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Recording and duplication
MP3 Explained
The Distribution Revolution - MP3 recording
Tape Cassette Pros & Cons
CD Pros & Cons
MP3 Pros & Cons
Why have Quicksense auto reverse?
A Word on Guarantees
Domestic & professional equipment - What's the difference?
Recording and duplication
With so many ways to record and duplicate your events it may be confusing deciding which one to go for. Let’s look at the pros and cons of each system:-
Cassette Tape
This has been the established method for recording and copying for many years, but compared to the other formats it is beginning to show its age. Sound quality is generally poor, and degrades further with each generation, adding hiss and distortion when copied, recording time is limited to an hour or less before turning or replacing the cassette, and of course the tape has a nasty habit of unravelling like spaghetti inside the machine at the least opportune moments. Whereas a few years ago you could be confident that everyone would have a cassette machine at home or in the car this is not always the case now.
On the plus side cassette machines are simple to operate, and if you have a large library of archive material on tape you will need some way of playing them back - although in this case you could consider copying them to a newer format (the Tascam CC-222 would be ideal for this). Sound quality is less of an issue if it is simply spoken word as opposed to music.
CD-R
The first CD burner I installed in my computer was in 1997. It cost me a couple of hundred pounds and blank CDs were nearly £5 each. These days it would be difficult to find a computer without a CD or DVD burner, and blank CDs are available for a few pence each. Recording on CD offers a number of advantages; the media is very cheap, you can record for up to 80 minutes on a single disc, virtually everyone has the means of playing them back at home, and they can be quickly and easily duplicated both on a one-to-one basis in a home pc, or several at once using a dedicated CD duplicator. Sound quality remains the same even after many copies, and the media is robust if treated sensibly.
The one concern some people have with CD-Rs is that the longevity of the storage media has not yet been proven; the oldest CD-Rs people are likely to have are only about 10 years old, and no-one knows whether the media will still be readable in 50 years time. Of course in 50 years time it could be more difficult to find a machine to play them on...
MP3
The rise of the personal MP3 player has been relentless. Every train in the country is full of these ever-smaller devices boasting hours and hours of storage time. The focus is now shifting from simple playback devices to recordable ones, and this is an exciting time for those interested in recording.
There are massive advantages to using MP3 are a recording medium. Firstly, the devices themselves can be small, lightweight and battery-powered, meaning that location recording is easier than ever. The recorders normally use flash media such as SD cards or memory sticks, and with the prices of memory falling daily, literally hours (or days!) of recordings can be made on a piece of plastic barely bigger than a fingernail, and costing just a few pounds. Furthermore, these can be re-used many times, so after the initial purchase media costs are negligible. Sound quality at higher bit rates can rival CD quality.
For duplication, the device can be connected to any computer with a USB connection for high-speed data transfer, and can then be edited or copied to CDR, or uploaded to a web site for people to hear via the internet.
On the other hand, some people might feel less comfortable with this medium than with the tried and tested tape or CD formats, although as MP3 gains in popularity this may become less of an issue. The data also needs to be transferred somewhere else for storage (a computer hard drive, a CD-R or a DVD, for example), unless of course you are planning to buy a fresh memory stick whenever the old one is full! Lastly, some might be concerned about having six months of recordings falling through a hole in their pocket or down the back of the sofa...
MP3 Explained
(by someone who doesn’t understand this sort of thing!)
Long, long ago, in the ancient days of personal computing (about 1996), high quality sound files took up great deals of disc space (which you didn’t have anyway as hard drives were far smaller than today), and were far too large to download from the internet (which was resolutely non-broadband and slow in any case). In the last few years things have moved on at great pace. Hard drives have huge amounts of storage space and have come down in price, broadband means that data can be moved around faster than ever, and advances in compression technology have made it possible for sound files to be shrunk in size by around 85%, yet still retaining almost-CD quality.
The science of how MP3 compression works is beyond the scope of this article, which is just as well as I don’t understand the first thing about it myself, but essentially an uncompressed stereo CD quality sound file would take up roughly 10Mb per minute. (For comparison, a CD-R holds up to 700Mb and a floppy disc 1.4Mb).
With data compression there is always a trade-off between quality and size; the more densely-packed the data is, the poorer the sound quality will be. This is represented by the bitrate of the file (the amount of space the sound file is squashed into), shown in Kbps (kilobytes per second); at a rate of 128 kbps, one minute takes up about 1Mb and the sound quality is roughly similar to FM radio. To put this into context, if transferred to a CD-R you could store over 11 hours of music! A few years ago 128k became the unofficial standard for downloads (not least because of the slow dial-up connections of the day) but if the bitrate is raised to 160 or even 192 kbps the sound quality is a lot better, albeit with slightly larger files.
One advantage of recording in the MP3 format, then, is that the bitrate can be set with the programme material in mind. To give an example, if you are recording a lecture or any other spoken word, sound quality is not as important as if you were listening to a musical performance, and setting too high a bitrate would only take up more space on your MP3 recorder, and take more time to download if later put on the internet. Similarly this would be a situation in which you could make your recording in mono, halving the file size. On the other hand, if you wanted to make a top quality recording of, say, an orchestral concert, it would make sense to record at a bitrate of 256k to retain as much of the sound information as possible.
MP3s can be recorded in much the same way as cassettes in that you can take a cable from an output of the mixing console to the line input of the device, or attach a microphone (in the case of the Edirol R-09, high quality stereo mics are built into the unit, or you can plug in your own). Instead of putting a cassette in, the MP3 machine records onto SD cards, tiny flash memory devices with no moving parts. As with so much of high tech equipment, prices of these are falling all the time so that for an outlay of a few pounds you can get a huge amount of memory to record onto, which can be reused time and time again.
After the recording, a USB cable transmits the information at high speed onto your computer, where it can be edited using appropriate software, uploaded to your website so that church members can download it whenever they like, transferred to CD or archived.
The Distribution Revolution - MP3 recording
Does your church have a website?
These days, many people have access to webspace via their internet service providers, and this can be a great way to let people hear your sermons or other events. In fact many churches are already publishing sermons to their own websites. 'Podcasting' is a real buzz word at the moment; this might conjure up images of technology wizards spending unhealthy amounts of time at their computers, but really it’s not that scary.
Recorders such as the iKey allow you to record the sermon directly to MP3, from where you can upload the file to your church website in a matter of minutes. From there, anyone who can access the website can listen to the file or download it straight away, whether they live next door or on the other side of the world. There’s no lengthy file conversion procedure, no blank media to worry about, and the whole procedure could be on the internet within a few minutes of the service finishing. Anyone with a portable MP3 player could then listen to the files wherever and whenever they wanted.
If your sermon series is really popular then you could consider putting them on Apple's iTunes to let an even bigger audience subscribe to your regular podcasts! Take a look, many churches are already doing it.
Today more than ever, communication is vital to the Church, and this new system of distributing the message of the Church has so many advantages that we here are DM think it’s one of the most exciting developments for many years.
Tape Cassette Pros & Cons
FOR:
On the plus side cassette machines are simple to operate, and if you have a large library of archive material on tape you will need some way of playing them back – although in this case you could consider copying them to a newer format. Sound quality is less of an issue if it is simply spoken word as opposed to music.
AGAINST:
This has been the established method for recording and copying for many years, but compared to the other formats it is beginning to show its age. Sound quality is generally poor, and degrades further with each generation, adding hiss and distortion when copied, recording time is limited to an hour or less before turning or replacing the cassette, and of course the tape has a nasty habit of unravelling like spaghetti inside the machine at the least opportune moments. Whereas a few years ago you could be confident that everyone would have a cassette machine at home or in the car this is not always the case now.
CD Pros & Cons
FOR:
The first CD burner I installed in my computer was in 1997. It cost me a couple of hundred pounds and blank CDs were nearly £5 each. These days it would be difficult to find a computer without a CD or DVD burner, and blank CDs are available for a few pence each. Recording on CD offers a number of advantages; the media is very cheap, you can record for up to 80 minutes on a single disc, virtually everyone has the means of playing them back at home, and they can be quickly and easily duplicated both on a one-to-one basis in a home pc, or several at once using a dedicated CD duplicator. Sound quality remains the same even after many copies, and the media is robust if treated sensibly.
AGAINST:
The one concern some people have with CD-Rs is that the longevity of the storage media has not yet been proven; the oldest CD-Rs people are likely to have are only about 10 years old, and no-one knows whether the media will still be readable in 50 years time. Of course in 50 years time it could be more difficult to find a machine to play them on...
MP3 Pros & Cons
FOR:
The first CD burner I installed in my computer was in 1997. It cost me a couple of hundred pounds and blank CDs were nearly £5 each. These days it would be difficult to find a computer without a CD or DVD burner, and blank CDs are available for a few pence each. Recording on CD offers a number of advantages; the media is very cheap, you can record for up to 80 minutes on a single disc, virtually everyone has the means of playing them back at home, and they can be quickly and easily duplicated both on a one-to-one basis in a home pc, or several at once using a dedicated CD duplicator. Sound quality remains the same even after many copies, and the media is robust if treated sensibly.
AGAINST:
The one concern some people have with CD-Rs is that the longevity of the storage media has not yet been proven; the oldest CD-Rs people are likely to have are only about 10 years old, and no-one knows whether the media will still be readable in 50 years time. Of course in 50 years time it could be more difficult to find a machine to play them on...
Why have Quicksense auto reverse?
Most cassette decks have mechanical autoreverse where the mechanism feels the tug of the tape reaching the end of the spool.
Typically around 13 secs of the service is not recorded in this turn around time. Optical quick sense auto reverse sees the end of the magnetic tape & electronically auto reverses the tape in 0.3secs!!
Some tape recorders have a relay function between deck A & B as well as optical quick sense autoreverse for 3 hours continuous recording.
A Word on Guarantees
DM Music has always recommended Tascam products because of their reliability and good reputation, but one additional point to bear in mind is that the Tascam products featured here carry a full commercial warranty.
Whereas normal domestic cassette or CD machines might be cheaper, they are designed for light domestic use, and are guaranteed for this purpose only - many domestic product guarantees are reduced to just 3 months if the item is used outside of 'light domestic use'.
Tascam’s machines are built for heavier duty use and should give years of reliable service.
Domestic & professional equipment - What's the difference?
Build quality.
Professional equipment often has 19" rack mounting ears, designed for the extra demand of touring etc. Domestic products are designed for occasional use and are not to be moved unless flightcased. Professional equipment lasts longer and is often a better economy.
Features
Extra benefits such as ‘optical quick-sense autoreverse’, ‘relay record/playback’, ‘3 head monitoring’ and balanced outputs etc.
Components
Cassette decks with Amorphous Heads will last about 6 times longer. Motors, and power supplies are superior; even the knobs feel smoother. Ultra reliability is taken for granted from equipment using superior components.
Sound quality
Frequency response, signal to noise ratio and noise reduction systems are better specified on professional equipment.
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