FRIHETEN sofabed/couch Hack - Add bass to your couch for ultimate movie experience!

FRIHETEN sofabed/couch Hack - Add bass to your couch for ultimate movie experience!



I live in a tiny studio apartment in NYC and brought a large subwoofer with me. I was able to hide it well with my previous ikea hack. However, its hard to get much use out of it due to the amount of bass it produces (aka neighbors don't like it).

I recently went to a movie in NYC with AMC's new Prime experience. They put a speaker/subwoofer under your seat so you "feel" the bass. I did some research and it seems people have already done this in their home theatres. There are several companies with different products depending on how much money you want to spend. I decided to go cheap since I don't have a full blown home theater setup.

I first purchased 2 of these Dayton Puck Tactile Transducers on Amazon for $19 each and later ordered 2 more for my ikea FRIHETEN couch. This couch is perfect because there is already plywood on the back, which allowed me to drill a hole to fit the pucks in without having to purchase 2x4's and making my own mounts.

To power the Dayton's I purchased the recommended Lepai LP-2020A+ Amp on Amazon according to reviews. I went to hardware store and bought 24 wood screws (#6), 4 wood screws with washers (#8), electrical tape, and wire caps. At home I already has some zip ties and sticky squares that I got from amazon for cable management as well as some leftover speaker wire.

On Amazon I ordered a 15ft serial cable (subwoofer) cable and a serial splitter (you may need 2 of these depending on if your receiver has only 1 subwoofer out port).

The final touch, which is optional, was to add a 50hz FMOD low pass crossover which I got on Amazon through partsexpress.

The build

1. Use the premade cutouts that come with the Dayton pucks to draw onto the wood. I chose to evenly space 3 under the lateral part of sectional and one under the vertical (storage) part.

2. Use some type of powerdrill to drill out enough wood for the pucks to fit in nicely. (notice on this couch the rear wood is only about 1/2" thick so I was very close to drilling all the way through)

3. Using 6 of the #6 screws, screw in the pucks into their holes that you made and make sure they don't budge.


4. Use the speaker wire to wire the speakers however you wish (this is the most difficult step and will vary depending on how many pucks you use, what ohm the pucks you got, what ohm your amp will run on). I purchased 4 of the 8ohm pucks. I put each set of 2 in parallel and then connected to separate channels (L and R). This gave me 4ohms into each channel (if speakers are parallel you divide by 2, if series you add them together).



5. I chose to put Amp vertically under the storage section so it was closest to power outlet (power cord provided for amp is really short). This is also convenient because when you flip up the storage section of couch you can easily flip the power switch and also make adjustments to volume/bass/treble.

6. Drill hole in bottom of storage area for subwoofer cable and power cord to exit


7. Drill hole in side to allow speaker wires to connect to amp in storage space.


8. Connect splitter to subwoofer cable and L and R from splitter to Amp

9. Connect other end of subwoofer cable to FMOD crossover and crossover to subwoofer out on receiver. The crossover prevents unwanted bass sounds during movies so couch isn't shaking throughout whole movie and only during scenes that are meant to produce bass.

10. Power on amp

11. Test it out by either plugging in serial cable to amp and other end into phone and play music with bass or play movie through receiver. (note when playing music with serial cable through phone you will get actual music + bass out of the pucks, but when connected to receiver you will only receive bass).

12. Don't tell your wife what you did and play a movie to see her surprise :)


NOTE: There will be alot of adjusting settings on receiver and amp to get it perfect for movie watching. I leave it off for watching tv but turn it on for playing games or watching movies.


Test video so you can get an idea on the bass that the couch produces




Equipment Needed