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I need some serious help with this! Let me give you a little background and setup info first. I just got thrown into working the sound system at our Church. We just moved to a larger building and were just give a decent sound system. We have a Behringer PMP2000 mixer, two Kustom 215's, a Wireless Audio-Techna Headset Mic, and we are using a laptop to play the music and do our recording.

As far as recording goes, we use the line out on the mixer and run it to the laptop, we just use the windows sound recorder to record with. I was using Audacity to record with as well, but it kept locking up on me. Before we switched to the new system I had to run a line out of the wireless receiver box and to the laptop to avoid sound problems. It doesn't seem to make a difference with the new system though.

The part that is blowing my mind, is when the building is empty and we are doing test. I can record without any of this static. But come Church time, our recordings are horrible. I don't know if my sound card in the laptop has anything to do with this? I'm kind of clueless here.

A few more things, I do have the wireless receiver volume almost set to max ( which is what the manual recommends ) and we are not hearing this static through the speakers at all. We come out crystal clear. So I really believe this a digital issue?

Here is a link to our website, you can hear what I'm talking about.

Link removed

Listen to the June 16th - Walk the Talk sermon. I was able to take out a lot of the static in Audacity, but it's just horrible. When I upload them through our player it does compress them, so that's why his voice is a little sketchy, but you'll know what I'm talking about on the static.

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.
It will all be appreciated : )

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Comments

Codemonkey Thu, 07/02/2009 - 10:15

Hey man, I do this exact thing.

People will tell you to get a proper interface and I agree, but that doesn't mean you can't carry on using what you have (I've been recording sermons for, uhh, too long now).

Advice:
1) turn down the input volume to the laptop
2) save as a mono file - or copy the left to the right track.

What output are you using on the mixer?

soapfloats Thu, 07/02/2009 - 23:44

Mr. Monkey, if it didn't cost more than the gear to ship it, I'd donate you some stuff. You certainly deserve it. :o

To the OP - it's better to be safe than sorry. Like the others have said, record at a lower level. A recording that is filled w/ noise is no better than one that is too quiet. That's what a volume knob is for. Seeing as you're doing sermons w/ music and not arena rock, there's no need to max out the volume.