Bass sensation like a loud car system in home?

The relatively small enclosure space of a car is a big part of it but so is the nearfield aspect.  You can sit a lot closer to most speakers than people think.  I've used floorstanders on each side of my desk in a bunch of situations and it's very satisfying.  There's a punch and liveliness that dissipates with distance.  I think every audio enthusiast should experiment with listening to speakers that are only a couple of feet away.  You might be surprised by how much you like it.

@yukispier, I have experienced this type of bass in an upstairs room using four far field subs and one near field sub. The subs were JL audio, two with dual drivers and three with single drivers. The speakers were the large Klipsch Palladiums. The volumes this person played were extreme and probably damaging to his hearing. I actually feared he was damaging his house.     

I can experience this type of bass in my upstairs system using Innersound Eros speakers and an Earthquake MKV-15 subwoofer. 

The construction of the room is a very important factor. What works on wood floors is not as effective on a concrete slab. On concrete tactile transducers may be the answer you are looking for.    

The best tactical experience I have felt and highly recommend is found on another forum. Google, The Hideaway Theater. Some people have taken this concept to the extreme; there is a tactile bass thread on the same forum. You do not need to go that far. It is not difficult to build, it is customized for your space, and is not very expensive. This concept allows me to experience tactile bass without the usual extremely high SPLs required to produce it. I use a Mini-DSP so I can equalize the bass curve, timing, and volume to My satisfaction. I can also turn it off with the flip of a switch.  

In conjunction with the BOSS platform, I use two large sealed subwoofers, one in the front left corner and one in the rear right corner. I balance the sound of the subs with the effect of the platform so vibrations and sub volume are well matched. My primary use is movies but some use it for music as well. Now that I have experienced it, I would not want to live without it.     

You can build a room within a room to not disturb your neighbors. 

https://youtu.be/GFXfAux7wYA

Just for bass the Devialet Phantom Gold are very impressive  but costs around $5k. That includes a few thousand watts of amplification. 

I'll stand by my initial post, rude as it may be considered.
I've heard wayyy too many auto 'bassers' loosening the bolts in their cars with just floppy butt bass...therefore, the 'bowels' inference....🤨

An approach could be multiple large drivers for the audio/tactile point, transferring to tactile drivers in the seating. (Drivers first, bolt seating Down second....)

Complex?  Perhaps....how far you want to go with your concept and desire?  Likely the answer could get complex and expensive depending on the results desired....

I like big bass too....relative to the genre', of course....;)

Good luck, J

@yukispier
Have you tried cranking up the volume then listen from outside (exterior windows and doors closed) ? It may not be as loud as you think

Maybe you can borrow or get a returnable sub to evaluate the exterior sound leakage.

Tolerance of other home noise is dependent on the neighborhood. I have neighbors who occasionally have parties and “occasionally” jack up the music at “reasonable” (non sleeping) hours which I don’t mind because sometimes people just need to cut loose (destress) usually on weekends. So chances are it’s ok to jack up music occasionally during reasonable hours.

Or you can play better music that your neighbors enjoy :)

Let me put it this way: with my new (last couple of weeks) sub placement, I am now getting bass so powerful that I can’t imagine something similar in a car. It would be far too distracting and therefore dangerous. 

I listen to almost all genres of music. Some of them require some thud to the bass, even classical. It’s nice to FEEL the cellos and double bass at the end the adagio to Mahler’s 5th under Karajan’s wand. 

The one genre I almost never listen to is rap: with the exception of a handful of artists such as Notorious BIG and going back to Grandmaster Flash, I find it to be too misogynistic and with a range of emotion that rarely ventures beyond vicious anger and violence.

@phusis , You could do two floor to ceiling towers in the corners with four 12 subs in each tower and get decent results and here is why I do not do it that way. It is virtually impossible to control resonances and vibration in an enclosure that big. The problem with most subwoofers is they are not just speakers. They are musical instruments. Enclosure design is not so simple. Any vibration or shaking of the enclosure is distortion. Keeping the enclosure from becoming a musical instrument requires a very heavy stiff walled enclosure. The Stiffest enclosure would be a sphere. Spheres are unfortunately hard to make and work with. Next in line is a cylinder. Put a driver in each end of the cylinder and you cancel forces that want to shake the enclosure. A heavy cylinder with 1.5" walls will not resonate. No resonating and no shaking. Perfect. Place four of these units along the front and in the corners and you have an extremely low distortion horizontal line source. If you recall. line sources do not radiate sound off the ends, in my case the sides! The subwoofer line source system has only one early reflection, the ceiling. My listening room is open to the kitchen and then the dining room. The nearest full wall is 75 feet away. I still have some nodal behavior in the room but it is greatly diminished. It sounds like you are in a much larger room. 

Getting a horn to do 18 Hz requires an extremely big horn. I know of one fellow who casted bass horns in his house's foundation. The drivers were in the basement. The horns curved outwards and upwards opening up at the bottom of the front wall making a "U" turn. I only saw pictures. This was before DSP. Those drivers had to 15 feet behind the rest on the system. That is a huge delay. I have screwed around with delays just to see what I could detect audibly. 1.5 ms is clearly audible in the midrange.
If your subs crossed over like mine at 120 Hz 1.5ms would also be clearly audible. Much lower and you would be able it pick it out in an A/B comparison. It gets more difficult as you go lower. It becomes not what you hear but what you feel. 

Most all these answers will never give you what you want. You just need one subwoofer from Stereo Integrity and it is 24 inches in diameter and will handle 5000 W and has an 85 pound magnet on it and it will move 5 inches peak to peak travel and has audiophile quality sound.  It will change your whole reference for what subwoofers can do . Believe me you need to FEEL the bass.

For subsonic measure in Richter scale.  Sub-sub system flat to 4 Hz. Therefore dba meter pegged and not useful.  Car audio limited vs larger room volumes.

@mijostyn --

I would feel free in saying the vast majority of us do not have the room for subwoofer horns.

Maybe so. And yet; if you have the allocated space anyway it seems to me the sheer will to do it is the predominant factor, unless the horn cabinet volume itself turns out to be acoustically obstructive, something I haven't faced even when they've taken up a combined 100 cf. in moderate spacings. 

They are bandwidth restricted in their upper range, certainly tapped horns like mine, so you have to know what you're dealing with in how to best suit your specific needs. I take it you're fully aware of that.

... In my case it would not work anyway. I have to form a line source with them which means 4 or more drivers in most situations. If you put the subs in corners and in a wall floor intersection you do increase their efficiency requiring about 1/4th the power to get the same volume. In this case as a line source 4 12" drivers can do a lot of damage in your typical room. My own system will shortly have 8 12" drivers in 4 sealed cylindrical balanced force enclosures.

I've wondered myself why your setup didn't comprise line source bass towers when your main speakers are configured this way, but that seems to be underway now. It should make for an interesting, dare I say significant upgrade even. Please keep us informed. 

@phusis , I would feel free in saying the vast majority of us do not have the room for subwoofer horns. In my case it would not work anyway. I have to form a line source with them which means 4 or more drivers in most situations. If you put the subs in corners and in a wall floor intersection you do increase their efficiency requiring about 1/4th the power to get the same volume. In this case as a line source 4 12" drivers can do a lot of damage in your typical room. My own system will shortly have 8 12" drivers in 4 sealed cylindrical balanced force enclosures.

Make room for a cerwin vega earthquake box. 
They will rattle windows n everything else.

Hi Yukispier,

I understand you and your question is valid. It’s quite possible to get astounding bass in your home that will surprise you. The devialet Expert Pro 220 with SAM engaged at 100% and DPM on, will produce massive bass response using the right speakers without a sub. Many full-range speakers are capable of prodigious bass, with the right source. In my opinion for bass, vinyl can produce massive and highly resolved bass. As the marvelous and gifted designer Bob Carver demonstrated so many years ago with his sound spectrometer - whatever its called - the waveform of analogue vinyl is different than digital CD or for that matter streaming. The analogue waveform is significantly wider and spread over time than the digital signal. One can hear it listening to a great vinyl system; that big, dense, tonally rich dynamic sound created so easily by vinyl is quite different that the digital we are used to hearing. I remember walking into discos in the late 70s and 80s where the vinyl front end was driving powerful class ab solid state amps driving a number of horn compression driver speakers and bass cabs. That sound would pulse right through you. Fantastic.

you can get an idea of this sound by listening to say house or disco music sets recorded from vinyl decks. Weird. Even though its been digitized, that waveform still comes through and one can hear the analogue vinyl signature.

but for all that, digital and vinyl alike, try a system like Devialet’s Expert Pro with their Digital Power Management (DPM) and Speaker Active Management (SAM) engaged. Even with a sealed box design like Magico S3, the mid bass bloom and richness and massive room-filling bass will be mesmerising.

Go see Yngwie Malmsteen, then ask his crew what they do . Big wall of amps , and what feel like Butt Kickers . Also saw a Sarah McLachlan concert that had significant bass . I think they just had huge sub array across the front below the stage and digital correction . Better start with some big dedicated circuits . Woo Hoo my uvula is jiggling . Regards , Mike .

The question was simply whether having a powerful sub right next to your seating position will provide a similar effect to sitting in a powerful “ghetto blaster” car systems drivers seat at a more sensible volume then as loud as is comfortable.

This is for electronic and hip hop genres that are designed to be played back on systems with slamming subs.  Great info about subs has been shared but its mostly not relevant to the question.

Get a rotary subwoofer and use it conjunction with a regular subwoofer

@tony1954 -

My only question would be, why?
Unless I am watching a battle scene from Avatar or Midway, the last thing I want is bass that is disproportional to the way it was recorded.

I believe I understand what the OP is after, that "inside your head" kind of bass that’s produced in a car, and I find it is most closely reproduced with a mono-coupled DBA sub set-up in your home. I like it for what it is, many aspects actually, but ultimately I find the "outside your head" bass that’s created with stereo-coupled, symmetrically placed subs - usually a pair only placed fairly close to the main speakers - to be the more natural sounding. The real culprit it seems isn’t as much whether there’s stereo information in the bass below 80-100Hz, but that what’s effectively a pair of subs are placed symmetrically to the mains - i.e.: with equal distance to your ears - and that may put even a symmetrically placed DBA subs setup in a disadvantage. Some may want to convince (that is, ’correct’) us timing in bass doesn’t matter, but it absolutely does to those sensitive to it for whatever reason. In any case, that’s not what the OP is asking for, so: mono-coupled DBA from my chair.

The thing about "bass that is disproportional to the way it was recorded" is a bit tricky, if not easily misleading. If anything I’d say most hifi setups fall short of reproducing bass proportionately (i.e.: with proper energy and immersion), and moreover an addition in capacity doesn’t dictate for it to be dialed in overly "hot." That said cleaner and more effortless bass can (and usually should) be dialed hotter to recapture and natural balance and foundation in music (and movies) that a less capable bass system can’t approach without making itself too "visible" in the mix.

the last thing I want is bass that is disproportional to the way it was recorded

The type of music that you want this bass for is produced, mixed and mastered with slamming bass setups in the studios.  Purpose built studios have the benefit of being able to float all of the floors to decrease carryover but you still can feel the bass through most of the building while a session is really pumping.  Obviously this is the absolute wrong forum to even have asked this question on.  Lets let it die now.

My only question would be, why?
Unless I am watching a battle scene from Avatar or Midway, the last thing I want is bass that is disproportional to the way it was recorded.    

Topic is closed.  This discussion has devolved into s-posting and is not helpful.

Auto bass in the home.....🤪

What's not to like?!
Crack that sheetrock, all the seams rippling like the pond subjected to a stream of rocks.....Big Rocks (not yours, sorry....*L*)
Renovating in mind?  Get that old lath cleared of horsehair plaster bits.....
(Your woofs will get dusty....wear a mask, which ought to be part of your 'lifestyle' anyway....unless you're interested in creating a vacancy by one means or another....)

"Let's evolve CV-19, v.G!"

no

The potential nice effect of major home subs that mimic car rattling ones' is that your bowels Will Move....so be aware....*LOL*

Sounds like you're a candidate for a Woojer!
The wearable subwoofer.
Hey, it's a hobby! Have fun your own way...
Peace.

https://www.woojer.com/products/vest-edge%E2%84%A2?currency=USD&variant=36151926685859&utm_m...

Why would you ever want that? When I think of car audio, I think of the ghetto blasters that are played so loud that the sound of the plastic car body sounding like it’s gonna vibrate clear off the car frame is louder than the music itself.

If you've ever actually spent time in a car with a proper system and adequate dampening materials installed you hear no rattles or buzzing inside.  It's similar to having a massage chair when it's bumping loudly.  But you're right about "ghetto blasters" being what I'm referring too.  I have a high end high powered sub sitting in my garage that I thought I could use for this.

You guys who don't listen to the type of music that is built around slamming bass will never comprehend why anyone would want this.  It'd be stupid to build that style of system to listen to symphonies and jazz.  You don't need a bass volume knob for that type of listening :P

Why would you ever want that? When I think of car audio, I think of the ghetto blasters that are played so loud that the sound of the plastic car body sounding like it’s gonna vibrate clear off the car frame is louder than the music itself. 

I use a second electronics system, amp and pre-amp, to drive my excellent mains and  quality subs. Since both sets are driven by thr same models of amps and pre-amps, and since I measured and time aligned all of my speakers, it works great. an added benefit is complete control of how much bass is either added, either to somewhat suppeiment my mains, or really rock out.  On really good recordings, the volume controls are set the same.    .   

If you have room to fit  Energy ES-18XL , it will blow you away.

REL subs. Two columns of S/510 3 subs in each column, one left one right. 

Bass sensation like a loud car system in home?

Two speaker that do good one note bass with no extension, instantly come to mind, Bose 901 and old Klipsch.

Cheers George

@mijostyn --

You do not need to resort to huge drivers to get the best bass. They take up way too much room when you factor in the enclosures they require.
Today’s subwoofers are way more powerful than drivers of old. Their Xmax is much higher, up to 2 inches is not uncommon. The old drivers you were lucky to get 1/4 inch out of them. The larger drivers also tend not to move straight in and out. They wobble! I have seen it with high speed photography. In a 16 X 30 foot room four 12" drivers in corners and along the front wall (were they are most efficient) will do fine given enough power and a little EQ. Eight 12" drivers would be definite overkill.

More displacement area means less cone movement needed for the same SPL, which again is less distortion and cleaner sound. Indeed: smaller cones moving more violently to equate the SPL of larger cones moving less, sound different; you sense their effort producing bass (a bi-product of any direct radiating bass system, really, compared to horn-loaded bass) even though they mayn’t be working close to their limits. Inertia build-up in the moving parts of a driver, inevitable with prodigious excursion, IS audible - negatively, that is, as a smearing of transient ability. Ample displacement, not least combined with high efficiency and horn-loading simply creates a more effortless, smooth and relaxed bass by comparison. The cones of the 15" pro drivers (B&C) in my tapped horn subs move a few mm’s at most when making the air viscerally shake in the whole listening room (and beyond), at dB’s that’re downright scary. No wobbling of cones, I can assure you, and totally effortless at these levels.

Btw, there’s no "overkill" with bass; only an approximation of sufficient headroom ;)

The one concept I really dislike is the one that requires different bass for different functions like theater vs 2 channel. My 2 channel system doubles for theater and I do not make any adjustments between these functions. Last week I almost scared the projector tech to death with Star Wars then next I put on Dave Holland. No adjustments. Accurate bass is accurate bass regardless of what you are listening to. Maybe people like juicing the low end for theater because they think it’s cool like oversaturating the colors. Definitely, there are way more theater people than us audiophiles and you always want to buy equipment that was designed especially for your purpose which is marketing garbage. A good is a good amp regardless. Accuracy is exactly the same for theater and 2 channel. Maybe some of us audiophiles are thinking we don’t have to go down that low. You don’t have to do anything but in regards to the performance it is a vital part of projecting realism and making you think you are really in a much larger room. Many systems start dying at 100 Hz. The specs might say 28 Hz to 20 kHz but that is at one meter in an anechoic chamber not three meters in a 15 X 25 foot room. Just get a measurement microphone. Actually, don’t do that. It can be very depressing. Sh-t! I was listening to that??

Wholeheartedly agree here. What I’ve realized is that less clean bass means that you have to "negatively compensate" with less level for it not to be too conspicuous, and this really robs music (and movies) of a foundation that it should ideally have. That’s why, I gather, many feel the need to "juice up" the levels again with movies, because otherwise they don’t have proper impact and energy. With my former sub set-up that’s exactly what it lead to (re: negative compensation with music), whereas now the gain of my tapped horn subs sits at the same value, where it should, with both music and movies.

Regarding proper extension, this is where displacement and efficiency (and, ultimately, size) really matters, because hearing acuity lessens with lower frequencies, and so your sub setup needn’t only be linear down low but with progressing amplitude the lower the frequency. That’s why, with bass, headroom is so important, and for that "overkill" makes all the more sense.

I don't think it is that giant. I distinctly remember hearing him say one time when he was excited, it is a full three inches.

OP:  Have you seen the movie "Howard Stern Private Parts"?  If you haven't, do so and find the scene where they have the giant sub in the studio.   That's what you need to do .

@myjostin

Yep multiples of 10” are the quickest bass that can be had from a standard driver, but with servo control you can go larger.


To the quibblers here, I dare you to reproduce this song as it was performed at the 2002, I think, Bastille day celebration in Boston. Their entire stage sat on banks of 12” woofs, and it rattled the glass up and down the street, crossing into the subsonic. Music since the Synth is not your mommies orchestra.
https://youtu.be/Lux9J5ckKFw

Uh oh. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UU19UE4IOWg

OP chose the wrong forum for this query. 

All of what you are saying about requirements for large rooms is why I thought it made the most sense to just have a sub right next to the main listening position.  FWIW the main genres I listen to are hip hop and EDM which are mostly sine wave based bottom end genres.  Just would like to feel the bass in my body without rattling things all over my house.  I’ve had the pleasure of chasing down rattles in a couple of cars and really have no desire to open floors and walls to add dampening material anytime soon.

That is not bass that is noise. Now stop riding your bike across my yard or I will have to tell your mother!

Go william53b and absolutely right. Dave Holland uses a cabinet with 4 10" drivers and close in it is pretty potent. This is for your routine jazz
clubs which are not all that large. 
You do not need to resort to huge drivers to get the best bass. They take up way too much room when you factor in the enclosures they require.
Today's subwoofers are way more powerful than drivers of old. Their Xmax is much higher, up to 2 inches is not uncommon. The old drivers you were lucky to get 1/4 inch out of them. The larger drivers also tend not to move straight in and out. They wobble! I have seen it with high speed photography. In a 16 X 30 foot room four 12" drivers in corners and along the front wall (were they are most efficient) will do fine given enough power and a little EQ. Eight 12" drivers would be definite overkill.

The one concept I really dislike is the one that requires different bass for different functions like theater vs 2 channel. My 2 channel system doubles for theater and I do not make any adjustments between these functions. Last week I almost scared the projector tech to death with Star Wars then next I put on Dave Holland. No adjustments. Accurate bass is accurate bass regardless of what you are listening to. Maybe people like juicing the low end for theater because they think it's cool like oversaturating the colors. Definitely, there are way more theater people than us audiophiles and you always want to buy equipment that was designed especially for your purpose which is marketing garbage. A good is a good amp regardless. Accuracy is exactly the same for theater and 2 channel. Maybe some of us audiophiles are thinking we don't have to go down that low. You don't have to do anything but in regards to the performance it is a vital part of projecting realism and making you think you are really in a much larger room. Many systems start dying at 100 Hz. The specs might say 28 Hz to 20 kHz but that is at one meter in an anechoic chamber not three meters in a 15 X 25 foot room. Just get a measurement microphone. Actually, don't do that. It can be very depressing. Sh-t! I was listening to that??

Headbangers should not post on audiophile sites.
Try Kerrraaanngggg!

@dizbuster
Funny you should say that because in my original music room (with double hung windows from 1957) I had to chase down all the buzzing and mitigate as I went.  Then I could finally let the Hartleys rip and amazingly to me I cracked all the windows playing DSOTM.  Not due to sound pressure, just those bass notes vibrating them so hard. Sounded wonderful.  And for those of you who have not heard DSOTM on a system that will play below 20hz you would be surprised how much information is down there.
Regards,
barts

Oh, and PS. No square corners in the build. And of course the room correction software of your choice!

Mine will have a Mercedes Gull Wing style door to enter. 😁

This is the fun part of being a retired product designer. 😉

What @myjostin said, and…

What you get in a car is called "Cabin Gain"; large drivers in a confined space. You can solve this in a house by adding a lot of large drivers, most musicians playing bass prefer 4 or more 10” drivers right now for a modest club, multiples of that for larger halls, rather than 2 12’s or 15’s, for accuracy sake. (A random fact made by musicians buying performance speaker cabinets.)

Or, to everyone else’s point that you could possibly be the most hated person in town, you can build a small room within a room in a basement or garage, as an example, where the listening chair is in the middle, and the drivers are modified surface mounts and the cabinets external to the listening space. Say 6’x8’; with all surfaces dampened with fabric, carpet with padding etc. This takes Nearfield listening to the extreme. And it doesn’t take scads of power to pull it off.

If properly constructed, even people outside of your "cell" in your house won’t be too bothered, because you don’t need windows and instead of sheet metal on the outside you can use fire rated ⅝” Sheetrock on the inside and outside, and of course if built well, you can fill the insides of the walls and ceiling with sand or some other such vibration dampening material. So essentially a soundproof booth.

Frankly, I’m glad you brought this up, because I’m going to design one for my garage and build it. I love thunderous Rock and Classical, as it’s the best anti-depressant I have found. 😉

And I can execute a tasteful low wattage prissy system for my family room for showin’ off. 😂

A spectacular system could be built for around $5-6k.

I dub thee the “Sound Cell Supreme" listening room. ©️2021 William Pietrzak.

2- Scan-Speak 32W/8878T11 Revelator 13" Woofers, $1,400.
2- Hypex FusionAmp FA501 (250W 8 ohms mono), $1,000.
5- Seas Excel C18EN002/A (E0060) 6.5" Coaxials, $2,500.
1- $2,500 5 channel surround sound receiver of your choice.
1- Building supplies for room and speaker enclosures, $2,500.

Total, $10,000. And peace of mind that no one will bother you, and you will bother no one.

(I already have an Arcam surround receiver and 2 KEF subs to handle the power end and bass, so I’ll settle for those in mine.)

Have you considered structural damage to your home? Corner cracked windows? Drywall screws backing out?

I own a pair of Hartley Reference, a full range speaker with the 24" as  the woofers.  My understanding is that the 24"ers are no longer produced and very difficult to find on the open market.  It took me over two years to find a pair on the internet and I bought them of course \8-).

Easier to find the 18" drivers, still few and far between.

OP,  If you really want boom boom then the Hartleys are not for you.  Buy some modern powered sub-woofers.  The Hartleys are very musical and not designed to slam you in the face, they will but I'm not going to find out for how long.

Regards,
barts

The Eminent Technology rotary subwoofer can easily do this. it’s a bit pricey but if you want bass down to 1Hz, it’s the best.

http://www.rotarywoofer.com/

Very large woofers and lots of power.

I suggest a pair or 24" Hartley woofers in custom cabs that can be many shapes. Hartley can help you with this.

https://www.hartleyloudspeakers.com/new_page_2.htm

We built some cabs for these back in the day for the Levinson HQD system:

https://www.google.com/search?source=univ&tbm=isch&q=levinson+hqd&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjW...

They are big, but will give you what you are seeking.

Cheers!

1+jd55, I have heard some outrageously good car systems, competitions for highest sound pressure levels aside. I use to do my own systems because the factory ones were terrible but that is no longer the case. Although most stock systems are not the last word in performance they are quite tolerable so, I do not feel the need to rip a new car apart. Car systems to me are like headphones. They can sound great but it is the wrong perspective. 

As long as you live in an apartment, and this is an assumption on my part, what you ask for is a pipe dream. If you can " feel" the bass, your neighbor can too.

Move into a house ...

+1

@yukispier --

Actually I am just trying to be a courteous home owner and not have a house that can be heard down the block like a car with a nice system

So you do live in a house? Let’s be clear on that, because if you do there’s no reason you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Since I’m not interested in have 140dB of bass in my home lets say SQ system. Clean and defined sub bass yet strong enough to cleanly vibrate through your body.

You don’t need Richter scale levels to vibrate through your body, but make up your mind here: if you want what you’re asking for - that is, sound quality and impact - be prepared to go the distance (i.e.: there’s no magic "feel the impact on your body without the near within-the-same-structure surroundings being affected," and you won’t get proper impact from tiny, decor-friendly subs). If your residential situation can accommodate it there’s no reason why you can’t achieve your goal.

My advice: forget about "buttkickers" - it’s a cheap and distracting trick, if you ask me. Visceral sensation is very much created through prodigious lower 30-ish Hz reproduction in particular, and with bass it’s relatively simple: ample displacement (meaning: a certain minimum of driver size and overall volume) and proper implementation, and with that quality of reproduction and felt impact naturally follows.

It seems to me your real problem isn’t the neighbors; it’s that you want felt bass impact from a soundbar. Moreover, if you do live in a separately situated house then 90-110dB SPL’s from capably implemented subs won’t affect the neighbors, even louder than that, and you’d definitely be able to feel it. A mono-couple DBA bass setup with likes of, say, four PSA S1512 sealed subs (fairly compact and quite powerful) would give a sensation of a impactful and rather smooth "inside your head" bass, not entirely unlike that experienced in a car (personally I prefer symmetrically placed, stereo-coupled subs, but that’s not subject here).

bro, we hear you , I have 4 Buttkicker LFE in my couch on a QSC DJ amplifier mounted to the coils in my couch and it pumps , the cushions move up and down remotes fall off the couch. I also have 5 12 inch subs mounted in my couch (2 are kicker solos the square ones behind the back) on another dj amp you would love it  , i love using my buttkickers I rarely use my 12's cause my pb16s are much more cleaner and the 12's tend to drone, your not the only one looking for bass in a couch like a car system. I have 17,000 watts in my house system .you cant really talk about this to these people its frowned upon, you can talk shop here about your digital stream, stereo, amps but when it comes to sub bass they just dont get it and you will get a bunch of replies like if your system was good enough you wouldn't need all this bass, speaker position ,  , blah blah bunch of nonsense.. I got 2 DJ quality amps running my couch , a clean box to convert the RCA to XLR and its in my basement under my theater because they are noisy by nature and blow off allot of heat. theres allot of Bass Heads out there and im one of them for sure . I have 3-20a circuits 60amps total  and I have 60 amps because i needed it , I have 1 for my Furman 20amp 1 for my dual pb16's and 1 in the basement for the DJ amps. Im here because Its still a hobby for me and get ideas, It was a journey to get to this point I think I can lead you to the promise land Bass nirvana. allot of the parts for the couch were used and saved a bunch cause it was a project but at the end of the day I exceeded my expectations , Im also using this in my Home theater and run an AVR thats also frowned upon , this is a 2ch forum you won't get much from this crowd but light insults. let me know if you need help I truly have it all figured out and can save you some heartache and pain because Ive tried everything.