We are just beginning (as of April 2010) a project to record our sermons and distribute them via the Internet and other means to persons who could not attend our services or who wish to hear them again.

We use a ZOOM H4N digital recorder to capture the audio. For now we are just using the built-in microphones. We plan to try recording one or two channels from the Church sound system as well, which should give us an opportunity to reduce some of the ambient sound. I am very impressed with the sound quality as recorded from the built-in microphones on this device.

The ZOOM records in high definition .wav format. We use the free "audacity" software with "lame" to edit the .wav and convert it to the more compact MP3 format.

At first, the sermons and scripture were converted to constant 128kb/s. We experimented with "average" 64kb/s and/or 96kb/s, and finally settled on two formats: a "high definition" 96kb/s average stereo MP3 and an "AM-radio-quality" 8kb/s monaural MP3. The latter are processed in Audacity with the "Effects/click-and-pop removal" filter, then "Effects/normalize to -0.5 Db", then "Tracks/stereo-to-mono", and finally "Export/MP3/8k average" with sampling to 8kbits/second. Visitors are presented the 8k-mono by default, with an option to switch to a page with the High-definition stereo (which takes about ten times as long to download). On September 5 we switched to presenting the high definition (96k stereo) files by default and the monaural (now 16k) as an option.

The original WAV files are too large to put on a web site, being about ten times as large as the High Definition files. We are keeping them on a local hard drive for possible burning to CD or cassette tapes for distribution, or for conversion to other formats.

This web page is hand-edited, but we are looking into using sermonsontheweb, which is free software available from SourceForge.net, to create a more attractive page and perhaps more optimally compressed files.

Editing of the WAV files is labor-intensive. It's necessary to go through each file several times to make sure we don't divulge personal information or violate copyrights (e.g., if we sing "Happy Birthday" or another song that might not be included in the church copyright license).

One parishioner has reported that the files get downloaded as "Quick-Time" files that she can't then load onto her portable MP3 player (iPOD). I think that is a problem with the file associations on her machine. She solved the problem by "dragging" the icon into her music-management application.

The presence of the large MP3 files on our web site caused the Bing search box to hang while "Loading". This was reported to the Bing Community forum (see ) http://www.bing.com/community/forums/p/657651/9596415.aspx#9596415) and to Microsoft, and we found a workaround: referencing the audio directory as http://tinyurl.com/cokesburymemorial/audio instead of http://cokesburymemorial.org/audio (on our current domain). The tinyurl URL is an alias for the real one, but Bing apparently does not search it because we don't mention it in the Bing search strategy.

I also did this initially using another registered domain that we happen to have (cokesburyumcharford.org), which worked, and with http://bit.ly/cokesburymemorial-audio/ and http://bit.ly/cokesburymemorial/, but could not get those to work.

We lost one service (April 11, 2011, 08:30) due to forgetting to "empty the trash" on the SD card in the digital recorder after uploading the previous recording.

Starting in December 2011 we contracted Ekklesia to set up a new web site. For this we make a 32kb/s monaural MP3 of the sermon only, which Ekklesia reduces to 24kb/s monaural. We continue to maintain the 96kb/s stereo recordings of the entire service and the 32kb/s monaural recordings of the sermons at http://cokesburyumcharford.org

In December 2011 we relocated our web site registration and hosting from GoDaddy.com to namecheap.com.

We lost several services (February 26-March 20, 2012, 08:30) due to a broken power cable for the digital recorder. I wasted a couple of weeks looking for the spare and finally ordered a new power brick.

We also replaced the 4GB SD card with a 32GB one. This will allow us to start the recorder the day before, on occasions when we won't be present to start it at the morning service.

This diagram (not to scale) shows the microphone positions that we've tried:

The green squares denote the various microphone locations.

• a: In front of the first pew, March 20 and April 6.
  
  • Good recording of the preacher.
  • Good recording of the choir, but I turned the microphone towards them during their song.
  • Sounds of pages turning, etc., by first pew occupants, and our voices are heard above the rest of the congregation.
• b: Between the organ and the pulpit, March 27 and April 11.
  • Good recording of preacher and choir.
  • Organ is too loud.
  • Microphone is accessible to curious children.
  • Not a good placement during Communion.
• c: By the wall near the organ, April 4.
  • Good recording of preacher and choir.
  • Organ is too loud.
  • Microphone is accessible to curious children.
  • It is out of the way of Communion.
• d: Behind the Communion rail, to the left of the pulpit, April 18, 10:30.
  • Very good recording of preacher
  • microphone faces away from the choir.
  • Microphone is not accessible to curious children.
  • It is visually intrusive and would not be good on Communion Sundays.
  • The minister likes to walk around while preaching, and brushed the recorder two or three times with his robe.
• e: At the rear of the Fellowship Hall, April 18, 08:30.
  • Due to lack of power outlets elsewhere, this is about the only place we can put it, if we would rather not use batteries.
  • Some commotion of nearby people is audible.
  • Praise band too loud relative to preacher.
• (not shown) By the window next to the food service table, April 20, 11:00. This is a 26-foot square room in the New Hope Christian Fellowship UMC in Edgewood, which resides in a double-wide portable building. The microphone was propped up on the foam insert of its carrying case.
  • Good recording of the preacher.
  • Some commotion while lunch was being set up. At one point a potato-chip bag was placed in front of the microphone.
• f: In the rear pew of the Sanctuary, April 20, 18:30.
  • Good recording of the preacher. Can't use this position when the church is full.
• g: In the rear right corner of the Sanctuary, April 25, 10:30, also May 2 and 9.
  • On a fully extended microphone stand, about 7 feet high.
  • Good recording, congregational commotion is relatively diminished.
  • Does not detract from the view of the front of the church.
  • Settled on this position for subsequent recordings.

The red rectangles are the organ, pulpit, and Communion rail.

In the Fellowhip hall, the red square is the lectern.

The medium blue rectangles are the choir or praise band.