Another Option for Audio Recording Your Church Service
A few weeks ago Pastor Gillespie had a great article on “Automated Audio Recording of Services.” It’s a great option but all geeky pastors know that not one size fits all, so here’s another option for recording your services (or sermons).
Zoom H2 Handy Recorder
At our church Trinity, Creston IA we lack some of the necessary options for recording as Pr. Gillespie suggests (mainly not enough computers and all in the wrong locations). Fortunately, technology keeps marching on and portable audio recorders have increased in quality and decreased in price. Enter the Zoom Handy Recorder H2. This unit is primarily made for recording musician jam sessions. The price is relatively low (about $150 at Amazon) and the quality is excellent. It has many features that you won’t need for worship service (or sermon) recording. However, its portability gives you the option of recording from any location (i.e. fellowship hall, outside, Sunday School classroom).
Because the unit is made to place in the middle of a jam session, it has front and back microphones for recording in stereo. I place the unit on the pulpit. The front microphone pick up everything I say (even when my back is to the microphone while I’m facing the altar) and the rear microphone the congregation.
Front Mic Records Me
Rear Mic Records the Congregation
The recording is stored directly onto a 1G SD card (included). An hour service takes about 100MB. After the service simply pop out the card, insert it into your computer open it with an audio editing program (I suggest Audacity – The Free, Cross-Platform Sound Editor look for a review of this software here sometime in the future). Cut out the extra stuff before and after the service (or sermon), add an intro, save it, burn it to a CD or publish it to the web.
1GB SD Card
I currently use this great tool to record my sermons every Sunday (http://wattswhat.podbean.com/). I have plans of recording bible classes, too.
It’s simple, relatively inexpensive and produces a great quality result.
Rev. Jonathan C. Watt
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January 16th, 2011 at 7:58 pm
I currently use a something similar, and press record at the beginning of the sermon and stop at the end (all I want is the sermon). Because it records to mp3 I can upload it right to the website, no editing. Mine is a Sony and cost me 50 bucks, and the quality is excellent. A 17 minute sermon is about 6mb. This is a good idea… The one featured here I'm sure had better fidelity, especially for Bible class, the concept is great over all.
February 10th, 2011 at 8:44 pm
Hello. Our church is looking for a way to record both the sermon and the rest of the worship service. Your solution makes sense. Would there be a way I could listen to a small sample of what you record (a bit of the sermon, some congregational singing, anything else you think would be helpful)? I would really appreciate your help with this before we invest the money in a recorder. Thank you. -Peter