Tom's mobile unit build diary

[Lander]

Hi everyone :D

This is my Audio RV build diary.

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!

I have also included a few pictures of the inside:

Sketchup File:
http://woodcreststudio.com/temp/RV/rv_interior4.skp

[Lander]

Well a bit of time has passed... I learned sketchup, kind-of lol, and I came up with this in Attachment 1:

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 in Attachment 2:

Then I began to build and vision the sketchup print from there...

[Lander]

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. 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..

Attachment 1: partial demo

Attachment 2: packed with oc703

Attachment 3: 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...

[lampmeister]

Great stuff! Can't wait to see how this comes together.

Respect.

[Lander]

Thanks,

It's taking a while, but as I move forward, construction and ideas are accelerating

[marty lester]

great thread man...best of luck...and keep the pix coming!

someday, i hope to have my own build diary to post...but
for now you'll find me in a corner, the side of the stage,
or some other nook...with headphones on.

cheers,
marty.

[big country]

how are you going to run power to all your stuff ? will a couple batteries
and inverter cut it?
the reason Im asking is I want to run all my gear off batteries.
looks like a fun build

matt

[Lander]

Cheers Marty


Hi Matt,

There are 4 deep cell diode isolated from the 5th coach battery. A 2000w power invertor is fed from the 4 deep cell. There is also a 2.8kw onan generator. The only thing I don't like about the powervertor it the fan lopes on it. I have to put an occiloscope on it to check for the trueness of it's sinewave and for noise..... in due time.

[Berolzheimer]

Looks cool. Make sure you bring some looooong cables for those late night recording sessions in the canyons of the Southwest!

(can you tell I've dreamed of this many times?)

Happy travels, & lets hear some as you go!

[Jim vanBergen]

It looks great so far!

How is the sound isolation working out (both from interior & exterior perspectives) now that you have done the insulation?

Keep a positive attitude, bro. Lookin' good!

[Lander]

Hi Paul,

I looked into long microphone and they're too expensive. A 50' cable is like $30 ! So to save money I bought a 1000' spool of string and stole a couple cans from a neighbor's recycle bin. One can in front a mic in the rv and the other to come with me to the top of a mountain

All right, you can take me away now BTW I love the South-West

Jim,

I think it will be pretty good. At least I hope so. That spray foam is about 3" thick under the windows and the oc703 is 2" Knocking on the side of the rv (all fiber-glass) you can really hear the difference where the insulation is and isn't (in a good way).

Were you at the meet in NY this week? I couldn't make it, but wish I could. I was working on the Rv!

[Berolzheimer]

Originally Posted by Lander

Hi Paul,

I looked into long microphone and they're too expensive. A 50' cable is like $30 ! So to save money I bought a 1000' spool of string and stole a couple cans from a neighbor's recycle bin. One can in front a mic in the rv and the other to come with me to the top of a mountain

Make sure you do an impulse response of that for Speakerphone!

[Jim vanBergen]

Originally Posted by Lander

Jim,
Were you at the meet in NY this week? I couldn't make it, but wish I could. I was working on the Rv!

Yup, the event was my original suggestion, and while I did arrive late after seeing my doctor for allegies (bummer!) I got there in plenty of time to eat, drink, and make merry! I'm the big, short haired redhead guy with glasses in the middle of the table on the left hand side in a couple of the pictures. I'm also the former owner of Steve Remote's Breadmobile, I used to operate Audio Architects Remote. Now I do mostly work on video trucks with flypacks... but that's a whole other story!

Sorry you did not make it. I hope to see this baby (your RV) up in action before long! Did you ever see the Lincolcn Center Library RV? A tiny Sony mixer on the passenger seat and the driver turned to the right to mix, while behind him a shader/switcher is calling & taking camera cues to tape. Tiny, but great...I think your rig has HUGE possibilities!

best regards,

JvB

[Lander]

Hi everyone, been busy busy busy... constructing..

Jim, sounds like the gathering was a good time. Maybe a bon-voyage party for me and my rv next one lol . I'll be all across the USA. I'd love to show some of the remote recorders the setup, especially before I head out on the road in case I missed something I'm not familiar with.

Paul, I will send you the impulse response!


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.


Next post.... The genset and power inversion tests....

[Lander]

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...

Both the genset and the powervertor were square. The powervertor 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 ) 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 !!

[big country]

How to Choose a Power Inverter

wish I could tell you what to get , hopfully soon I will be headed in the direction of getting one my self.

If you poke around on that site it will hook you up with some vendors . good luck

is that a vixen by any chance? my budy owns a shop and is converting one into a Bio .

those are some tripy rides BTW. when I first saw that thing in the shop I thought to my self wow that would be

cool studio

let me know if you find a thousand watt , sine wave , for a good price.

how big are you looking for?

[Remoteness]

I've seen a lot of ProSine true-sine power inverters used in our industry.

I noticed that the link above includes the ProSine brand.

...By the way, great thread -- Keep up the good work!

[Marshall Simmons]

How is everything going with your build?

I'm hoping that you've found a solution for your power inverter problem, and that you've been able to move ahead.

[Remoteness]

What about Tom's mobile unit build diary -- How's it coming along

[boojum]

Very interesting project and I hope you will keep us in the loop as it progresses. I saw one of these RV's over ten years ago in Palo Alto, CA and was never able to determine who or what about it. I tracked it down from the name on the side of yours. What a rig! Lucky guy!

Cheers

[Lander]

Hey guys!

Sorry, I didn't receive a email response that there were new posts.

The construction is coming along. I cannot for the life of me find my digital camera. 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! So I had to move everything back inside out of the rv.

I'll look for my camera again tonight and 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!

[Lander]

Ok, in the first attachment is 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?

[Lander]

I guess you can tell, I found the dang camera!

[hackenslash]

Coming along nicely there, Tom.

[Lander]

Thanks Tony

Good to see you in these parts

[Lander]

Originally Posted by boojum

Very interesting project and I hope you will keep us in the loop as it progresses. I saw one of these RV's over ten years ago in Palo Alto, CA and was never able to determine who or what about it. I tracked it down from the name on the side of yours. What a rig! Lucky guy!

Cheers

Funny, I bought this one in San Juan Bautista, CA and drove it back to Pennsylvania.

There is a used dealer there:
http://stannerair.hypermart.net/

Ted is a really nice guy.

[Remoteness]

Tom,

How's the build out coming along?

Got anymore pics to show us?

Did our recent (AES) field shop meeting perk your mindset at all?

All the best my man!

[Gedit]

Tom,

Nice to see you're still at it. I ran across the last PM you sent me in May. That was when I was leaving my previous employer and embarking on the 100% audio thing, so I never got back to you. Apologies.

I've nabbed a 24-foot RV on a 93 Chevy body with ridiculously low original miles on it. I've begun the same thing you're doing to yours - carving out work areas and mapping the floorplan. I have a ways to go before I catch up.

Keep up the good work!

george

[big country]

not to high jack
but I was wondering what it takes to get streaming on the net
I looked at your site George
I always thought it would be cool if GS had a streaming section
It could open many new doors to the industry
possibly blow the doors off the hinges
for Mobile knuckle heads
and artist a like

[Remoteness]

Originally Posted by Gedit

Tom,

Nice to see you're still at it. I ran across the last PM you sent me in May. That was when I was leaving my previous employer and embarking on the 100% audio thing, so I never got back to you. Apologies.

I've nabbed a 24-foot RV on a 93 Chevy body with ridiculously low original miles on it. I've begun the same thing you're doing to yours - carving out work areas and mapping the floorplan. I have a ways to go before I catch up.

Keep up the good work!

george

Sounds like it's time to get a George Build Out thread going.

All the best to you folks!