While I was never a Boy Scout, I was a cub scout. I guess I learned to be prepared while in the Cub Scouts.

Recently, our church had a revival. It started with two sermons on Saturday night, three on Sunday, and one each on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights.

As the “official” sound ( pa system ) person for the church, I was asked to record each sermon for distribution on CD.

Our Sound room is equipped with a tower computer and a firewire connection to a multi-channel mixer. Getting a digitized recording was not a problem. My main concern is some sort of failure whether mechanical, electrical or human might prevent me getting a recording of all the sermons.

I devised a plan.

My main recording would be on the computer. My secondary recording would be on a cassette deck with audio fed from the mixer to the deck and a third recording would be on my Sony digital 8 camcorder with audio fed from the mixer through a special interface that I designed that reduced the mixer level down to microphone level. All equipment, except the camcorder which had it’s own battery, was attached to a small UPS.

The results were:

  • Main recording was not hampered. Complete recording of all the sermons
  • Tape deck recording was only hampered by the speaker going past the length of the tape, twice.
  • Video recording was very good except one where human failure entered and I lost the first couple of minutes of the sermon.

Now to burn about 200 cds of the sermons.