Most people who want more bass actually want to feel it. A big subwoofer does that by pressurizing the room, but that isn't an option in an apartment, with sleeping kids, or with a spouse who doesn't want more equipment on display. So can the feeling come without the volume? I put a bass shaker on one of my couches to find out, and I ended up buying three more.
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Watch what a bass shaker does · 7 min
See the shaker and hear how it changed my theater
Jump to: What the BST-1 plays and how it shakes · Adding it to my theater couch
This involves wiring a power supply to mains voltage and can be dangerous. If you're not experienced, get qualified help.
What a shaker does that a subwoofer doesn't
A subwoofer radiates sound through the air. When it pressurizes a room, the bass is felt everywhere and it's hard to tell where it's coming from. That's the feeling most people are after, in the chest, the body and the legs. But I also pointed out that most people with a subwoofer have never actually pressurized a room, because it usually takes multiple subwoofers.
A bass shaker skips the air. The one I used was the Dayton Audio BST-1, which plays from 80 Hz on down. It attaches to the wooden frame of a couch or chair, and when the bass hits, it shakes whatever it's connected to. The sound people associate with bass mostly isn't there, so it doesn't bother the neighbors or wake the kids, but the couch moves with the movie.
What I expected, and what happened
My theater room wasn't lacking bass when I tried this. It had a good subwoofer, and there was nothing wrong with it. The shaker still became the fan favorite of the movie theater. I was showing a friend a movie trailer, nothing scary and nothing special, and when the bass hit the couch he wasn't expecting it and jumped out of his seat. I think that's a physiological response. People feel the vibration in their body in a way they don't normally feel bass, and it catches them off guard.
That's why I bought three more, so the second couch could get the same treatment. It's also why I said I wish I had added shakers before I upgraded some of my other equipment. At about $30 for one BST-1, it was inexpensive next to a really nice subwoofer that can run $500 or into the thousands.
The power part I got wrong at first
Each BST-1 is rated for 50 watts of continuous RMS power, and I wanted to give it all 50 watts. Most people run shakers from a subwoofer plate amplifier, which has its own volume and crossover dial. I went the cheaper route: a small 4 ohm board amp rated at 50 watts per channel, fed from the receiver's subwoofer output, with the receiver's crossover set to 80 Hz.
My mistake was the power supply. A 12 volt, 6 amp supply is only 48 watts total, which works out to about 24 watts per side, not enough. I was running a 19 volt, 4.75 amp laptop-style supply at the time, and it worked fine, but I could tell I wasn't getting all the power. So I switched to the supply recommended for that board, a Mean Well RS-100-24 rated at 108 watts, regulated down to about 22 volts to get the 100 watts the board needed for two shakers. For four shakers, the plan was two board amps, each with its own 100 watt supply, and RCA splitters off the one subwoofer output. My plan was one shaker for the love seat and three for the standard couch, or maybe two and two depending on how it felt.
Years later: one amp built for shakers
When I reviewed the Dayton BSA-200, I had been using bass shakers for many years, mostly on those small board amps, and they worked quite all right. The BSA-200 is a class AB subwoofer amplifier that Dayton designed with shakers in mind. It's rated at either 210 or 230 watts depending on how it's hooked up, and it can run four shakers from one amp, whether that's four chairs or, as I did, one couch.
The feature that changed things for me was the wired remote. I love bass shakers, but not everyone does, and being able to turn them off or down from the seat is the one thing that had been missing from my setup. Honestly, I rarely touch the volume. I'm more of an on or off guy. It's also small, 9.5 inches wide by 8.5 inches deep and 2.5 inches tall, so it fits on an end table or under some furniture.
Scoreboard: board amp vs BSA-200
- Cost to start: board amp route was the cheapest way I found; BSA-200 costs more.
- Power per shaker: board amp needed the right supply to reach 50 watts; BSA-200 has its own.
- Shakers per amp: two per board amp; four on the BSA-200.
- Control from the couch: none on the board amp; on/off and volume remote on the BSA-200.
- Crossover: set in the receiver for the board amp; 50 to 200 Hz on the BSA-200.
What I still don't like
The BSA-200 isn't perfect. It has a left and right balance adjustment that I'm never going to use, and it's a car-audio-style screwdriver adjustment, so it's hard to tell whether it's centered. The low-pass cutoff is the same kind of screw, and I'd rather have a knob that clearly shows where it sits between 50 and 200 Hz. I think Dayton meant it as a set-and-forget amp, so those aren't huge issues, but they could be better. My other limit is my own room: the shakers went in on top of a good subwoofer, not instead of one, so I can't say from my own setup how a shaker does as the only source of bass.
What I took from it
The feeling of bass and the sound of bass are two different things, and they can be added separately. A subwoofer handles the sound. A shaker handles the feel at the seat, at a volume that doesn't fill the house. That's why I called it an upgrade I wish I had made sooner. My kids, nieces and nephews agreed.
Prefer to watch it on YouTube? Here's What is a Bass Shaker on the Toid channel.
The subwoofer side of the same room
A shaker works best on top of real bass. For the subwoofer half, the ISO 100 isobaric subwoofer is my budget answer, and the Audience 212 post shows the theater speakers I built for the main room.
Keep building: The ISO 100 isobaric subwoofer · The Audience 212 · All of my DIY builds
Parts Used and Mentioned
These are the products used and mentioned in this post. Prices change, check the current price.
Some links below are affiliate links. Toid may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
| Item | Used or mentioned | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Dayton Audio BST-1 bass shaker | Used: the shakers on my theater couches. | Parts Express |
| Dayton Audio BSA-200 amplifier | Used: the shaker amp I reviewed, with remote. | Parts Express |
| Dayton Audio BSA-200 with 4 BST-1 bundle | Mentioned: the package with the amp and four shakers. | Parts Express |
| Mean Well RS-100-24 power supply | Used: the supply I switched to for the board amp. | Amazon |
Prices change, check the current price.
