I first heard about Moving Haptic Feedback from Curtis Clark, the founder of Clark Synthesis. Curt showed me how to make Tactile Sound move across a sofa. I was intrigued. For example, in a war movie a fighter jet may fly across the screen, say, from right to left. To help the audience experience the jet’s movement, the jet’s sound will first appear in the right front speaker before the jet appears on the screen. The sound then moves across the front sound field to the center speaker, and continues to the left speaker as the fighter flies off the screen. This creates a sound field that helps the audience focus on the jet as it flies across their field of view.  In a Dolby Atmos™ Theater, the sound is further enhanced with 3D positioning so you can hear the jet fly directly overhead.   

In real life, when a fighter jet flies over, you not only hear the jet, you feel the rumble coming off the jet. At my home in Colorado I sometimes hear the windows rattle and feel the rumble coming from military jets. Years ago, I spent some time in Wyoming, and would hear and feel the sonic booms coming off those same fighter jets.

In a home theater, the jet experience can be enhanced by adding the jet’s haptic feedback to a sofa. To do this, you create what we call The Ultimate Sofa. You begin by placing three TST429 Platinum Transducers in a sofa. For sofas with thinner padding, three TST329 Gold Transducers will suffice. The Transducers are connected to the Left Front, Center, and Right Front audio channels. These channels are separately available on better receivers. If your receiver or video display doesn’t supply separate audio channel outputs, you can purchase an HDMI 7.1 Audio Extractor. 

Now when the jet flies across the screen, not only will you hear the audio fly across the screen, you will also feel the haptic feedback fly across your sofa. That is a totally awesome experience. In my home theater, the jet feels larger and more powerful. I feel much more involved in the action.  

This effect also works with other movie experiences, such as a herd of bison charging across the prairies, a T-Rex thundering across a tropical landscape, a dozen Harley-Davidson motorcycles racing on a deserted road, or Formula 1™ cars racing at the Grand Prix.   

Adding Moving Haptic Feedback to your home theater will certainly enhance your movie experiences with an even greater sense of reality and, of course, more fun. Enjoy!!! 

You can see a short video about The Ultimate Sofa here.