Buttkickers are maybe next (never ending sim upgrades)

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Turtle Power, Oct 6, 2020.

  1. Turtle Power

    Turtle Power Well-Known Member

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    My eyes are on Buttkickers mini LFE and simvibe. Possibly 4 in total. Not sure yet? As for the amp, rather have one for all. Since I have no experience in this particular area, your comments are welcome.

    My rig is solid aluminium extrusions 45x45 and 45x90. Any tips are welcome. Cheers
     
  2. ravey1981

    ravey1981 Well-Known Member Beta tester

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    I have a coupe of cheaper shakers and a cheap amp and the difference between shakers on and off is night and day. Less than £100 for the setup and it's great.

    I haven't tried high end stuff but I'm more than happy with what I have now.
     
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  3. Turtle Power

    Turtle Power Well-Known Member

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    What do you use it for? Road bumps engine vibe etc.... or something in particular?
     
  4. ravey1981

    ravey1981 Well-Known Member Beta tester

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    Engine vibe at low revs (sitting in the pit, or on the grid basically) makes flicking the starter so satisfying....

    Suspension bumps (all wheels directed under the seat)

    Road noise, which is a kind of randomised small vibration (seat and under wheel deck)

    Gear shift (nice big thump on gearchange)

    Until recently I was just using one under the seat, some people claim they use them to aid their driving, which I think is balls, but for immersion I can't stress enough how much they bring to the party.

    I use simhub to drive them.
     
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  5. The Iron Wolf

    The Iron Wolf Well-Known Member

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    I have not used SimVibe, but I used GameVibe and I am using SimHub ShakeIt now. I'll just suggest not to dismiss ShakeIt - it is very automatic, same profile works for all games - that's how dynamic it is (it autocalibrates). I basically can't imagine better transducer driver software.

    I have 4 minis and 4 LFEs, one thing to prepare yourself for is that mini's are very easy to overheat - and effect is very annoying, all of a sudden all effects become dull. So I have to run them at very low volumes especially for continous effects. Full size ones on the other hand don't overheat, so as long as they don't clank, they're good (and powerful). I was able to get used full size LFEs for ~$100 each, but took time to hunt them down :)
     
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    Last edited: Oct 6, 2020
  6. ElNino

    ElNino Well-Known Member

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    They are a great addition. I would prefer one amp as well, but currently using 2 small 20w stereo amps or so, with 2 of the small dayton "pucks" down on my pedals for fronts, and then two larger maybe 6" kickers on each side of by seat bottom for rears. I'm sure having them hardwared to the chassis corners would be better, but using small drivers and low power like I am, it works great. When I forget to turn on my amp power switch (wired up a 120v switch on my dash) it's like I forgot to turn on sound or something - it becomes that integral for immersion after using it for a bit. I am also using simvibe, which works pretty well once you get it all setup.
     
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  7. The Iron Wolf

    The Iron Wolf Well-Known Member

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    For mini's I got used ART SLA4 from ebay. And buttkickers are a great addition indeed. To me, the holy grail is that they help you understand wheel lockups. When I slam brakes and lock my wheels IRL with my road cars, the whole car shakes briefly (+ABS sensation). Obviously, I did not do that at 200km/h, which is something we are simulating here, so not sure how realistic such shaking is for race car with slicks. But I was able to set SimHub up to shake me on lockups very similarly to what it felt in my road car.

    On the immersion side, road vibration is great add by kickers - it no longer feels you are simply gliding. Especially, with highly detailed tracks, it is great. But I hate to be the downer, it is not the Mini's that deliver, it is full size LFEs. They are so good that my head hurts sometimes from going over bumpy surface. Maybe my rig is not good fit for Mini's, I know people who are happy with them though.
     
  8. ravey1981

    ravey1981 Well-Known Member Beta tester

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    Could you show me your settings you use for lockups? I experimented with a shaker under my pedals for this but it didn't seem to like abs cars as as soon as I braked I got vibration.....I only want vibration when I actually lock a wheel. I will just add that this was a while ago and shakeit has been updated several times since then. Even so, I'd love to see your settings.
     
  9. The Iron Wolf

    The Iron Wolf Well-Known Member

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    so there's a catch - Wotever just reworked his math heavily, so I am rebuilding my settings on GTR2 (and don't know if they will apply nicely to other sims yet, but most likely they will).

    Minis:
    upload_2020-10-6_12-39-5.png
    upload_2020-10-6_12-39-39.png

    LFE:
    upload_2020-10-6_12-40-18.png

    Important: in wheel slip effect I use:
    upload_2020-10-6_12-40-55.png

    Otherwise, slip fights lock (which is related thing).
    Note in all games I tried ABS means no lockups at all.
     
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  10. ravey1981

    ravey1981 Well-Known Member Beta tester

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    Awesome thanks, I will see if I can get that working now. Couldn't live without simhub these days. It's an amazing collection of tools.
     
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  11. The Iron Wolf

    The Iron Wolf Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, I really hope he gets to apply his approaches to motion - recalibrating motion for different cars/games manually is really annoying.
     
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  12. Hervé45

    Hervé45 Well-Known Member Beta tester

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    Great simhub
    I use with gametrix
     
  13. Bull Shark

    Bull Shark Well-Known Member

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    I use simhub with a buttkicker. Really awesome. It does not help me at all but the immersion is top notch of course. Especially when I race in VR. But also when racing on my triple setup. Sometimes I forget to fire up the amp but within a split second I miss it. Racing feel lifeless without my m8 kicking my ass.
    I really like the gear change rumble. I have it set fairly high. Also driving over the curbs does give a great feedback. :D
     
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    Last edited: Oct 7, 2020
  14. Turtle Power

    Turtle Power Well-Known Member

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    Great feedback,
    Now I have to think over again about the LFE mini's due to overheating issues. Also if the large one is more desirable, how much would I have to spend on an amplifier to drive two large LFE's?
     
  15. Badgerous

    Badgerous Well-Known Member

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    This was all new to me earlier this year and I ended up taking a punt on one of these:
    https://www.simracingstudio.com/product-page/srs-shakekit-shakeseat-integrated-with-shakebox-lite

    It's arguably a little expensive for what it is, but the plug-n-play nature of it was perfect as an introduction to this, and once I fiddled with the placement of everything internally I find I don't notice I'm even sat on the thing. As you say, the immersion this stuff gives in VR is fantastic, and the gear change rumble is right up there for me too :) The more subtle effects of front/back when braking/accelerating, and left/right on faster corners are suprisingly effective, and flicking the switches for ignition and starter and feeling the whole thing kick off underneath never gets old.
     
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  16. The Iron Wolf

    The Iron Wolf Well-Known Member

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    In my personal experience, just as with music, where most difference comes from the headphones/speakers, same with transducers I wouldn't lose any sleep over which amp to choose. In fact if I wasn't restricted by the space, I would've probably tried running them off some cheap AV receiver first (I know impedance does not match, but it might be fine at moderate volumes).

    So I have ART SLA4 and Behringer NX4-6000. SLA4 has better specs (goes to lower Hz on the paper), but guess what - it does not matter. Mini's are not very useful below 20hz, and LFEs aren't great either. Yes, LFEs go lower, but they are not very strong below 20hz and it is easy to reach clanking/pang volume. Second thing is power, it is not as important as one might think, because neither Mini's nor LFEs can handle fulll output at interesting (low) frequencies, in my experience. At some point I had issue with ART SLA4 getting very hot, but once I learned to configure everything to avoid clanking/pang/overheating of the transducers - heat problem disappeared - I was simply pushing it too far, into clipping. All that said, I like Behringer way more - it is cold, class D amp.

    One more thing to consider is equalizer/DSP - my amps have none and I use Equalizer APO to tame the problematic frequencies. But this is not a set and forget solution, because with OS updates settings get lost and I have to re-apply them. If amp had EQ it would've been set and forget :)
     
  17. Turtle Power

    Turtle Power Well-Known Member

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    Settled with 4 Buttkickers Mini LFE's to simulate 4 wheels and Emotiva BasX A500 amp. True I didn't think much about saving money but hey you have only one life (and rice every day for 60 days). The sound card 5.1 is cheap so that is not an issue.

    Next thing to do is just wait for the package/s and try not to say anything bad about my recent order as it may give me a severe depression :p:D:D
     
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  18. Hangon

    Hangon Member

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    Can't stress how much this addition to your rig will make!! I have 4 butt kicker mini lfe( may cost more, but well worth it) running from 2 Dayton amps using running in chassis mode. Running without this now is like using a wheel with no ffb.I have a fantastic profile for simvibe that works amazing in RRE. If you like I can send it if you go that route.Highly highly recommend upgrade!! Next best thing to a motion rig that we would all love to have but few can afford.
     
  19. Hangon

    Hangon Member

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    I have the 4 mini lfe and have never had a issues with overheating?? I have had them well over 4 years with heavy use, I use them everyday.I do not have them turned up max though as they are pretty powerful and make a hell of a noise at high settings...I find power at about 60% more than enough on the amps and giving great feedback from the kickers
     
  20. Turtle Power

    Turtle Power Well-Known Member

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    Thanks mate, I heard this before and I trust what you are saying. Since I love the engine vibe and gear shifting on my direct drive, surely it will be a blast using 4 transducers (chassis mode) for adding a complete vibe immersion experience.
    Finally should be able to feel some road bump effects in Raceroom since it has little to none on the steering wheel. Although Raceroom does have something that is related to road surface but its not really a bump. It's more like when the tyre is lifted up in the air at fast rate
    which is very cool.