About our MP3 sound files ---

We record our services with a Marantz PMD-560 rack-mount solid state recorder, fed from a TOA D-901 digital mixer. Recording can be done as either MP3 or WAV files which are stored on a Compact Flash (CF) card. 

Our speaker system is set up in mono because the sanctuary is too long and narrow to achieve useful stereo separation. However the mixer is set up to feed stereo from the choir loft at the same time. A 4 gig card will hold about 70 hours as MP3 or 6 hours as WAV, twice as long in mono. There are usually 5 microphones open through the whole service; sometimes 6 or 7.

Files are edited using the excellent free Audacity editor. Version 1.3 is in beta as of this writing and is quite a bit easier to deal with than the stable version 1.2.6; we record the whole service as one file and then clip out pieces using Audacity. Current practice is to record as WAV but export the clips from Audacity as MP3.

The Flash players on the website are skinned versions of the JW player, which is free for non-commercial use. The playlists are done in ASX format (an XML offspring). One potential problem: the player is derived from the Adobe Flash Player, which will not work in 64-bit browsers (that refers to the size of the chunks of data that the computer handles). If you have a Windows 7 computer it may have come with two versions, both 32- and 64-bit, of Internet Explorer. Only the 32-bit version can play Flash sound files.

If you have any comments or suggestions please e-mail the webmaster. Please mention what browser you use.