Buttkicker Speakers or Similar Recommendations?

[gregog]

Hi All,

Firstly, please bear with me here. I am not a noise boy. I know more than enough to get me by, but I may not understand all your terminology!

 

Righteo, in March 2014 I have a production taking place. I am intending to deck out the entire venue with Steel Deck. The play is "Earthquakes in London" and will indeed be taking place in London.

 

Initially I was considering putting some subs underneath the decking, to create vibrations and make it a bit more of an interesting experience. Then I was told about the "Buttkicker" speaker and was told that I could possibly screw it on to the underside of the deck - which would make the decking act as an amplification device and be much better? Is this the case or is this the wrong product entirely?

 

Has anyone ever used them in Theatre and would recommend them? Or, can you suggest something that I could hire (in London) to get a similar effect? I pretty much want it to rumble and be more of an experience for the audience and thought it would be good fun too.

 

Any advice gratefully received.

 

gregog

[the kid]

Reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_%28film%29 , The obvious issue is how are you going to be sure the deck does not move or drift?

[gregog]

The decking used will be huge. We're talking about 40 pieces of Steel Deck connected and bolted together. So thats not going to migrate at all!! It'll also have a steel structure and an audience sat on top of it!

[Peter F]

Buttkickers attach to the underneath of a drum stool. It's a very localised sensation and uses a hefty amount of amp power just to produce a sensation in one err butt.

I don't reckon they would be much good for the effect you're after.

Not unless you could attach one underneath every chair in the venue, even then it probably wouldn't do what you want.

 

Carefully placed subs might be a better option.

 

Cheers,

Peter

[dbuckley]

You could take a leaf out of the Earthquake movie playbook. About Sensurround on Wikipedia and on the 70mm site.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lYOc5XsmCI

 

Its in Germany, but most of the interesting stuff is in English, as it was a bunch of Brits who did the technology.

 

Back in the day, subs going down low was a big deal, hence the custom CV cabs for Sensurround, but now, there are a number of easily available subs that go down low competently. db Audiotechnik J Infra is one example. Having said this, in a real quake, most of the energy is in the below-a-few-Hz range, so low that in fact the earthquake folks measure using period rather than frequency.

 

So having lived through a couple of big earthquakes and literally thousands of smaller aftershocks, if you really want to move people like a quake, a a sub or buttkicker (or fifty) really isn't going to do it, not even a small quake, let alone anything destructive. You need hydraulics. A lot of hydraulics. But most people won't know that, so just rattling them with subs will be quite convincing...

[bigclive]

Buttkickers attach to the underneath of a drum stool. It's a very localised sensation and uses a hefty amount of amp power just to produce a sensation in one err butt.

 

Not sure if they do them in different sizes, but when I was doing the lighting FX on the Armageddon SPFX ride at Disney Studios Paris they used them under the audience platform to vibrate it. I think the use does require some thought into transferring the vibration through to the audience though. Solid steeldeck might just dampen the effect too much. On the ride the floor was raised on rams (it drops in the show) and was metal grid (so nitrogen jets could be fired from below).

 

I wouldn't care much for having one of the Disney buttkickers mounted directly to a small stool in case it produced a large runny stool.

[azlan]

I would be tempted to use some 'infra' subs (D&B B2/J infra, EM acoustics i12/MSE118, Funtion 1 Infrabass 218 etc..) or some cinema LFE subs to send out low frequencies across the stage, they could be sat directly on or underneath the deck, and would probably cause the deck to resonate quite a bit with some low frequency rumble played through them.

 

If I remember rightly, Fabric (I think it was) in london has a system where a load of sub drivers are bolted directly to the dancefloor, to make the floor resonate in time to the music? might be worth hiring a piece of deck, buying a driver from a decent sub and testing the concept out

 

 

As Dbuckley said, you are not realistically going to recreate the effect of an actual earthquake with loudspeakers, however, you can create a realistic enough effect, and in fact for many people it will be more realistic as it will be more similar to the effect they would get watching it in a film (which for most people will be their main experience of earthquakes) I would also talk to the lighting department and work with them to see what they might be able to do with regards to flashing lights etc.. to disorient the audience, which may increase the realism of the experience (random strobe patterns all around the room maybe?)

 

And on a side note, if you do make the whole audience area vibrate, don't forget you will need to risk assess it, as it may cause problems for some people or impede with emergency evacuation if the system fails open.

[cedd]

Local folklore says that one of our nearby audio companies were asked to take a load of their D&B subs to the site of a building fire and played LF through them for a couple of hours to shake the ash off of the steel superstructure that survived the fire. Apparently it worked!

 

A friend recently designed the sound for a production of Miss Saigon and he managed to make the whole place shake when the helicopter landed, just with a pair of the theatre's (cheap) subs and some carefully selected sweeteners played in under the helicopter sound effect.

A few carefully selected tracks with sweeteners and a handful of decent subs should do you pretty well.

 

 

[paulears]

The physics of physically moving steel deck will need large amounts of energy. The buttkicker devices decouple the floor, from the seat and add vertical movement. If you could use 4 butt kickers on the four support legs of a piece of steel deck, I doubt that they'd even tickle it - and you'd lose the structural stability of the deck. Sure - the deck can support X amount of load, but can buttkickers carry the same load, and the weight of the deck?

 

Steeldeck weighs so much that a piece up on edge, needs considerable force to push it over. You can kick a piece of deck on it's edge, hurt your foot, and it doesn't even move. To push it over needs applied force for a period - not a transient 'ooof' like a buttkicker device. The mechanics of getting a big area of deck to physically shake are an engineer's dream, and an amateur's nightmare. Big subs, as in 'sensearound' would be a much better starting point.

[gregog]

Hi All,

Thanks for all the input thus far. Seems like my initial idea of simply using subs are going to be for the best. Thank you for also recommending some models of units, azlan.

I am not trying to recreate an actual earthquake by any means - the title of 'Earquakes in London' is more a metaphor, so I don't want to simulate an actual earthquake - I do just want to create some low frequency vibrations within the sound design.

 

Not a problem re risk assesments, lighting, etc, I'm the Technical Manager of the venue so up to scratch of HSE and predominantly a lampy!

 

Loving the suggestions though, so thank you all so so much. Do please keep them coming if you have any other suggestions! As I say, I'm no noise boy!!

 

Gregog!

[Wingwalker]

Give Stage Electrics in London a call 0207 939 3000 and ask to speak to Alex Keighley. I think he used one of those units last year for an event. If anyone's going to know about it, it's him.

[Chappie]

We have used Buttkickers plenty of times on dancefloors along with psychoacoustic bass generation to give the impression of huge bass when in reality it didn't exist. The effect can be quite astonishing, especially if you are actually using big subs.

 

The only thing I can suggest is to try it on a single piece of steel deck and see if it does what you want, you're only looking for a sensation in the feet after all, not to physically move the whole decking. I would think you'll only be able to use one per piece of deck for it to be remotely cost effective, but if it works on one it'll scale up well. You may struggle to find that many units for hire though and if so might want to concentrate on the centre section of the decking and hope the sensation spreads.

 

Obviously check with whoever owns the decking that they are OK with you screwing into their stock. You may even find that short screws that don't protrude through the top are not enough to hold the Buttkickers and that they might require bolts. Just something to think of.

[Seano]

Local folklore says that one of our nearby audio companies were asked to take a load of their D&B subs to the site of a building fire and played LF through them for a couple of hours to shake the ash off of the steel superstructure that survived the fire. Apparently it worked!

 

Based on my experience of large speaker arrays and dusty steelwork, I call urban legend. ;)

[Chappie]

Local folklore says that one of our nearby audio companies were asked to take a load of their D&B subs to the site of a building fire and played LF through them for a couple of hours to shake the ash off of the steel superstructure that survived the fire. Apparently it worked!

 

Based on my experience of large speaker arrays and dusty steelwork, I call urban legend. ;)

There could be something in it. We did a TV show for the BBC in an aircraft hanger that required localised, low frequency energy at very high levels to physically move things that were being captured on high-speed film. We had to stop pushing the levels in the end as the roof sounded like it was going to come in.

 

I don't see how it's any easier than just cleaning the steelwork with a picker though!

[alistermorton]

Based on my experience of large speaker arrays and dusty steelwork, I call urban legend. ;)

 

Or as we used to call it on cix (dbuckley will probably remember the specific conference) a dead granny.