Tom's mobile studio build

Hi everyone :D This is my Audio RV build diary. This forum has been an inspiration for me for years and I wanted to share this with you all. If you have concerns or ideas, I would be into hearing them. Enjoy the ride. :D I am going on the road in a rv for a year to write and record myself and garage bands, and small venus. About the RV: The Rv is 21' long. 16 MPG and the size to manover through towns is why I bought her: My goal is to be able to have 2 people inside with acoustic guitars able to play and record. The passenger seat swivels around so one could sit there and one could sit somewhere in the middle as well. I would like if possible to keep the middle fairly open so I have some space to live since it will be my home for a year or so. In the sketchup file I set the speakers firing the long way down the rv. It seemed better to avoid the reflections shooting the short way which is only 6'8" wide and I drew up to the height of the window I am having a hard time using sketchup. It's not as intuitive as my DAW! :lol: I have also included a few pictures of the inside: Sketchup File: http://woodcreststudio.com/temp/RV/rv_interior4.skp :D :D

Well a bit of time passed... I learned sketchup, kind-of lol, and I came up with this: Then demo commenced........ One of the downfalls to rv construction, in my case, is curved walls, nothing's plum, yadda yadda yadda...... Making for difficult square measurmeants. The first thing I built was a cabinet face: Then I began to build and vision the sketchup print from there..

I demoed out the entire drivers side of the rv, spray foamed behind where the main equipment rack would be for r-value and sound dedening of the outside world. Meanwhild doing my best to fabricate the 1st cabinet carcass. To work with the curves.mezed pita! LOL After the spray foam high wore off I figured out my sound panels and how I would make them. Then I moved forward.. partial demo packed with oc703 upholstered After 4 trips to fabric stores I finally found a nice fabric to upolster the first side. I think I bought enough to do an entire house to be safe! CHeerS! more to come..

What a cool project! 8) Be sure to edit your profile to include your location -- we have no idea where in the world you are, other than to assume you're in a place where one drives on the right side of the road and measurements are in inches! :roll: USA, right? --Keith :mrgreen:

Hiya Keith, Forgot to update my profile. :? For some reason my original profile no longer worked and I re-registered with 1/2 of it. cheers, Tom

good Lord, this may be the coolest build i've seen in a while. that vehicle alone may be the coolest. reminds me of the studio in that container. . .or the Click Track Audio mobile van. i probably can't offer any good help, but i can say that i'll be watching. good luck to you. i hope your build and finished project serve you well. my build is here http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8205 to redeem my adolescent sounding post. . .haha.

dynamike wrote:

good Lord, this may be the coolest build i've seen in a while. that vehicle alone may be the coolest. reminds me of the studio in that container. . .or the Click Track Audio mobile van. i probably can't offer any good help, but i can say that i'll be watching. good luck to you. i hope your build and finished project serve you well. my build is here http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8205 to redeem my adolescent sounding post. . .haha.

Hi Dynamike, thanks for your kind words. Your setup looks nice 8)

So... the progress.. I built the dual equipment rack. As you see in the pictures, there is a finish frame around it and the rack will recess behind that about an inch on isolation mounts pictured below: Iso mounts will be under the rack bolting the rack to the body, helping to soften the transmission of shock to the rack. This was a concern of mine and searched for a week ordering various mounts untill I found one I felt good about. Next post.... The genset and power inversion tests....

I did take some footage of the readings. My pop stopped over with his oscilloscope and we probed the generator and power inverter. Depressed depressed... :cry: Both the genset and the powerverter were square. The powerverter had crazy anomalies at zero crossing. The generator was fairly clean, but also a square wave. From what I have read, pure sine wave power inverters are the way to go, so I am now looking. I am open to suggestions for true-sine power inverters if you can recommend one. Here is a picture of the generator's -120 volt square wave. <<- (square wave? that just sounds wrong :) :P ) You can see a little spike in voltage at the beginning and end of the cycle. It was very small, we were zoomed in pretty far. Next is a video of the +120v portion of the cycle: genset.avi 2.4M right/ctrl click save target: http://woodcreststudio.com/temp/RV/genset.avi Here is a video of the power inverter probe. I thought we were doing something wrong: vertor.avi 6.3M right/ctrl click save target: http://woodcreststudio.com/temp/RV/vertor.avi Sorry, but I tried to resample them to mpegs, but windows movie maker just kept crashing, so I couldn't edit them and bring the size down. I don't think avi videos stream, you'll have to wait for the whole video to download before it will play. Enjoy, and hit me with some power inverter suggestions if you have any. ciao !! :D

Here's a good site for inverters - it's in alaska which has many alt energy installs. ;) http://www.absak.com/catalog/index.php/ ... 27_129_197 BTW - I hope you aren't using that expanding aerosol foam to stop sound getting out - it won't do it ;) cheers john

Hi John, Thanks for the link. I think I will be getting a prosine inverter. I spoke with a rep from their company for sizing with my load and amount of batteries. There's a bit to it. I'll draw a line diagram of the design of the electrical distrubution in the next day or so. As for the foam. I sprayed it on the bottom panel to stiffen it since it is all fiberglass, the window had some water leak issues, and for a little r-value. I believe i stopped all the leaks. I just didn't want water to get into a panel of 703 and not notice it until I smlled the musty scent and see the back of my rack preamps rusting. :shock: Have a great night.. ciao, TOm

Hey guys! Sorry, It's been a while. The construction is coming along. I could not for the life of me find my digital camera for a month. The racks and cabinets are in and finished on the drivers side. I got a new power vertor and I have been running some mixes in in the uncompleted room to get a sense of the sound of the interior of the rv and the mix's translation. Go figure, once I dismount the rear from the house control room to run tones and mixes and work comes in for the studio!diddlydoo So I had to move everything back inside out of the rv. I found my camera again today and will fill you in better on the progress. It has been stifled with the business of summer and I have a girlfriend too, but I really can't complain since things are moving forward. It's never at the pace you anticipate is it!

Ok, Here's a picture of the completed and installed cabinet on the drivers side. I did wind up getting a prosine 2000 watt power invertor. The closet where it is to be installed in is not built yet and the old has to come down and be expanded. Here is the plan to rebuild the closet and expand it. The shaded area will be the new face of the closet. I'm going to make it out of sound dampening material. I had set up the speakers and ran a couple of mixes to get a sense of the room sound and I have to move them back out there and RTA the room. The mixes didn't translate that well compaired to my control room inside the house which is 11x13 splayed walls and tuned to what is predictable and mixet turn out pretty well in the first go. Question: I usually use my Goldline RTA. It doesn't have the level of detail I see in some other FFT programs. If I use my macbook, it's internal sound card to drive the speakers. What microphone should I hook up to the macbook's sound card that will be reliable for analyzing the room? ciao, Tom