Sound Booth Computer

[delta013]

Hi everyone.

My church has asked me to build a new computer for their sound booth. It needs to run a program called Easy Worship, which puts hymn lyrics on a projector. It also needs to record the sermon digitally for burning to a CD and possible posting to the web. I assuming that all I need is a reasonably powerful CPU, a dual output video card and a good soundcard. My main question is what software I should use for recording the audio and what format should it save the audio in. If the software could be free and open-source that would be a plus.

Any suggestions are appreciated, especially if you’ve done something like this before.

[SonicVanguard]

Today's on-board sound would be fine in this application - there's enough power from todays CPUs that a separate audio card is overkill. Get whatever dualhead video card that floats your boat - nVidia or ATI. Keep in mind if the projector is far enough away from the computer you may need a in-line signal amp (http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat%5Fid=3417&sku=29559) or send the video signal via cat5 (http://pcclub.com/product_details.cfm?itemno=A0200186).

As for recording - I'd suggest something with a small footprint to do your recording - something like Easy Recorder (http://www.easyrecorder.com/). Record to WAV format and then convert to mp3, wma, or even ram - but recording to wav format will give you a lossless recording for archiving purposes. Recording to wav also takes up few CPU cycles since there's no codec involved. You can use something like Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) to edit and output your recording after the service.

[delta013]

Thanks for your reply Sonic. This should get me started.

[SonicVanguard]

Good luck!