August 14, 2013

Recording Church Services with Audacity

I’ll be discussing the basics of using your computer to capture the audio of your weekly service and making sermon MP3’s or audio CD’s using the Audacity recording program.

Copyrights: Before you record or broadcast a worship service, make sure you have the rights to use the music. Old hymns and songs that you have written are OK to use as you wish, but most modern music carries copyrights, and there are certain restrictions on how the music can be used. A license gives you right to perform the a lot of modern music in your church. Check with Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) or Christian Copyright Solutions for for more information on how to legally record and distribute music.

Hardware

Recording to a Computer: If you have a digital console, this is easy. There is usually a USB port to route audio out. Otherwise, you will need some type of interface to get sound into a computer. Be aware that the “mic input” on a cheap soundcard should not be connected directly to the console, because it will likely give poor results. Apple computers seem to work better, but an external interface is still preferred.

Recording to a Handheld Recorder: Handheld recorders are small devices for recording ambient sound to an SD card. One example is the Zoom H1, which costs about $100. But be aware that the “line input” on the Zoom and Edirol products aren’t the best quality, and it’s not suitable for connecting to a console. The Sony PCM-M10 would probably be a better choice.

Remember that if you record directly to MP3, you can’t easily edit it later. To get the best results, you should record in an uncompressed format, such as WAV. Export to MP3 only after you’ve finished editing.

Recording Sermons

Make sure you get the recording levels set correctly during the sound check, to not have to change these in the middle of your recording. Not too high, to avoid clipping. Make sure you save your recording as a project when finished, or export to an un-compressed format, like .WAV

A Music Mix

It is theoretically possible to record simply using the “Main Out” of the console, but be aware that the live mix will sound different in the recording. For best results, use an Aux or Matrix output. The EQ, compression, and effects need to be done separately on a recording/live mix, because they will sound different. Instead, use direct-out, or pre-fade aux or group sends, with the outputs going to the recording interface. This allows you to have a separate mix for the recording. If you have a stereo aux send, you can pan stuff around, and be as creative as you like.

There will also be much less reverberation in the recording; this is great for speech intelligibility, but your music won’t sound as good. I use an effects processor to artificially add ambience. Audience mics are another way to make the recording mix sound more natural, especially if you are not able to mic all of the instruments. Your audience mic should not be sent to the main mix, only to the recording interface (and in-ear monitors). If you’re mixing an audience mic with the send mix, be aware that there will be a time delay. On a digital mixer, you can set a delay to bring all the microphones in alignment. In some cases, this means that you’ll have to have the different sources routed to Aux busses, and a Matrix to blend the mixes together.

Compression

Compression on speech: It’s usually best to use the Compressor effect to reduce the “dynamic range” between loud and soft. Most churches use audio compressors, at least on vocals, but it’s even more important for a recording mix in a large environment.

The default compressor in Audacity has very limited controls, but others can be installed. Keep in mind that a compressor can:

Improve intellegibility
Improve ease of listening

but can also:

make the audio sound unnatural (if overused)
make background noise more significant
move the system closer to feedback (live environment)

Settings: For voice, I usually put the threshold slightly above the soft parts, the ratio should be high enough to function properly, but not so high as to take away the character of the audio. Attack and decay can be set to your preference. A good place to start is 15ms for attack and 250ms for decay. If the attack is too fast, it could be triggered by T’s, S’s, P’s, and so on. If it’s too low, you’ll hear the first part of the syllable stronger than the rest. Play with the controls and try to hear the difference.

Editing and Distributing

We’ll probably upgrade our old PC to a Mac Mini, since it works well with our hardware. The size-compressed MP3 format is ubiquitous for audio players and website plugins. But keep your Audacity project (or export your recording as WAV or FLAC) so as to save an original, uncompressed copy. This lets you fix any problems that you find later without audio losses. When you save as MP3, some quality is lost in the process. MP3 files cannot be edited and then re-encoded as another MP3 without significant loss in quality.

Streaming Audio or Video

If you want to broadcast live or pre-recorded audio (embedded player on your site, or to another location), you’ll need a program for encoding your audio to send to your streaming server. There are many DJ programs available which can both stream and record. Be aware that it’s very important to have a good level of compression on the signal before it’s sent.

Video is much more expensive, and I’ll talk more about this later. Just getting a simple HDMI camera into a computer you’ll at least nee, but will all depend on your needs. If you want a simple video stream, begin with something like Livestream.com and an encoder. If you have a budget and you’re looking for a better solution for creating an online presence, check out streamingchurch.tv or streamingfaith.com or haivision.com

Checklist for Recording and Editing Sermons

Before the sermon, verify that:
- Gain levels are correct to the recording device
- Signal sounds good.
- For sermons: Aux Send goes to one channel. Other channels could be used if needed.
Start recording.
- Make sure your power-saving features are turned off
Save your work
- …as an Audacity project file and/or an uncompressed file (WAV, FLAC, or AIFF)
- Append the day’s date, sermon title, speaker.
- Save in a second location for safety.
Edit your work
- Trim so that it begins/ends at the appropriate location
- Listen to your work, and fix any problems as needed
- Use the compressor to make levels more consistent.
Use the Metadata Editor to create the ID tags. ID tags of the sermons should be the same each week.
Set the levels to get a good sounding finished track.
Export
- If it is for the website or ipods, use MP3 with variable bitrate, and lowest quality (smaller file)
- For archival and burning CD’s, use .FLAC. or .WAV)
Listen to the final product
Use the FTP program to copy the .MP3 to the web directory (if applicable)