The Black Family Weblog

I wanted to share this with you folks who have been listening to the podcasts of Desiring God Community Church…and if you haven’t, what’s keeping you??? (Note: Click the link on the right sidebar called DGCC Audio).

Up until the end of May ‘07 the audio recording as been hit-or-miss. Sometimes there would be no recording, and if there was a recording it would sound rather bad. Don’t blame the sound guys! It was an antique mp3 voice recorder that was being used. I think the maximum amount of space on the unit was 64MB (I could be wrong) - and it was recorded with the worst possible quality to could ask for. It was the end of May where we decided to try using our Macs to record the sermon (and sometimes the whole service!) for one, better quality, and two, that the actual recording will happen. To hear the quality difference hear: April 29, 2007 then listen to the recording by a Mac on May 20th. Amazing huh?

It was several weeks of using Macs that I thought it was just crazy to have to bring in the laptop or (gulp!) desktop each week to record the sermon. Crazy to lug in the computers - not so crazy to record the sermon. So I have been experimenting with a device from m-Audio called the Microtrack 24/96. A great little device that allows you to set audio sound levels on the unit, have several options of quality recording levels, and contains several inputs. Let me just say that with me saying that I’m excited about this device is an understatement. Hear the quality with this device by listening to: June 24, 2007. This is the lowest quality setting possible. Why did I record at the lowest setting possible? Well I misread the screen when it said I had 45 minutes of recording available. At least that is what I thought I had at this setting. It was funny because I thought I would have to return this device as sometimes Coty goes over 45 minutes. But at the end of service I did a double take when I noticed it was 45 HOURS of recording time, and not 45 minutes!!! So I quickly set the device at the highest possible level and found that we have 27 hours of highest quality recording available.

On the 17th of June the recording was done through the antique voice recorder again.  Note the difference in quality compared to the week’s before with using the Mac.

So the last two weeks have been a little struggle on how to set up the device. The first week I had the audio at the lowest quality. Last weekend I had the audio recording level set too high. You can probably hear some peaking with Fred’s voice. That was my fault, and after trying to tweak with it in Adobe Audition, I gave up and just went with what I had. This weekend’s service will be recorded again with the device, and I feel confident that this will be the best sounding recording outside of a Mac yet. Just you wait.