April 12th, 2006 at 9:51 am
Two days ago I purchased a Digital Voice Recorder so that the kids could hear Daddy sing. Just to see how it would sound before I used it Thursday, the accompanist and I met last night and tried it out.
The Olympus VN-960PC was the least expensive DVR that could transfer files directly to a computer. It has three recording quality modes. High quality is approximately 6 hours, and long playing mode is for 16½ hours. A mini-USB cable, earbuds, and a small external microphone are provided. The built-in microphone has two sensitivity settings. I didn’t try the lower sensitivity setting, but I probably should have. It was easy to get distortion from singing too loud. I ended up playing the recorder off to the side about 5 feet away from me and the piano.
Files are saved in Windows WAV format. The software to transfer the files worked, but it had limited other functionality. I had to download the free software program WavePad to crop files. It can save WAVs as MP3s with some options to cut the file size down.
Once we verified that the recorder would do the job, I recorded the following for the family:
- Twas that Dark, That Doleful Night
- Lord, Keep Us Steadfast in Thy Word
- A Mighty Fortress
- Angels We Have Heard on High
- Away in a Manger
- Lift High the Cross
- My Faith Looks Up to Thee
- Onward Christian Soldiers
- The Lamb
- Thy Strong Word
My performances weren’t anything to make a demo tape over. We’d sing out of TLH or All God’s People Sing. We rehearsed the first verse and then recorded the whole hymn, and I got caught off guard a couple of times by the phrasing in the subsequent verses. Sometimes the melody won’t let you breathe where the text has punctuation. 
A couple of times we’d try a hymn in AGPS and revert back to the TLH version. For “Thy Strong Word” we had to dig up a copy of Lutheran Worship. I know the argument is to make songs simpler for 9- to 14-year-olds, but Mom and Dad want to sing with the kids sometimes with the hymns as the parents learned them. Kids have enough reminders that they are different from their parents; should we add hymn settings to the list? If our new publications kept the original settings from the old hymns while adding new, theologically sound songs and hymns, we could have the best of both worlds.
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April 16th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
I want to hear a copy of that. =)
April 17th, 2006 at 11:54 pm
Heh. It’s one thing to produce a recording that I can sing along with the kids and cover up the mistakes I made. A recording for public consumption will require more practice until I’m happy with it.
April 18th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
Just consider me one of the kids then.
April 19th, 2006 at 12:22 am
Dan, what would you think about using this particular device for recording sermons and/or services for web archiving or podcasting?
April 19th, 2006 at 9:12 am
aardvark:
The “high sensitivity” setting picked up the pastor 30-40 feet away using the built-in microphone. It comes with a small external microphone that one could clip on to an alb or something else. I’ve yet to try the “low sensitivity” setting that might be more appropriate when recording a source close to the microphone. I’m optimistic this device could do the job.
As for archiving and podcasting–the files are saved as Windows sound files (.WAV). I don’t know if podcasts will use those files or if you will have to convert archives to .MP3 files. The free program WavePad will do the job. Transferring the files from the recorder to the computer was easy. The software that comes with the player doesn’t edit the files; WavePad does that pretty easily too.