If you have a sound card do you connect the transducers to this or does it still need to go through an amp?
You still need an amp. Soundcards doesn't have the output to feed (multiple) 50, 100 or 200 watt transducers, I think. You can look it up on the simxperience site. http://simxperience.com/en-us/products/simvibe/simvibesoftware.aspx
I feel a difference between the analog output signal and the digital that gets converted into analog in a separate DA converter (DIGITAL-ANALOGUE CONVERTER). It's a confusing setup but it had to do with my PS4 It can only be the signal strength that makes the difference. I am using the onboard sound for the transducers. But the signal was never really strong, I remember the days when using it for my headphone. Because of that I baught a Sound Blaster ZxR. What a difference in sound with the analog signal of my onboard card it feels less strong, washed out. Just to weak the signal. I have to crank up the amp quite a lot. I mean, it is still very moderate because of my neighbour :/ even this little amp can do much more crazy
Have you checked the balance/output settings of the analogue output in the sound card settings ? Maybe the output is just not @ 100% that's why you don't have "full strength" I have 3 Soundcards in my computer: the onboard, 1 SB Audigy and 1 cheap PCI-E sound card. There's no difference at all between those 3 with simvibe.
What I've read about onboard and PCI souncards is that the PCI ones are a huge improvement soundwise. My conclusion from this is, that the PCI soundcards will give you a better simvibe experience. Again, it's not my experience (I don't have a simvibe setup yet), but it is somewhat obvious for me, that if the PCI soundcards deliver a better sound (better dynamics, crispier frequencies...), than the amp that is connected to it will send clearer sound signals to the transducers. The simvibe software makes a modulation of physics data from the sim to sound data that is send to the soundcards --> amp --> transducers. The better the soundcard can handle the low frequencies (I think only these are used), the better it can split these frequencies and the faster and more abrupt it can send these to the amp, the better simvibe feels.
Difference between onboard soundcard and PCI Soundcard is not really more a concern today. Onboard SC are pretty good now and they are WAY enough to handle what simvibe will output.. WAY WAY WAY Enough ! Everything more than any cheap/onboard soundcard will be overkill for Simvibe. There's so much other parameters that will influence the feels you get from your buttkickers before you will be able to eventually feel any difference between 2 soundcards. There're so much settings in simvibe itself, the quality of your transducers, the wiring, the mounting of the transducers, the rigidity of your rig, the position of the transducer on your RIG, all of that will have much much much much more influence on the result you might get than any soundcard swap. Trust me: I tested this on my setup, and It's IMPOSSIBLE to distinguish the effects coming from the SB AUDIGY against the one coming from the onboard or the cheap soundcard.
I found a nice amp for up to 4 BS-200 (Sinustec or Reckhorn). The price is more than reasonable. Just 80€ more than my small and mono amp. By the way, Reckhorn got a new version of the BS-200, it's now called BS-200i. The new BS-200i has gold-colored connectors and comes with the following improvements: - The magnet is made of a stronger material and is slightly larger - The vibration is slightly deeper the t.amp E4-130 Power: 4x 130 W per channel at 8 ohm, 4x 200 W per channel at 4 ohm https://www.thomann.de/gb/the_tamp_e4_130.htm it has more than enough power for this kind of transducers. Man, if I would live in a house
I want to build a 4 transducers setup too, to run it with simvibe in chassis mode. I've think I will go with this components and stay around 500 Euro: Simvibe Software 89,00 EUR ASUS Xonar DGX 35,00 EUR Sinustec BassShaker BS-250 35,00 EUR (4x) Fame Audio Quad Amp 210,00 EUR
even with my new Sylomer damped platform, my neighbour says she can still hear it :/ (but ti's supposed to be ok) I didnt hear it by myself. The volume is already super low so that the transducers just begin to work. tztz, multi-family homes suck
Perhaps these will help a bit more? I don't know your setup/rig, but I will go for it: http://sd-dresden.de/leistungen/marken/eluflex/eluflex-sb.html
my "rig" is a bit in a state of still in progress. Currently, I have two platforms. One platform for the pedals and one for the seat. I called a company called Telle GmbH in Germany, they did the calculation for the Sylomer pads. I would like to a have a motion rig, but I am not sure if it will work with my neighbour.
As we're talking about something that make vibration and not supposed to make noise it's not strange that your neighbourg hear something that you don't. The transducers are not supposed to make noise you can hear (or very little), but the vibration can be transmitted through the floor. If the building is mostly made in concret and be amplified by the building structure. I build my RIG on a wood plate, under it I put some high density caoutchouc plates for washing machine / industrial machines, and everything is on dense carpet. Nothing get through this
ok, its a bit of topic perhaps, but I was quite surprised about what Sylomer can do. But it always needs to be calculated for the specific situation. Sylomer is developed by a company called getzner
You guys have some pretty good s%&t available over there, we don't even have half this stuff available down here