September 1, 2009 - 1:10am
A couple of ideas
I use a Zoom H4 digital recorder to record a local band's concerts. Using a 2GB SD storage card I could record nearly two hours (IIRC) of 24-bit WAV files; in actuality I use 4GB cards just because it's convenient and I have them. Anyway, with storage of this magnitude it's not difficult to start recording at any convenient point BEFORE the concert and stop recording anytime after the concert. I then take the resulting (rather large) file, load it into Audacity and slice and dice it into individual tracks. Since I know what gain settings to use, and because of the extra depth that 24-bits gives me, I don't have any problem producing high quality WAV and MP3 files.
I like using the H4 MUCH more than using a PC to do the capture.
However, you could setup a PC and use Audacity to do a timed recording. You set everything up and let it go; it starts and stops recording at your designated times. I used to do something like this for the band but found that when using a computer for the capture there were far too many things that could go wrong. And remember, Murphy was an optimist!
Hope this helps,
Curt
Our audio recording of our service is done manually by our sound tech. The issue we have is when they forget to hit record and we lose a whole service. Since we upload our sermon podcasts to our website, that is a problem if we miss a week due to technical difficulties. Is there something out there that will automatically start recording at a certain point, or with a certain microphone. Our pastor uses a headset mic for the sermon and it would be great if we could get it to begin recording when he begins speaking. Kinda like those cassette recorders people buy for school that are voice activated. Is there such a product out there for this?