Recording Sermon - will this work?

[ythpstr007]

We are finally moving from taping our sermons (welcome 21st century) Of course, there is a very SMALL budget. I would like to be able to put sermons on CD and also put MP3's on the website.

We have an older laptop that is not really being used much the basic Config: Intel P M 710 (1.4 GHZ. 2MB L2 Cache), 256MB DDR, 40GB,DVD/CDRW Combo Drive.

My plan was to
Clean up the laptop (fresh OS)
add an external hard drive (250+ GB)
add an external audio interface - something like M-Audio Fast Track USB or Transit
and then record on a freeware program (audacity, etc).

Will this work? Am I missing important steps in the process?

[sien]

Sounds good!

[tacticus]

We do this with a laptop running Linux (Ubuntu), and a simple Behringer UCA202 USB interface.

Not yet in production, is a tower system also running Ubuntu, which has an M-Audio Delta 1010 interface, and a few SATA drives running in a RAID1 array.

The first setup has been running mostly well (except for when I forget to unplug the laptop's power supply, in which case there is a bad whistle in the recordings; or when I forget to make sure that both ends of the analog cables are plugged into the right set of jacks after they had been used for something else) for about a year now--actually more like 18 months.

- Luke

[bladeaudio]

You might also want to look in to getting a "hum eliminator" device, so you can avoid any ground loop issues. It's quite common for people to experience ground loop issues when running audio in to a laptop. A device like this can go a long ways in solving most of those problems.

Also, take a look at reaper for your recording. http://reaper.fm its a great program for recording.