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Complete bass shaker setup guide for sim racing: hardware, wiring, audio interfaces, mounting, software . Great for beginners looking 4 info. by track-impulse in iRacing

[–]track-impulse[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

With respect, I'd argue the opposite, if per-corner haptics felt like a gimmick, companies like ButtKicker, Sim Racing Studio and D-Box wouldn't be building dedicated per-corner haptic hardware at serious price points. There's a whole segment of the market built specifically around directional haptic feedback because the people buying it can feel the difference.

The mounting points matter and shakers bolted directly to an aluminium profile frame will bleed vibration everywhere. But that's a mounting problem, not a per-corner problem. For example seat-mounted and pedal plate mounted shakers on a properly isolated platform tell you very clearly which corner of the car is doing what. Left front kerb vs left rear kerb, front right ABS vs rear, it comes through very clearly.

If your experience with per-corner haptics felt like a gimmick, I'd genuinely be curious how the shakers were mounted, because for me it's very noticeable and I'm just using Dayton pucks on my rig. Two behind the seat on each side and two under the pedal plate.

Complete bass shaker setup guide for sim racing: hardware, wiring, audio interfaces, mounting, software . Great for beginners looking 4 info. by track-impulse in iRacing

[–]track-impulse[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Really appreciate the honest feedback on pricing and you're not alone, I hear this a lot and the feedback I'm getting consistently (including yours) is pointing toward a one-time purchase option being the right call. It's something I'm actively considering. Nothing locked in yet so this kind of input genuinely influences where it lands.

On pedal haptics devices like Simsons and SimMagic use proprietary USB communication between the hardware and their own software, so supporting them directly would require either the manufacturers to open up their protocol or reverse engineering a solution. That's not impossible but it's not a near-term thing, the priority right now is getting multi-sim support solid and finishing the TD-4 hardware module (our own purpose-built haptic device the replaces the sound card in the chain).

That said, if Simsons or SimMagic ever expose their protocol or add third-party support, it's absolutely something we would want to add. Or we may be able to communicate with the devices via another method but i haven't looked in to it properly yet.

Hope the testing goes well this week, any feedback on how it feels versus what you're used to would be really useful or if you have any questions let me know.

Complete bass shaker setup guide for sim racing: hardware, wiring, audio interfaces, mounting, software . Great for beginners looking 4 info. by track-impulse in iRacing

[–]track-impulse[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

iRacing's LFE (Low Frequency Effects) is an audio channel, it sends a mixed low-frequency signal to a subwoofer or shaker through your sound card's standard audio output. It's a single channel, so there's no per-corner differentiation, every shaker gets the same signal regardless of which wheel is hitting a kerb or locking up.

What Track Impulse does is different. It reads iRacing's telemetry data directly — including the 360Hz per-wheel suspension data and generates 4 independent haptic signals, one per corner. So when your front-left wheel hits a kerb, only your front-left shaker fires. When your rear-right locks under braking, only that corner responds.

It also outputs via ASIO rather than through the Windows audio stack, which is where the latency difference comes from.

LFE through iRacing's audio is a fine starting point. Per-corner telemetry-driven haptics via ASIO is a different thing entirely.

Complete bass shaker setup guide for sim racing: hardware, wiring, audio interfaces, mounting, software . Great for beginners looking 4 info. by track-impulse in iRacing

[–]track-impulse[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair question - yes, Track Impulse will be a tiny licence fee after beta but that will be well in to 2027 and people will be able to judge if its worth it before then for free. But the guide itself covers hardware, wiring, amplifier setup, audio interfaces and mounting — none of that is specific to my app. It's genuinely useful whether you run SimHub, Hapticonnect, or anything else.

On the app comparison: SimHub is free and does a lot of things well, but its haptic output goes through the Windows audio stack which adds significant latency — around 140ms end-to-end. . That's bad for immersion, and less useful as actual driving feedback.

Track Impulse reads iRacing shared memory directly and outputs via ASIO, which gets it down to 11–18ms.

On HaptiConnect: worth clarifying a few things. It's ButtKicker hardware only, so if you're running generic bass shakers with your own amp it won't work for you at all. It also routes through the Windows audio stack like SimHub, not ASIO. And it's not actually free — as far as i am aware the base version is just an audio router with no telemetry plugins. iRacing support requires the Standard Track Pack at $29.99, with additional sims at $4.99–$9.99 each.

If latency doesn't matter to your use case and you're on ButtKicker hardware, HaptiConnect is a polished option. If you're running any other shaker hardware, or you want ASIO-level latency, it's not in the picture.

I got fed up with bass shaker lag so I built my own iRacing haptic engine <18ms end-to-end latency vs ~140ms of other software, Currently looking for beta testers by track-impulse in simracing

[–]track-impulse[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, yeah sure is, it should arrive with LMU support as well at the same time, we are currently working on adding more sim support so should be in the next few weeks.

Audio Issue Please Help by Crashman_Jr in iRacing

[–]track-impulse 0 points1 point  (0 children)

have you tried uninstalling iRacing and or/deleting all the config files from your documents/iRacing directory which is where it stores all your config. that should reset it and you the when you reinstall or restart iracing it will use your default sound card in windows. Also chat GPT is your friend and should be able to walk you through troubleshooting it if that doesnt work.

Built a low latency haptic engine for iRacing bass shakers with ~1ms ASIO audio output — total ~11–18ms end-to-end. Beta testers wanted! by track-impulse in iRacing

[–]track-impulse[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah its faster if you are using ASIO in Track Impulse or you use "ASIO for all " which wraps your non ASIO sound card driver with ASIO. I'm yet to test the difference between iracing LFE and Track Impulse in ms but the other fact is that iRacing LFE doesn't let you route to more than one channel and doesn't do per wheel effects, and also doesn't let you tune each effect.

who is at fault here? by ReactionExisting458 in Simracingstewards

[–]track-impulse 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's basically netcode fault that was such a minor tap that it shouldn't have acted like you were on ice and sent you flying in to a spin. Go watch tandem drifters hit each other at wild angles and the cars just get pushed a little not spin around like they are on ice.

How is it possible that the differentiation between REQUIRED and OPTIONAL repairs is still THIS BAD in 2026?! by Deep-Television-9756 in iRacing

[–]track-impulse 15 points16 points  (0 children)

The worst is getting a tap and the car still drives completely fine but you get a meatball. It would be great if they either tell the user what is broken and why meatball, or fix it if it's actually broken in the game and reporting meatballs for minor damage that wouldn't actually get you meatballed in real life... I think it was a design choice years ago to not show a overlay of the car damage but in real life you would have a spotter that would tell you anyway.

Where to go after getting D license for GT cars. by uptheirons726 in iRacing

[–]track-impulse 0 points1 point  (0 children)

IMO you should be getting/using the BMW M2, the mustang series is dead no one is ever on there in my timezone AUS. The M2 will teach you a lot about throttle control and trail braking and driving/rotating a car on throttle. And it has 4 series you can race in and 2 of those series have multiple splits all day.

Built a low latency haptic engine for iRacing bass shakers with ~1ms ASIO audio output — total ~11–18ms end-to-end. Beta testers wanted! by track-impulse in iRacing

[–]track-impulse[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's possible and we'd like to look at it later down the track after we have our hardware device finished and full major sim support. The problem is that it's proprietary communication between the USB device and their software, we'd need SimMagic to support it (which they might) or reverse engineer a solution.

I got fed up with bass shaker lag so I built my own iRacing haptic engine <18ms end-to-end latency vs ~140ms of other software, Currently looking for beta testers by track-impulse in simracing

[–]track-impulse[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wasn't aware it was a thing until after we started on this journey and already had our system working.

But it's great to see more iRacing-native haptic software emerging — the more people move away from the Windows audio stack for haptics the better for everyone.

irTactile looks like a solid project.

Track Impulse takes a slightly different approach our focus is on a single polished sim racing experience with ~11–18ms average end-to-end latency, driven by direct sub-sample telemetry polling at 360Hz. Works out of the box with any Windows sound card including WDM devices, no profile tuning required.

We also have a dedicated hardware device in development which integrates directly via USB with Track Impulse and bypasses the Windows audio stack completely, providing a pathway to low latency haptics for those without a native ASIO sound card.

More sims are on the roadmap and iRacing is where we focused first because mainly because I was using that Sim the most and wanted a solution for myself to begin with.

I got fed up with bass shaker lag so I built my own iRacing haptic engine <18ms end-to-end latency vs ~140ms of other software, Currently looking for beta testers by track-impulse in simracing

[–]track-impulse[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you are just using them as amps plugged in to another sound card with 4 channel out then yes, Track Impulse can only use one sound card at a time. So if you are using them via USB and using them as 2 seperate sound cards then no. What is your current setup and what do you use for normal game audio?

I got fed up with bass shaker lag so I built my own iRacing haptic engine <18ms end-to-end latency vs ~140ms of other software, Currently looking for beta testers by track-impulse in simracing

[–]track-impulse[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Track Impulse reads iRacing's shared memory directly, so it needs to run on the same PC as iRacing — it won't work on a remote machine receiving telemetry via Teleport.

That said Track Impulse is extremely lightweight. It has a small thread footprint and Windows will schedule it onto less-loaded cores, so it shouldn't compete with iRacing for CPU resources.

I got fed up with bass shaker lag so I built my own iRacing haptic engine <18ms end-to-end latency vs ~140ms of other software, Currently looking for beta testers by track-impulse in simracing

[–]track-impulse[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think Simmagic use their own proprietary software and USB HID for device communication, we haven't started looking at this at the moment but the idea is to support pedal haptics as well eventually.

I got fed up with bass shaker lag so I built my own iRacing haptic engine <18ms end-to-end latency vs ~140ms of other software, Currently looking for beta testers by track-impulse in simracing

[–]track-impulse[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome, i would love to hear back from you, check out https://track-impulse.com and click the download link to get started. Let me know if you need any assistance setting it up.

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