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View Full Version : Recording Sermons Digitally for Upload (ATTN: Scott--other input welcome too!)


Jon Twitchell
22nd December 2005, 01:47 PM (13:47)
I put Scott's name in the subject line because I know that he has some experience with this--but anyone with interest or experience is absolutely welcome to chime in! :)

I spent some of my Christmas cash early to get an MP3 player that also has a line-in recording feature (It's an iRiver IFP895). It came yesterday, and while I've been having fun with the FM tuner, skimming my radio show to listen to later, and enjoying the regular MP3 features, I got started today on testing out its functionality for recording sermons (which is one of my primary interests for it).

I can record at a variety of sampling and bit rates...currently I have it set at 44.1KHz and 128KBPS. The quality sounds really good when I move it over the computer for editing and playback--but I'm wondering if I'm overkilling on quality for people to want to download a 20-25 sermon.

A few questions:

1) Do you think I should record at this higher quality and then apply file compression as the last step before distributing? Or should I record at a lower quality and then just leave it alone?

2) In addition to cleaning up the beginning/end of the sermon, what digital effects do you apply with your audio software before distribution? I played around a bit, and thought that performing a "normalize..." and an "audio compression" would help make the listening volume most stable and comfortable for listeners...but I'm curious as to what you are doing with yours.

3) I have a radio friend who's going to make some bookends/donut for me to go around the sermon file. Is there anything else I should be thinking about here?

G R 'Scott' Cundiff
22nd December 2005, 02:07 PM (14:07)
I record mine at 16KHz and 24KBPS, so in my opinion your 44.1KHz and 128KBPS would be overkill -- listen to it and see what you think of the quality:
www.alvinnazarene.org (http://www.alvinnazarene.org)

I stream KJIC at 22 KHZ and 24KBPS and have received many compliments on the audio quality. You can hear it at www.kjic.org (http://www.kjic.org).

Jon Twitchell
22nd December 2005, 02:14 PM (14:14)
Thanks Scott!

I'm listening to yours now...it sounds pretty clean, and the file size is pretty good. Do you make your initial recording at 16/24, or do you apply that at the end after you've done editing and such?

I'm so pleased with my iRiver...it does everything that I had hoped it would!