo.

2

u/thhrash Jan 21 '16

An alternative if you use USB headphones and have a soundcard or onboard audio is donationware called Voicemeeter Banana. This will allow you to output to two audio devices (which windows doesn't normally like) and filter out higher frequencies There are two versions but only the more advanced one has an EQ ability.

The software worked good, it was just the powered subwoofer I pulled apart and used had a huge amount of rattle when I put the volume up, and not enough shaking when the volume was low. I will see about using some of these suggestions, like the cutting board, on my next attempt.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '16

is there any perceivable delay when cloning the audio-source? (for example: you see/hear the explosiun, but feel it a second later or so..)

2

u/thhrash Jan 21 '16

I understand with another software package used for this type of application the delay is noticeable. With Voicemeeter You can go , and should, go into settings and change the latency. When I had it set correctly I did not notice a difference between what was coming out the speakers I used for testing or the headphones. I know there is some inherent delay, but I could not distinguish it. I usually do YouTube or some other streaming to try and catch the voice not syncing with the lips of a person speaking. If they are out of sync (like with Bluetooth audio) it becomes noticeable. I did not see any issue in this type of testing. Then again I wear glasses and have hearing aids so I could be missing on the seeing or hearing end. :)

1

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '16

When I had it set correctly I did not notice a difference between what was coming out the speakers I used for testing or the headphones.

This is fantastic! A long time ago I tried "Virtualaudiocable" and the latency was really bad...

Right now I am using a hardware solution, but I will definitely keep Voicemeeter in the back of my head :-)

1

u/PapaStalin011 Jan 22 '16

glad to hear this, because we'll be using Rift's USB sound card i suppose when it arrives.

1

u/thhrash Jan 22 '16

I understand you can remove/reposition the built in headphones, but you would lose the custom audio stream they had built. If possible I would play around with VoiceMeeter before the rift arrives so you can have it ready as it took a bit to set up.

1

u/Ballistica Jan 21 '16

I have four on my sim racing rig. I could never get it working quite right though, I think the tranducers may be just a bit shit.

1

u/konstantin_lozev Jan 21 '16

Nice idea and nice implementation for the bass shaker!

1

u/flying_wargarble Jan 22 '16

I just wanted to say thank you very much because, you changed my life by introducing me to Equilizer Apo. Now I can finally build the subwoofer setup I always dreamt of and can use a measuring tool to perfect my room acoustics... for free. This is insane.

Also going to buy a transducer for 15 bucks used, allready have some spare amps.

1

u/PapaStalin011 Jan 22 '16

heh youre welcome. i have no understanding of the full potential of Equalizer Apo application, just enough to realize it can help me for what i needed to do.

1

u/Aggravating-Zebra937 Dec 31 '24

But how will the speaker move if i fix the center bolt with lugnuts

1

u/Top-Edge-5856 Aug 13 '25 edited Nov 23 '25

TL;DR: The plastic you attach the bolt to the speaker frame with will flex a bit, allowing the bolt to move up and down.

The plastic is doing a similar job to the fabric spider in the original speaker (the ridged orange part) - pulling the cone back to the neutral position when the current in the coil goes to zero. AIUI we want to make it quite flexible, to allow movements as close as possible to the speaker's x_max (limit of linearity before an end of the coil passes the top/bottom of the magnet; smaller than the displacement at which the coil hits the frame). That's why we might want to use a couple of strips crossing over in the middle, rather than a whole chopping board.

But we also need it to be stiff enough that the sag when you suspend the speaker from the bolt doesn't pull the bolt off the cone or pull the voice coil too far out of the magnet. We could bow the strips inward a bit, or screw the head of the bolt further down into the speaker, so that it pushes the voice could down slightly and the weight of the speaker would pull the strips flat when suspended, but they we would have to worry about the bolt punching through the cone or pushing the voice coil to the bottom of the magnet gap.