[EricHaptics]

This is fun, I do haptics for a living and I would have never expected to have something to say here.

The way around the seat shaking problem is to use wideband vibrotactile actuators tuned to respond between 10 and 250 Hz on different part of the body. They can be embedded is seat or on a vest.

The mechanical energy transfer is local, can be tuned individually, and consumes much less energy.

There are also several successful products leveraging this principle like the Razer Hypersense line, feel belt, and others.

A recent company acquired by Meta, Lofelt, started their tech doing exactly this.

If you want to jump into the haptics rabbit hole, I animate a podcast [0] with some industry folks. Fascinating topics.

[0]: www.thehapticsclub.com

[pyinstallwoes]

I make Techno. I would like to "feel" the sub in a way that doesn't require me to have a subwoofer. I know of things like Subpac but they don't sell them anymore. Do you know of anything else like this or if it is relatively easy to make one?

[clolege]

I'd check out the Woojer Strap/Vest [0] or maybe the ButtKicker [1] from the article if you're ok with being seated. I have stereo ButtKicker Concerts on my couch and they're awesome.

[0] https://www.woojer.com/

[1] https://thebuttkicker.com/

[EricHaptics]

All these products are cool, the only issue is that they usually apply dsp to the sound and distort the output to enhance the haptics experience.

If he is looking to get the bass feeling of the music you want the pure input.

[clolege]

The Strap 3 is marketed for music listening, so I would imagine it would be workable? I've yet to try any of their stuff, though. The appeal seems to be around ease of use, and the targeted chest vibrations.

And the ButtKickers are purely mechanical, so no DSP. I would steer towards their Concert line as it's meant specifically for music, whereas the LFE has a stronger response from 20-30hz for home theater type applications.

[EricHaptics]

I don’t know the strap 3, never tested.

For the buttkicker the real issue is the chair itself. It filters a ton of stuff and rattles.

A good experience are the Dbox chairs, the problem is that they cost 5 k.

Relevant club podcast with the CTO https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ERkgfJxm7QCZlp1p5eIGD?si=E...

[diimdeep]

You are right about dsp. Measurements (in russian) [0] https://www.dastereo.ru/t/subpac-m2-technical-review-dr-wehr...

[EricHaptics]

Thanks!

I wrote few of these algorithms myself for some other products.

There is always a trade off between fidelity and immersive feeling because the basses were not meant to be used with such product in mind.

With my company, Interhaptics, we built a full stack pipeline only for haptics. Our tech is at the basis of the MPEG haptics encoding standard coming out shortly.

We have been recently acquired by Razer, look out for news of you are interested to build for touch natively

[EricHaptics]

Quite easy to build. The problem is to get ahold of the parts.

Get a well know console controller, take out the two actuators and mount them in any other form factors you like.

You can drive them with an audio pipeline, they are effectively a 4 ohm speaker. Attach them to a sound card and you can have your stereo haptics subwoofers.

You have to filter out aggressively the resonance frequency of the actuator to get a flattish response. Not that subpac or the other folks do so

[clolege]

How many watts can those handle? I would imagine wanting something more powerful.

[EricHaptics]

No idea, worst case scenario the stator comes out and you find your limit :)

The key is to mount them properly on the body to maximize mechanical coupling. You don’t need a lot of watts if the losses are almost zero.

If you want more, build an array of actuators and spread them out.

More immersive feeling compared to a stronger one.