Xbox rumble to tacticle transducers

  • Thread starter TaemA
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I've been thinking of this for years. And I can't find anyone who's done it.

Here's the idea: clone the rumble signals sent from the Xbox to send into an audio amp to have stereo buttkickers.

At the moment the life channel is mono, so the kickers vibrate both sides of the seat. If I could separate the signal then one side of the seat would rumble rather than both while driving over a rumble strip.

Any thoughts or input?

Thanks,
Ed
 
Maybe it wouldn't work very well... at least not without something to actually generate audio signals for the buttkickers, and even then the something would only have the motor control signals as input to work from. Probably not capable of enough variety.

What I had setup on PS4 was using both outputs and two amps:
HDMI (5.1) -> TV -> 1st Amp -> Speakers (normal surround audio)
SPDIF (stereo) -> DAC -> low-pass filter -> 2nd Amp -> pair of Reckhorns

It worked pretty well :) Better with some games / some effects than others, since anything a game intends to go purely to LFE will be mono anyway.
 
I have a 7.2 setup now. But there is like you say no stereo with the lfe.

There would definitely need to be something like a midi trigger before the buttkickers to convert the signal to an audio signal.
 
But there is like you say no stereo with the lfe.

I found that a number of effects were stereo though, and actually there's not much that is only through the LFE. So using the SPDIF set to stereo did get some good left/right effects.
 
Okay. I'll try using the passthrough from my preamp to a buttkicker amp. It is worth a try for stereo effect!

You may need a filter doing that if there isn't one built into your BK amp, but it can be cheap. I used one that looked like this one and it was OK.

The nice thing about using the second output on the PS4 was that the 5.1 was down-mixed to stereo, so there weren't any effects missing (even if effects from centre/lfe were mono, tht's fine for engine). Although, a fairly cheap external DAC could do the same from 5.1. (I don't know what the xbox can do or which output(s) you're already using).

On the PC, I'm still doing something similar, just in software: 5.1 down-mixed to stereo, through EQ, then out to amp. Thinking about playing with Sim Shaker Wheel next - that looks at shared memory / UDP and plays shaped wav files. Maybe it would give you some ideas if you were going to persue the rumble idea.
 
I've been thinking of this for years. And I can't find anyone who's done it.

Here's the idea: clone the rumble signals sent from the Xbox to send into an audio amp to have stereo buttkickers.

At the moment the life channel is mono, so the kickers vibrate both sides of the seat. If I could separate the signal then one side of the seat would rumble rather than both while driving over a rumble strip.

Any thoughts or input?

Thanks,
Ed

I did this with a PS3 as follows (probably similar to X Box) - set the console to multi-out (sends signals to all outputs at once - connected the PS3 to 5.1 surround sound audio amp by optical fibre cable, connected PS3 to TV by HDMI then set TV volume to 0, connect 2 mono subwoofer amps, one to each audio side of the audio out from the back of the console . Each subwoofer amp powered 2 x 50W RMS bass shakers positioned on either side of the chair. With GT5 and GT6 the effect was ok for rumble strips and collisions and very good for rallying. Good engine vibration effects with Audi and Mercedes V8 cars. Very poor i.e. almost no engine vibration effects with 4, 6, 10 or 12 cylinder cars. Some strange effects - i.e. if driving a 4 cylinder car and overtaken by a V8 Merc the seat would vibrate a lot until that car was out of range.

Note - the full range stereo signal contains the LFE signal. The way I connected the PS3 to the shaker amps was not an option with the PS4 because it does not have enough audio output options (might also be true of the X Box). Eventually I got my system working by using a mini-jack from the TV headphone output - this provides a full range stereo signal - the tactile effects were absolutely mind blowing on Project Cars 1 - for engine vibration - all configurations of engine - gearchange jolts etc. Unfortunately with PC2 the audio signal is too weak so I don't get any effects with the new game.

Effects vary a lot from game to game e.g. GT5 and 6 good, PC1 very good, Dirt Series very poor, PC2 very poor.

Personally I don't think stereo effects are worth the extra cost and effort and would advise people to stick with mono - I switched from stereo to mono with PC1. It is difficult to effectively isolate the shaking effects from a stereo system - for instance even if a shaker is mounted on the left side of the seat it will still shake the right side by transmission through the seat. A mono system is good enough - the eyes will see the source of a directional effect from the screen and it adds to the immersion giving a realistic effect without needing to be stereo. On top of that it is easier to get a strong signal from a stereo source - high signal strength is key to a good effect and sadly the two games which I play - PC2 and AC have a weak signal - the music for AC provides plenty of shakes, but not the action in the game.

Note I don't split the LFE signal to the sub from my 5.1 system and feed it to a tactile amp as that isn't an option with my surround sound system. For those that can, splitting the LFE signal to power a mono shaker system will be the easiest option. If you are using a full range stereo signal you will need an appropriate amp(s) such as a subwoofer amp which enables you to filter out all, but the small range of bass signals that you need - shakers are only designed to work with a very narrow signal range i.e. below about 120 Hz and will sound horrible with higher frequencies - the strongest effect is at about 40 Hz.

Sorry it's a long post - hope some of it is useful!
 
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