Pastor's mic not loud enough in recording

[adessmith]

We have struggled with this issue for a while.
We record our service to DVD, with the audio coming straight off the board.
We have a stereo subgroup that outputs to the recording... There is an ambient microphone which is routed to ONLY the subgroup, and not the mains, all other sources are routed to both.

Our pastor is LOUD, he speaks very clearly, and very little amplification is needed. He wears a headset microphone, but the sound guys always end up bringing his level WAY down... It works with the size of our building, but it causes a problem with the recording.
The signal is nice and strong with all of the music, and all other parts of the service, until the pastor starts preaching. He starts out quiet, and it is fine, but as he gets louder they turn him down and then it is difficult to hear on the recording.

I always end up exporting the audio from the DVD, applying amplification to that portion of the service, and then re-authoring the video.
It's a lot of work, and it creates a lot of background noise... it would be great if anyone had some better ideas of how to get a nice strong signal to the recording without blowing out the congragation.
I only have one free aux send (could be set post fader), but they are monitored in pairs. (When monitoring the recording, we would hear the floor monitors in the left ear, and the recording in the right)... Also, the recorder is stereo, and the aux send is not.

I even thought about puching his mic channel into another subgroup, and feeding the output of that subgroup into another channel which would only be punched into the recording subgroup. I am just afraid that if the wrong subgroup routing accidently got selected (routing the output of a subgroup back into itself) it would cause a feedback loop that could damage something.

Also, I considered splitting the output of the microphone to two channels, and routing one into the mains, and the other into the recording subgroup.
The problem with this is it would be easy to forget to mute his microphone for the recording (lets say, after he does annoucements), and record the pastor either singing durring praise and worship or, worst case, praying with someone at the alter durring the time of invitation.

I know the ideal solution (and proper way to do a live recording) would be to split all channels into a seperate mixer for recording, put the recording mixer in an acoustically isolated room, with a video monitor, and let a seperate volunteer mix the recorded sound totally seperate from the live sound.
We dont have the budget, or additional hands, or space for this approach though.

Any ideas?
HELP!!!

[Arlin]

What mixer are you using?
You might be able to use an aux for your recording mix instead of a group.
Set that aux send on all the 'other' channels as post-fader.
Set the pastor's aux send as pre-fader (which should also be post-mute).

[bpalermini]

Depending on your mixer you might be able to use two channels to give you what you want.

We have an A&H GL3800 on it I could connect the Direct Out on the channel that his mic comes into for the house sound to a channel you would assign just to the recording group. On our mixer the default is for the direct out to be pre-fader but post eq & mute. If yours has a similar configuration when he gets muted for the house he would be muted for the recording but the recording would get a constant signal and the house mixer would be able to do whatever he needs to for good house sound.

[adessmith]

Our board is a berhinger eurodesk... It's not very "high end".

It does not have direct outputs, so that that solution will not work.

There are a couple of problems with the aux solution (I already thought about that), and again they go back to limitations of our board.
1) The auxes arent stereo. Thats not a big deal, we could deal with a mono recording though.
2) We need to be able to monitor the recording through headphones, and our auxes are monitored as a pair (we have 2 auxes, and one is used for floor monitors) This would put the monitors in one ear, and the recording in the other. Currently, we always match the levels between aux 2 and aux 1 so that we can easily listen to the foldback mix in the headphones.

I spoke with another one of the sound people last night, and we came up with a "innovative" solution... We are gonna try feeding that microphone into 2 channels which are side by side (the microphone receiver has 1/4" and XLR outputs). We will punch one into the mains, and the other into the recording subgroup. I'm going make a bridge out of something like a popsicle stick by cutting it and put adhesive tape on each end to stick it to both mute buttons. This way, when you go to mute one, you will hit the "bridge" and mute both at the same time.
I know it sounds crazy, but it is the best solution we could come up with.

[bpalermini]

I like it. Innovative thinking!