Recording

From a listserv (2004)

Recording worship has been part of the ministry of the Church for many years now. The arrival of the cassette tape last century allowed Congregations to story, copy, share, and extend the worship experience beyond Sunday morning.
Cassettes were great. They were relatively cheap, easy to record on to, and fairly sturdy. They did, however, have some drawbacks. Cassettes had limited recording capacity, often having to be flipped over during worship to contain the entire service. Cassettes were also a pain to duplicate; even with high-speed (and high priced) dubbing machines it took a good chunck of time to make multiple copies of worship.
Even still, cassettes were the recording instrument of choice for many congregations; and remain so today. Cassettes have remained in wide-use in congregegations despite the availability of a more elegant, and technically superior, solution. Namly, the CD.
CD's made their appearance in the late 1980's as a replacement for both vinyl and cassette tapes. The sound quality was cleaner than either of the two mediums it was replacing, and they were cheap to produce (though the price of CD's has never matched this reality). Despite the popularity of CD's as music medium, however, it wasn't until the mid 1990's that CD recorders began to be in wide use with the general public. The cheap availability of CD recorders in PC's opened up the possibility for congregations to use a computer to digitally record worship, and then burn it on CD later. While a more elegant solution, this new technology had a few draw-backs as well. Many "traditional" sanctuaries did not have a decent place to set up a PC recording station without it becomming an eyesore. The use of a PC for recording required a "geek" to be able to set up, record, and burn the worship service. Also, early CD burners were nearly as slow as cassette dubbing machines, and multiple-tray burners were expensive and bulky. Even with the benefits of the CD over Cassette as a recording medium; the costs of upgrading to the new solution were simply preventative for many congregations. They had neither the space, the technical know-how, or the money to make the switch.
In the 1990's, however, another media format arrived on the scene; a format called "mp3."
Unless you've been sleeping under a rock, you know what an mp3 is. A compressed audio format that shrinks the size needed to store digital audio (like music or sermons) significantly.
Mp3's (and, really, all digital audio codecs) are a wonderful format to share a worship service in. They are small enough to share on the internet, easy to store on a computer hard-drive, and can be easily burned to a CD. As useful as these files are, however, mp3's suffered from many of the same draw-backs as CD recording, and actually added several levels of complexity. For many years after mp3's arrived on the scene, "direct to mp3" recording was a rarity (though solutions did exist, such as mp3record on linux). Worship would first have to be recorded in large .wav files, and then encoded into mp3 by a technically-saavy user (ie. a "geek"). This encoding step, added to all the other draw-backs of CD recording (duplication, space, and money) kept many congregations from using this digital format to share their services with others.
This, however, is currently changing.
While the "geek" factor will never be entirely erased when using digital technology to record worship, many of the problems associated with the "geek" factor are now being erased. Many portable mp3 players, including iRiver's flash-based players and the iPod (with an add-on), now allow direct-to-mp3 recording from external sources or a built-in microphone. These devices take away the size barrier (the iRiver devices are palm-sized) and setup for recording is now limited to "one-click." While duplication still needs an associated PC, the advent of wide-spread broad-band Internet access makes the duplication barrier less of a problem then in earier decades (though it is not erased entirely, CD copies are still essential). The technical barriers to digitally recording, and sharing, a worship gathering are now being erased before our eyes.
This leaves us with the money question. Is the initial set-up cost for digitally recording worship directly into mp3 prohibative? Not at all! While Hard Drive-based mp3 player/recorders can range from $250 - $600, the iRiver flash-based recorders can got for as little as $129 for 256 MB. In fact, many people in congregations considering upgrading to mp3recording already have members that own devices that can be used for recording worship; and don't even know it!
Essentally, for $129, congregations can purchase and use a "one-click" recorder to extend the reach of their worship gatherings. Mp3 recording is more elegant, more useful, and cheaper in the long term than the preferred cassette-tape solution still in use by many congregations. The digital revolution is now accessible to many congregations that have held out for nearly 20 years. It's about time!