My wife and I are members of a core group who wanted to establish an Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in the Northern Greenville County area.

As you can imagine the normal cost of sound production in a church can quickly get expensive with microphones, amplifiers, mixers and recording media. I had approached the church leadership about buying this device I had heard about but they wanted to know if I had first hand experience with it and to tell the truth I didn’t but I had heard the results of another podcaster, Cliff Ravenscraft use it both in remote situations and as his recording device in studio.

About three weeks ago we decided to buy an Edirol R-09HR (A high end portable digital recorder) to use both for our own podcasts as well as recording the sermons and other speaking events for our church, Travelers ARP Church. Travelers ARP is a mission church which means we are a new, we don’t have our own building (but another church in the area is letting us use a small chapel on their campus) and of course because of the current small membership we don’t have the money available for a full scale sound system but even if we had the budget for a system at this time the fact we don’t have our own building is another factor to consider.

I invite you, especially if you are in a position where a professional sound studio or full system set up is not possible to listen to the sound quality of two recent sermons I recorded at our church using the Edirol.

Visit http://www.travelersarpchurch.org/category/podcast/ to play the samples by clicking on the gray play button. As you can tell pastors voice remains very level and we were able to cut out most of the background noise. The device was running of battery power and I was able to start the recording discretely from my seat in the congregation via a very small remote. The Edirol basically combines a portable mixer with basic functions, two onboard high gain microphones and storage in one device the same height and width as the iPhone and double the thickness. I described the Edirol to someone as a the audio version of a prosumer digital SLR Camera. You will find a lot of cheaper mp3 recorders which are fine for taking audio notes and interviews but if you need something that will produce files ready for mass distribution like podcasts, sermons, seminar speakers or even capturing ambient sounds for video projects.

I mentioned that I heard about this device from podcaster, Cliff Ravenscraft. I also bought the Edirol from Cliff as well. Cliff is a full-time podcaster and former pastor. Cliff personally tests all the equipment he sells and I highly recommend him for his service, support and recommendations. If you are with a church and especially with a new church without a full sound system I would urge you to contact Cliff Ravenscraft, The Podcast Answer Man for you sound recording needs. If you need a web site and online presence that will effectively promote your business, organization or church we would love to talk with you about the opportunities in new media and how they might help your business or organization grow.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 10:59 am and is filed under Announcements, Compelling Content, Greenville,SC, Portable Media, Upstate,SC, podcasting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.