Help a tech challenged person

[hhba]

We installed Audacity on the chuch computer without trouble and added the lame feature as we want mp3 audio ouput. The new mp3 file will be sent FTP to our existing web server (We presently use Real Audio made from cassette tapes.) We want to change that long process to using mp3 files. At the same time, we are in the process of changing our recording equipment to a digital one. What we cannot do but need to do is the following. We trust some kind soul will show us an easy way.
We operate on a peer to peer LAN with XP.

1. We want to take a precorded (mp3) music and voice intro as the beginning of a new mp3 file.
2. We will add the sermon by using a memory stick from the new soundboard.
3. We want to close the new new file with the above two items with a prerecorded closing (mp3) that includes voice and ends with music.
4. We plan to burn the new file to CDs and FTP it to our webserver weekly.

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated. There has to a simpler less frustraing way!
Thanks
hhba

[kozikowski]

Where to start. How about here:

Audacity 1.2 is very old and no longer supported,
patched, corrected, or updated. Audacity 1.2 can
be unstable on newer computers.

Download and install the latest Audacity 1.3 from here...

http://audacityteam.org/download/

You can install both audacity 1.2 and Audacity 1.3 on
the same computer, but only use one at a time.

Audacity 1.2 will not open projects made on Audacity 1.3.

If you use MP3 or some of the more modern audio
compression formats, get Lame and FFMpeg software
from the same web site. Do not use older software
or software from other web sites, even though they
may have the same names.


Never do production in MP3. MP3's mommy was a video format and this causes MP3 to travel in fixed frames limiting what you can do with timing and cadence of performance. That and MP3 sound quality degenerates rapidly with multiple productions. WAV is the way to go.

If possible, you should do all your production, including the intros and outros, in one WAV format to avoid oddball speed and quality issues. My television situation demands 48000, 16-bit, Stereo, but you can probably use 44100, 16-bit, Stereo which is the Music CD format. There is no quality difference between the performance and the Music CD if you do that.

Your last sentence suggests that you're going to upload the CD to your web site. Probably not, right? That's the exact place you would produce an MP3 from the edited show for the upload. MP3 is a delivery format, not a production format.

MP3 has some ground rules. The compression and quality move around depending on settings. 32 produces the smallest mono show file with borderline acceptable quality. 64 for stereo. Audacity defaults to 128 which is OK/Good for general use. Higher is better quality, but the file sizes go up.

Did I miss anything? You didn't say anything horrifying -- except that MP3 thing.

Koz

[hhba]

Thanks for a really fast response!
As you sugest we will:
1 Check our version and install the 1.3, then delete an earilier version, if that is what we have
2. Do the project in wav then convert later to mp3, your advice is golden
3. we did not plan to send a cd to webserver; we will send the mp3 file via FTP

The real struggle for us is when we load each file, we get more horizaontal lines. iI we load the first i minute intro, then load the sermon, we get another set of horizontal lines. We are not sure if we should stop or pause in order to load the sermon and then we need to edit the sermon for silent times and possily remove certain sections to make it fit our time goal of one half hour total for the entire new file. When load the ending, yet another set of horizonatal lines. Question..how do we merge ,if that is the right word, all the files into 1 ,after editing?
Thanks again for coming to our rescue.
hhba