I'll preface this by saying that my background is primarily in flight sims where everything is mostly DIY and requires some understanding of core concepts of electronics and analog vs digital signals. In the flight sim world there is no real "plug-n-play" for most things so the population of flight simmers tends to be a smaller, older crowd with a strong motivation to research topics on their own. We'll often spend as much time putting together our own hardware and software as we do actually flying the sim and building things is very much considered part of the hobby.
I'm much newer to the sim racing community (only 6 months) but it seems that generally there are more people here in the sim racing group and the average age seems to be a bit younger with generally less understanding of electronics since most people just use "off the shelf" devices as-is. I'll explain some things in detail with the assumption that we need to cover some basic operation of devices. Forgive me if I explain things that are obvious to you, but I genuinely have no idea what kind of background you have and it seems like there's some confusion from the other folks in this thread as well as to what we're actually discussing here.
A tactile transducer is like a subwoofer, it responds to low frequency inputs (20 Hz - 100 Hz), but instead of producing sound, it produces vibration. Just like sound waves, the intensity and frequency of the vibration are governed by the amplitude and frequency of the input sound. A very loud signal at 20 Hz produces a strong, slow rumble while a quiet signal at 50 Hz produces a weak buzzing. Like a subwoofer, you can pass it a complete signal with the higher component (100 Hz - 20 kHz) but there will be undesirable harmonics/buzzing/noise. For best results you need a "low-pass filter", it filters out the higher component of the signal and passes along the lower part of the signal. Most subwoofer amps will have a knob to control the LPF with a setting somewhere in the range of 50 Hz - 200 Hz. This is often labeled "LFE Crossover" (low frequency effect) and represents the cut-off for the LPF that passes the signal to the subwoofer (anything higher is played by the main speakers). Many amps will combine the left and right channel after filtering since most systems only run a single subwoofer, so you end up with L- and R+ (or reverse, doesn't matter) hooked up to the subwoofer.
Tactile transducers can be configured in primarily one of two ways: audio pass-through or software-driven effect. For the audio pass-through, you simply send the subwoofer channel to the transducer either before or after the subwoofer. This is the simplest way to configure a transducer and works very well for movies or music where the tactile response enhances the experience of feeling the bass "kick". It can work reasonably well in sims as long as the event effect you're looking to enhance also makes a sound *and* that sound is very low frequency and high intensity. Generally things like running over curbs will make a lower sound that's enhanced by the transducer but things like tire slip, transmission whine/gear change, and engine RPM have a significantly higher sound that gets filtered out before it's passed to the subwoofer channel, so you won't feel it in the transducer. Since the subwoofer channel is effectively "mono", you can generally only hook up one transducer if you're feeding it off of the subwoofer signal. It's possible to get more than one transducer connected if you run a separate filter/amp for each channel so that you get a left and right subwoofer channel to feed to the left and right transducer... but that starts to get a bit complicated and relies very heavily on the sim having good sounds to represent vibration effects. The advantage is that it's technically compatible with everything since the transducer is just another subwoofer and the sim is completely unaware that anything other than normal speakers are hooked up.
Software-driven effects for transducers are more involved to configure and depend on specific plugins and software to support a given sim. They function by translating telemetry data into expected feedback effects (much like a FFB driver for a wheel). The effect is then translated to a subwoofer signal on a separate audio channel/sound card and sent separately to the tactile transducer. This usually involves a few more wires but has the added benefit of being completely separate from your sound system and you don't have to mess with your subwoofer at all. It also means that you can have 8 different transducers if you want, and you can configure some effects like engine RPM and wheel hop to be stronger or softer than they otherwise would be if you were simply hooked up to the audio as the first approach described above. You can also mix frequencies to get different effects and textures (ie, the gear change effect can have a strong signal at 35 Hz with a weaker component at 50 Hz and 25 Hz, etc).
The JetSeat has two modes of operation: sound mode or USB mode. In sound mode, you connect the stereo audio output of your sound card directly to the JetSeat and then connect your speakers/headphones to the output jack of the JetSeat. You will hear the same output through the speakers/headphones as if you didn't have the JetSeat plugged in, but it will use the bass component of the left and right sound signal to vibrate the left and right sides of the seat. This is the same as the "audio pass-through" described above and will work with all sims/music/movies with a strong bass tone.
The JetSeat has 8 vibration motors in it and can support more than just left/right vibration through USB mode. Andre provides the SimShaker software free of charge. It has support for more advanced effects for flight sims, Assetto Corsa, and iRacing. It also includes a massage function and firmware uploader.
SimVibe is software provided by SimXperience. It costs $90 and supports nearly all racing sims. It requires a separate sound card (or it can use your on-board sound card's line out ports if you have your sound system hooked up using the optical output). SimVibe can operate transducers in chassis mode (representing wheel forces at all four corners of the car) and extension mode (added vibration on brake pedal for ABS, vibration on shifter for transmission whine, etc.). It requires that each of your transducers be hooked up to the secondary sound card as if they were speakers/subwoofers and it will translate the effects data into synthetic bass signal sent to each channel. Since SimVibe uses software-driven audio effects, it can only provide left/right data to the JetSeat via the audio input jack.
In order to get front/back or corner vibration effects from the JetSeat in the sim, we'll need Andre to update SimShaker to add support for the desired sim via USB mode. Until then we can use the JetSeat in sound mode and rely on good sound effects in the sim to produce vibrations. We can also buy SimVibe for better sim support and get just left/right vibration effects.
Hopefully that clarifies things a little bit for you guys.
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