Good review. I'll add my thoughts in here as well (note I have only used this thing for a few days!).
Design:
The ButtKicker Gamer itself is a pretty cool looking device. The gamer unit is designed to clamp to the center post of your office chair, but it could clamp to anything with a metal tube. It’s fairly compact and does not extrude past the edge of the chair. The clamping mechanism was slightly cumbersome to use but I had no issues with the ButtKicker coming loose.
The amplifier for the ButtKicker is massive (
fig1_ampsize.jpg). Make sure you have enough room to store this somewhere (as you can see I have absolutely no room on my messy desk). You’ll want to put it somewhere where you have easy access to the dials from your seat. There’s plenty of adjustments on the front panel (
fig2_ampfront.jpg) of the amp. Here are the descriptions of the leds/knobs from the instruction manual:
·POWER LED – This LED indicates the amplifier is switched on and is plugged in a power outlet
·LOW FILTER CUTTOFF (yes they misspelled that) – This switch toggles the 25 Hz low cut filter. The “in” position enables the filter; the “out” position disables the filter.
·HIGH CUTOFF FREQUENCY KNOB – This knob sets the variable high cutoff frequency.
·HIGH CUTOFF ON/OFF – This switch toggles the variable high cutoff frequency knob. The “in” position enables the frequency knob; the “out” position disables the frequency knob.
·CLIP LED – This LED is illuminated when the amplifier goes into clipping. Ideally, this should not come on, or should dimly blink.
·SIGNAL LED – This LED is illuminated when the amplifier is sending amplified audio signal to the ButtKicker Gamer.
·VOLUME – This knob increases and decreases the output of the amplifier and consequently, the intensity of the ButtKicker Gamer.
Setup:
Amp setup:
The setup took longer then expected. The reason for this is the instructions were not as clear as they could be and they supply twice the necessary amount of cables (since connecting to a console requires a different set of cables). For example, they package two “Y splitters” in the box. I happened to drop the one I needed on the floor during the install, and assumed they gave me the wrong type of splitter. Perhaps one solution is packaging the cables into separate plastic bags - one labeled “PC Cables” and another labeled “Console Cables”. Anyway, looking at the setup for a 5.1 system
(fig3_connections.jpg) you can see it’s not too difficult. Basically, you just split the audio output from the sound card so that it goes to both the subwoofer (or speakers in a 2 channel setup) and the amplifier.
Here’s what I didn’t like about the amplifier setup:
- A black RCA cable is just left dangling which made me question whether I hooked it up correctly.
- Pushing the power cable into the back of the amplifier pushed in the whole rear panel.
- The quick connect connection on the amplifier is color coded but the plug is just labeled +/-. This isn’t a big deal but it’s hard to see the + and - on the plug.
- It would be nice if the group loop isolator was just built into the case. It’s kind of a heavy cylinder and since I keep the amp on the edge of the desk it keeps falling off the desk tugging on the cables.
Buttkicker/chair setup:
Hooking the ButtKicker up to my office chair was pretty straightforward (
fig4_chair.jpg).
1)Raise the chair a bit
2)Push the plastic sleeve covering the chair’s center post all the way down
3)Turn the red clamp dial to open the clamp, close the clamp around the center post, and tighten the dial.
You can use the supplied Velcro straps to keep the cables neat on the chair leg. The strain relief is used to keep excess slack so if the chair is turned rapidly you don’t yank on the ButtKicker cable.
One thing that was annoying was the quick connect cable (
fig5_quickconnect_chair.jpg). There’s nothing quick about it. This cable coming out of the ButtKicker is fairly short and ends at the chair’s leg. The quick connect cable is long and connects directly to the amp. The problem is the cable goes in only one way and it’s pretty hard to see which way is the “correct” way. One prong is only slightly larger than the other.
Computer Setup:
There’s no installation CD. Once connected, the unit immediately worked for movies with deep bass. However, since LFS does not exactly have any deep bass, I needed to enable “Bass Redirection” in one of my sound card’s utility programs (I have a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Zs).
First Impressions:
This ButtKicker rumbles the **** out of the plastic height/tilt knobs on my office chair!!!11! It’s something I didn’t even think about before buying it. My chair is especially bad because I have 3 plastic levers (with loose plastic sleeves) and another knob on the bottom. The FAQ on the instruction manual says to jam foam under the levers or hang bean bags from them.
My most comfortable seating position had the chair at its lowest height setting. Unfortunately, to install the ButtKicker, I had to raise the seat about 2 inches. While this may not seem like much, I had to move closer to the pedals and I still feel awkward when driving (I keep wanting to lower my seat but I can’t!).
Does it work?
I was hoping I could tune it so that when I’m at idle there’s a slight vibration, when I rev the engine there’s a rougher vibration, and when I take off there’s a constant but much higher vibration than when idle.
Unfortunately, in Live For Speed the wind generates the most bass. The engine doesn’t appear to generate any bass. I tested the unit mainly with the FBM but I also tried out the LX6 and RAC and the results appeared to be the same. Thus, the vibration of the ButtKicker is directly related to the speed you’re traveling at and the amount of wind. I found with the volume up any higher than 2% it vibrated too much for my liking. It not only vibrates too much it also makes a good amount of noise even when I attempted to eliminate the rattles from my chair’s plastic levers. If you watch the sim racing tonight episode, when Sean turns the amp on it sounds exactly like that. IMHO, the vibration device should be perfectly silent.
So… I turned the volume all the way down to generate nice smooth vibrations (the kind I wanted when the car was idle). This seemed be a bit more realistic (as far as how much vibration I felt in my butt). The problem is, since the vibration is based on wind, when you’re not moving there’s zero vibration. Whenever you slow down for lower speed turns (less than ~90mph) the vibration just cuts out abruptly giving the feeling that you stalled your car or the engine died. Perhaps tuning the bass settings and adjusting the frequency knobs would fix it. I gave up after an hour or two. None of the knobs (except volume) appeared to do anything for me. To be honest, I think I would be just as happy with a vibrator completely independent of my PC – one that was simply on/off and had an adjustment for intensity. Maybe such a simple vibrator combined with the ButtKicker would be ideal for LFS. You can still get vibration at idle and slow turns with the standalone while the ButtKicker adds more vibration as the speeds pick up.
Conclusion:
I’m satisfied since I only spent $50 (using the coupon code found in the latest Sim Racing Tonight video - normal price is ~$150). I think I’ll enjoy it much more when I have a proper cockpit. Right now I just have too many cables, not enough power outlets and the ButtKicker just adds unneeded complexity to my desk setup.
