Following the installation of the CD audio recorder, we still had a need to edit the audio for our worship services.  Oftentimes, our workers in the sound room will receive requests for excerpts from certain worship services (i.e. specific songs, etc). 

To remedy this issue, we connected our sound board into our computer.  To do this, you need the following:

1.  Cable:  3.5mm Mini Plug to RCA
2.  Computer Software for recording audio:  Audacity

On your church sound board, find an RCA audio output.  Connect the “red and white” RCA cable into this jack.  Connect the other end of the cable (the end with the 3.5 mini plug) into the “audio line-in” on your computer soundcard.  As far as the connections, you are ready to go.

However, you still need software in order to record the audio onto your computer.  You can go to http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ and download the FREE audio sound-editor “Audacity.”  I’ve used this program for a few years and it has greatly served my needs.  The program is pretty straightforward and easy to use.  Audacity allows you to record audio and then convert the file(s) to WAV or MP3.

We often use this setup to record sound effects for plays & dramas at the church.  A few years ago, we used Audacity to record our church’s radio broadcast.  Using a computer microphone, the Pastor was able to record his teachings directly into Audacity and then I was able to mix soft music into the background to create a professional radio broadcast.  The folks at the radio station were amazed at the quality!

If your computer has a CD recorder, you can dump the WAV files onto a CD to play in your CD player.

This is a quick and easy setup that can be done for under $10 (taking into consideration you already have a computer and sound board with audio outputs).