Bass Shaker w/ DLS amp (1 Viewer)

[Jay O]

I recently got the DLS 10 sub with the bad amp, PE was on the ball and got me a new amp asap. Now I have the old amp just sitting on the shelf and have read about bass shakers. These look incredible but I have a couple of questions on them...

1. Can I just hook the amp for the shakers into the amp on my existing sub-woofer? Just a regular RCA cable?

2. From this amp, do the shakers just connect through the speaker outs with normal speaker wire?

3. What shakers should I buy? Is it better to have 4 or the 25W Aura shakers (from PE) or 2 of the Aura Pro 50W? The couch I'm going to install them in will seat 4-5 people.

Sorry if my questions are elementary, but I'm new to world bass shakers and have just transitioned out of the HTIB setup.

Jay

 

[Ryan Schnacke]

I hadn't thought about this before, but a sub plate amp is an excellent amp for bass shakers. The built in crossover would be great for keeping mid-bass from activating them.

"1. Can I just hook the amp for the shakers into the amp on my existing sub-woofer? Just a regular RCA cable?"

Probably not. Usually the Dayton plate amps have a high pass filter on both the line-level and the speaker-level outputs. So you'd get very little low bass signal to your shaker amp. Instead you should used a RCA splitter on your receiver's subwoofer output and send one signal to the sub and the other to the shaker amp.

"2. From this amp, do the shakers just connect through the speaker outs with normal speaker wire? "

Connect the shakers to the same output wires that used to go to the woofer in the sub. These wires will be on the back side of the plate amp. Be sure to wire the shakers in a manner that presents a 4 ohm or larger impedence. I'm honestly not sure that this amp is even rated for 4 ohms, but I DEFINATELY wouldn't try anything less than 4. If you don't know what I'm talking about here, ask. It's best not to let the "magic smoke" out of your amplifier.

"3. What shakers should I buy? Is it better to have 4 or the 25W Aura shakers (from PE) or 2 of the Aura Pro 50W? The couch I'm going to install them in will seat 4-5 people."

In a couch this big I'd go for more of the lower-powered shakers. A friend of mine has 2 of the 50-watt Aura shakers in his couch and he had to get creative with the shaker install in order to get an even response. With his initial install there was one really good rumble seat and anywhere else only your lower legs would feel them.

Honestly the 2 50-watt shakers can rumble his couch to a point that just seems ... unnatural when he turns them up. But then there are guys driving a kilowatt or more to their shakers so maybe its just taste. 4 25watt shakers would be plenty for me.

P.S. I could kick myself for telling you all this when I'd really like to buy one of those defect DLS amps for cheap. Ahh, well ... at least you're saving me from a butt-whipping from my wife. Doesn't she understand that we'll never have enough subs? Shoot, we're just storing the 3rd one for her brother.

 

[Jay O]

Ryan,

Thanks for the info, and just so you know I'm taking the butt-whipping from my wife on this also, but she will live with it...they just don't understand, we're doing this for them also...

I'm still alittle confused on the wiring of the shakers. Say I go with 4 of the 25W ones. How would you wire these into a series using the connection from the back of the amp? I have Pioneer 811 reciever that only supports 8 ohm speakers. So would I have to wire them in 2 series of 2? How would this work with only 1 wire from the amp?? I've read up on wiring speakers in series and ohm's but I'm still not confident in my understanding.

Thanks

Jay

 

[Chuck Bogie]

Is the "one wire from the amp" your LFE signal?

If so, it isn't amplified to run the shakers. You need an amplified signal.

I've got mine (well, I've got one pair - just ordered the second) set up as two sets of eight-ohm units (two shakers each), hooked to an old Marantz 2230 stereo, which is in turn driven by the LFE signal which made its way from the LFE port on my Denon 1803 to the DLS-10 (splitter), then via two cables from the DLS-10's line out plugs to the Marantz's AUX port.

 

[Jay O]

Sounds like I would use a splitter on the LFE signal from my receiver, one to the sub, the other to the plate amp for the shakers.

On the plate amp for the shakers, how would you connect the shaker to it? The speaker outs or the wire from the back of the amp that once plugged into the subwoofer driver?

I'm just not familiar with the wire out of the back of the amp. Is it just speaker wire? There is also only one wire, how would I wire all 4 into it?

I think I've confused myself even more now...:frowning:

 

[Chuck Bogie]

Use a splitter on the LFE signal if that's what you've got and run it into the RCA "in " plugs (altho I think that you can just hook to the red plug (check the "manual").

Connect the shakers to the leads that would normally go to the sub. Those are the red and black wires that would be "inside" the sub box. Red should usually be considered positive.

Unless you're running speaker level signals into the plate amp via the 5-way posts, they don't do anything. If you are, the signal that will emerge from the "out" binding posts is what went in from your receiver, minus everything from 125hz down, and should just be routed to your front speakers.

The bass shaker docs have a nice drawing that even an electronic idiot could follow (Ooh! Ooh! I did...) about how to hook up a pair for an eight ohm load. But that's as far as it went (and that I could understand). Could someone explain to the guy how he needs to wire four four ohm devices to either be a single four ohm or eight ohm load? I'm sorta fuzzy on that myself - I set my shakers up as two eight ohms, but hey, I may run 'em differently in the future....

 

[Ryan Schnacke]

"Sounds like I would use a splitter on the LFE signal from my receiver, one to the sub, the other to the plate amp for the shakers."

Yes, exactly.

"On the plate amp for the shakers, how would you connect the shaker to it? The speaker outs or the wire from the back of the amp that once plugged into the subwoofer driver?"

The wire from the back that once plugged into the sub driver.

" I'm just not familiar with the wire out of the back of the amp. Is it just speaker wire? There is also only one wire, how would I wire all 4 into it?"

Yes, its just speaker wire. It should actually have two wires - one positive and one negative. Here's how series/parallel wiring works. Imagine I've got 2 of the 4 ohm shakers and one amplifier channel. There's 2 ways to connect them.

First I could connect the amplifier negative to the negative of both shakers. Then connect the amp positive to the positive of both shakers. That's called a parallel connection since the electrical current can pass through 2 parallel paths. Any particular bit of charge will pass through one shaker or the other, but not both. The impedence seen by the amplifier is half of the impedence of each shaker. So a 2 ohm load is applied to the amp and if it can't handle it, it goes poof and out comes the "magic smoke".

amp_neg---shaker1_neg---shaker2_neg

amp_pos---shaker1_pos---shaker2_pos

The other way to connect them is to connect the amp neg to the first shaker's neg. Then connect the first shaker's pos to the second shaker's neg. Then connect the second shaker's pos to the amp's pos. This is called a series connection since the electrical current travels through one shaker, then the other in series. Any particular bit of charge will pass through both shakers. The impedence seen by the amp is twice the impedence of each shaker. So an 8 ohm load is applied to the amp and it can certainly handle this gentle load.

amp_neg---shaker1_neg shaker1_pos----shaker2_neg shaker2_pos---amp_pos

Got it? Okay, for 4 shakers at 4 ohms each you can actually hook them up in a way that presents a 4 ohm load to the amp. The amp is likely designed to take this kind of load. So how do we start with 4 ohms and end up with 4 ohms? We combine the series and parallel connections. In the end this will double and then half the impedence to get back to 4 ohms.

Connect 2 shakers in series. That "pair" is now an 8 ohm load. Connect the other 2 shakers in series. Now that "pair" is also an 8 ohm load. Think of each "pair" as a single 8 ohm load. If we connect the two 8 ohm loads in parallel we'll get a 4 ohm load. 4 shakers, 4 ohms, one powered amplifier channel.

The top circuit in the picture below is what I'm trying to describe here.

 

[Jay O]

Ryan and Chuck,

Thanks so much for the information. I think I have a clear picture of what I want to do.

My room is really coming along, but this will probably have to be it for a while. With new speakers, sub, bass shakers and couch all in the last 2 months the wife is starting to complain.

Thanks again.

Jay