Has anyone set one these up in their HT, and if so, have any comments on them? Are they worth the money, or just a gimmick? My thought process is: in an apartment setting, where too much audible bass may be a problem, would the addiction of tactile bass be an effective way to add to the HT experience?
In my experience your thought process about using one in an apartment setting is correct. I had one attached to the futon in my apartment and it made it was fantastic for giving that deep bass feel when I couldn't turn up my subwoofer which was most of the time. OTOH both my experience in the apartment and my new house is that a good subwoofer that goes low with authority (I have an EP500) will give you 95% or more of the shaking that the Buttkicker can and is one heck of a lot easier to use.
In the apartment when I had to keep the sub turned down the Buttkicker did an awesome job of giving me the low end shaking without transmitting it through the walls or the floor. Note that I had it mounted to the frame of the futon and wasn’t using the pad that fits under one leg. It did a great job of simulating the effect of having my subwoofer turned up.
Now that I can turn my subwoofer up the Buttkicker just isn’t as effective. Also, the difficulty of integrating it into the system starts becoming more of a pain than it’s worth. The problem I find with it is that no one set of settings on the Buttkicker work well for any two audio tracks meaning that to get the best integration with my sub/speakers I need to fine tune it every time I put a new DVD in. Or write down the settings and always use the same volume when playing the DVD.
The problem is that unless the DVD has something like the THX intro I have to wait until some deep bass gets played to see if it’s set right. And then have to get up and go tweak the knobs on the amp itself. This isn’t quite as big a deal now that I’m in a house and can play my system and 80dB all the time. But in the apartment when I was varying the volume setting a lot recalibrating the Buttkicker was a pain.
However, one advantage of having all the calibration options on the Buttkicker amp is that you can better control boosting the very low end w/o having the mid and upper bass to strong. So in scenes like LOTR FOTR in the Mines of Moria I’ve always felt the very low bass wasn’t mixed strong enough into the soundtrack. I can use the controls on the Buttkicker amp to boost the very low bass so I can really feel the cave troll’s hammer hitting the ground and the staircase crumbling and crashing down.
In the house I feel putting that money toward a better or multiple subwoofers would be more beneficial and easier to use. Though Randy and others could comment better on the ease of use of multiple subwoofers than I can. For now I don’t plan on using multiple subs because the one EP500 pressurizes my 13.5x21x8-12(vaulted) viewing area open into a 10x15x9 kitchen/dinning room more than I need. Literally it shakes the crap out of everything w/o being corner loaded or running it hot.
I loved the Buttkicker in my apartment despite the calibration issues, night and day difference when I couldn‘t turn up the sub. Jury is still out on using it in the house if being able to fine tune the lower bass is worth the trouble especially with separate chairs since I don’t plan on building a riser, at least not yet.
Sorry for being so long winded.
Cheers,
Dean
