[Arny Krueger]

"Bob" wrote in message


We are trying to record sermons from the church I attend
to an MP3 format to post on the web. All priests wear a
wireless headset which is piped into a large amp by the
organ. The amp only has a 1/4" headphone/monitor jack on
the front. There may be a line out jack on the back but
it's in a huge console and not accessible. We don't want
the priests to have to turn the recorder on/off so the
organist will.

I purchased an Olympus VN6200 (which I found out only
records in WMA format). As a trial I connected a 1/8" to
1/4" cable from the mic jack on the Olympus to the 1/4"
jack on my stereo amp. This results in very distorted
sound however. Is this setup going to work? If not can
you make a recommendation?

The scary part about the VN2600 is how highly compressed its files are.

In its highest quality mode, it records over 70 hours on 1 gigabyte of
storage. That's 3.5 k bytes per second or 28 K bits per second. For
reference purposes, 128 kbits is considered to be a marginal recording speed
for stereo music. You are being forced to do low bitrate recording and
sound quality will be significantly diminished. If all you want is an
approximation of the priest's voice, that is what you will get.

Tools that is designed for this purpose might be a Zoom H1 or a M-Audio
Microtrack. These devices have inputs that are actually designed for the
signal levels that you are trying to use. The Zoom H1 only runs a a few
dozen dollars more than the VN 2600 and records at bitrates that will give
you a useful range of audio quality levels.