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| What would any racing simulator be with
out a kicking sound system? Well.... a racing simulator with out a sound
system... but thats just my point! We want a sound system. Something that could
piss off the neighbors even - if we wanted (duh)! Well to add the thump to our
racing simulator here we chose a basic 5.1 surround sound system from Creative.
I will admit I am not exactly a Creative sound system fan, but for these
projects its really a good match. For about 45.00 you can get a decent 5.1
system with a sub that it not too shabby. |
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So basically we will be putting the pods
in the 4 corners and one up on the steering wheel itself. We chose to use a
self adhesive Velcro to mount it to the carpet and zip tie the cables to the
frame to avoid any moving parts. Due to the front speakers being further away
from the user than the rear you will want to use your sound card's surround
sound configuration settings to make the rear speakers a little quieter. |
| In the rear we will be mounting the
speakers facing up so to keep the sound where we want it. However, you might
want to consider using a seat out of a Miata from a visit to your local
junkyard since they have speakers mounted right in the headrest (thanks David
for the heads up). It shouldn't cost allot, but the trade off is you lose your
racing seat, and may have some more tuning to get the surround to work well. |
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Next, mount the subwoofer behind the
seat. The reason we mounted it here is after some testing we found that the
rumble in your gut it produced was quite nice. Bass output and volume can be
used to increase the realism factor.
With some perforated angle iron pieces we attach the subwoofer to the platform.
We got the angle iron from Home Depot for $5.00 and a couple bags of screws as
well. Screw the sub to the angle iron pieces. Another advantage of the Creative
speaker set is the height of the subwoofer. With the angle iron it sits quite
comfortably between the sliding mounts for the seat. Using a bigger sub could
cause you to become "creative" for your sub mounting solution
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| Next up, rolling the seat all the way
forward position, take your sub and test for fit. Then slide the seat all the
way back and make sure it doesn't hit the sub and gives an inch or two of
clearance. Using a combination of wood screws and 2" self tapping metal screws
attach the sub to the platform both in the wood and through the wood and into
the metal frame. Its really important to take two things into consideration
here with this setup. One is to make sure that your sub is really mounted well.
Don't scrimp here unless you like to learn from doing things several times over
(listen up you software guys). The second is most subs are not shielded. So
keep your computer a fair distance from this. |
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After you have your sub mounted run all
the cables from your speakers to the sub, make sure that your seat does not hit
the jacks with the cables plugged in and the seat all the way back. Any extra
cable (and yes there will be alot!) bundle up and zip tie to keep things nice
and neat and out of the moving parts at the rear. |
| with most of the cable clean up done
slide the seat back slowly paying attention to the cables to insure that they
are not in the way of the seat so they dont get pinched or cut, cleanup any
sloppy cables and use zip ties to manage them. |
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Finally run the volume control up to your
"dash board" and mount it so that its not going any where. I used epoxy to make
sure it was good and set. Once again pay close attention to your cable
management and run them in the conduit where you can. So there you have it. Now
you just need to plug into your computer and 5.1 sound is blasting right in
your face. |
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