Bass shakers - yes, they are awesome.

I saw the SubPac review on the homepage and thought I'd share my own experience with a DIY SubPac type device that I've been using for a few months.

I bought an Aura Bass Shaker for $40 (price went up to $50 it looks like, they must be popular!) off Parts Express a few months ago out of curiosity.

I screwed it to the bottom of the office chair I sit in when producing music and powered it using a Crown XLS1000 that I normally use when playing mobile gigs. I also set the built in X-over on the amp to ~120 Hz (just read on their site that its usable range goes up to 80 Hz though, so I'll try lowering the freq).

The shaker is only 50W RMS/100 peak so you don't need a hardcore power amp to drive it; I've seen people use subwoofer plate amplifiers like this one to drive it.

Here's a pic of mine installed underneath my chair, towards the front. I believe mounting it to the backrest would feel better, but I wanted it to be discrete looking.



Impressions?

I was pretty much blown away. I mix using dual 200W, 12" subs with huge enclosures and they don't deliver anywhere near the bass to your body that this little thing does. It feels like being in a car with a loud pair of subs, except you're indoors and not blowing up your ears or pissing off the neighbors. Psychologically, the butt shaking bass is indiscernible from bass coming from speakers. I tried turning off the shaker a few times while listening and was shocked that the bass completely disappeared. My friend couldn't tell that he wasn't "hearing" the bass either.

Another thing that's great is the response. The shaker hits every bass note pretty much evenly. Subs will hit some notes better than others depending on the enclosure and especially the room. The bass shaker is immune to room modes, although I suppose at some point it hits the resonance of my chair

Another thing I use the shaker for is playing electric drums. I use real cymbals with my homemade electric drum set, so it feels odd having physical feedback from the cymbals but not from the kick drum. The bass shaker solved that, now the kick drum thumps like a real one. It enhances the experience to feel much more real.

Here's a pic of my homemade electric drums, you can also see one of the subs I was talking about:



Overall, bass shakers are great if you love hearing sub bass. I would easily recommend getting one to complement a pair of studio monitors instead of getting a high wattage sub, especially if you don't have a room treated with bass traps.

Now that I've started using one, I can't go back