I’ve a little note on my desk from last time I had to clean up a dodgy sermon recording. It was a spur of the moment idea to record onto the laptop, little did I know that the laptop had a built in microphone and so recorded not only on the line-in from the mono out (post-mix) of the mixing desk but also the hiss, flutter and buzz of the laptop via it’s own mic.
Here’s what I did in audacity to get a bearable result:
This page is actually quite old now. More recently I’ve been using Ubuntu on an older Toshiba laptop for arranging things at the Christian fellowship that I attend. We’re looking at using OpenSong for lyrics and Bible quotations on the projector. I’ve also had a first shot at live recording straight on to the laptop using the “mono mix” from the mixing desk and a Free Open Source Software (FOSS) sound editing application called Audacity; Audacity can encode files to MP3 itself (I think it use the LAME encoder), which is handy.
The original page follows:
A Christian brother contacted me to ask about sermon recording. One of the problems he was having was with slow MP3 encoding from WAV files in windows. So, I did some googling around and whipped up this page. I hadn’t realised that you could record MP3 on-the-fly - that is create MP3’s live. Similar things can be done with WMA and OGG files. So Leeor, this one is for you.
I had been recording Sermons at our local christian fellowship since August 2002 and so put this together to tell people how we did things. It’s now largely obsolete as MP3 has taken off and minidisc has largely been passed by. Also, I no longer do sermon recording on a regular basis. I’ll keep this page up for a bit though.
I thought it was about time I shared a little of the methodology used and gave a quick review of some software options open to you. This information is relevant to all types of live audio recordings, not just Sermons.
We have Soundcraft Spirit E-series mixing desk at the fellowship building which offers 8 channels of inputs. Currently we just use 2 standing mics, 1 12-string acoustic guitar with pickups, 1 electronic keyboard and a radio mic for the person orating.