Church sound

[jdow]

From: "David Miller" <david at millersweb.com>
Sent: Sunday, 2009, March 15 19:53
   
> Well I have used Audacity for 3-10 min recordings in the past but not 
> for hour long recordings. I have never had a problem with my FC7 machine 
> here at home.  The FC10 machine that I threw together for this has the 
> same MSI mother board that I have in my FC7 machine. We are only going 
> to do audio at the moment and, I hope in the near future we will start 
> doing some sort of video.  I put this machine together and loaded FC10 
> Sat. and verified that sound worked, didn't have time to do much 
> testing.  Took the machine to the church this morning and did the 
> recording. I was disappointed with the results this first week.  There 
> was a high pitched hiss throughout the recording.  I don't know what to 
> make of it yet.  I am taking the sound directly from our 32 channel 
> audio mixer. Not the right sound for a ground loop. We have about a 6 
> foot unbalanced cable that goes from the board then splits into the tape 
> deck and the computer. Less than a foot from the split to each. The tape 
> doesn't have it but it may not be able to reproduce it very well.  Using 
> the built in sound of the mother board.

Ouch, there probably is something worse you could use; but, I'll be
jiggered if I know what. A decent sound card like a Turtle Beach
Santa Cruz would be better. (Or even better yet would be some of the
MOTU stuff - if you can find drivers.) Motherboard sound picks up all
manner of noise from the circuitry around it. The plugin cards have a
better chance of a clean signal. And an external sound arrangement
such as a MOTU 828 Mk 3 can give exceptionally good sound. But that's
an expensive arrangement. {o.o}

Note that there is an input level mismatch between PC sound cards and
professional mixers. You might stick in a 12 dB or so attenuator in
the feed to the PC. And be VERY sure you are using line in rather than
microphone in.

If I had to make a guess your budget is not sufficient to do the job
adequately if you are thinking of fighting motherboard sound. You can
expect sound synchronization problems and noise at the very least.
You'll have to resample the sound in editing for your video to get good
synchronization over an hour or so.

(The budget for the sort of toys I work with is closer to the $10k to
$25k range. So I won't try to sell you anything, especially here. {^_-})

{^_^}   Joanne