1. How can we contact you?
2. Where did all these messages come from?
3. Where does the money come from to do this?
4. I'm having trouble downloading MP3 files?
5. This is a good thing, how can I help?
6. I would like to get some copies as tapes, how do I do that?
7. Hey, I'm a geek, tell me about the nuts and bolts.

See our contact page for information on how to contact us. The webmaster checks email at least once per day, unless he's on the road.

Where did all these messages come from?

These messages come from the archive of the Christian Tape Ministry in Richmond Virginia. Most of the messages contained herein were recorded at meetings in Richmond, or at the Christian Family Conference held in Richmond. Some of the tapes have been contributed by other assemblies around the world. Most notably, the messages of T. Austin-Sparks came from a group of believers in Twello, Netherlands.

Where does the money come from to do this?

The money for the website comes from donations made to the Christian Tape Ministry. We believe that if the Lord wishes these words to continue going out, that He will provide the means to do so.

I'm having trouble downloading MP3 files?

Some browsers, especially Microsoft Internet Explorer, tend to take away control of the system from the user, believing that it knows best how to run things on your computer. This can be evident when you click on the 'Download MP3' link. Some browsers assume that since the file has a .mp3 name that it should be played instead of stored. To defeat this annoying behavior you can right-click on the 'Download MP3' link causing a pop-up menu to appear. Select the 'Save Target As...' option. The browser will than ask for the name in which the MP3 file should be saved. One more thing, other browsers, such as Netscape, AOL, Opera, or Mozilla, may use wording different from 'Save Target As...', but they all provide this feature.

This is a good thing, how can I help?

I'm glad you asked. One way to help is by helping us catagorize and catalog the messages. You've probably noticed that each message can have a summary, scriptures referenced, and a subject. Sometimes, when we upload a tape to the site we don't have the time to listen to it and collect this information. If you listen to a tape that doesn't have a summary, subject, or scriptures you can collect that information and email it to us at comments@christiantapeministry.com. Please include the title, speaker, and catalog id of the message. We will gladly include submissions.

If you would like to contribute messages to the site please contact us. We know that the library in Richmond is only a small part of what the Lord has blessed His people with in the past 50 years.

I would like to get some copies as tapes, how do I do that?

We are working on ordering tapes online, but that feature is not ready yet. So, for now, one must order tapes the old fashioned way, by mail.

Write down the following information for each message you want to order:
Catalog # (found on the message abstract screen)
Speaker
Title
Quantity you wish to order.

You can mail the order, with payment to:

The site runs on a Linux machine using the Apache web server and PHP as a dynamic page generation engine. The data on the site is stored using a MySQL database. The streaming MP3 files are served using an Icecast server, and the Real Audio is streamed using the Real Server Basic. All of the server software is free! The server hardware, currently, is a 400Mhz Celeron processor with 128MB of RAM and about 50GBytes of disk space.

On the digital recording side we use several tools to digitize the messages. Almost all of the messages are currently stored on audio cassette tapes, some of the tapes are over 30 years old and are loosing their audio dynamics. To digitize the tapes we attached a decent quality tape deck with Dolby Noise reduction to the line-in port of a PC. We then use a software program called Sound Forge XP by Sonic Foundry to record and digitize the audio into a Windows WAV file with 44.1Khz Mono sampling. We use Sound Forge's editing capability to strip the leader, tape-flip, and trailer from the message. Occasionally, we use Sound Forge to try to clean up the audio quality of the recording. The resulting file ends up being about 300MB in size.

After making the digital copy of the message we use Sound Forge to make a compressed copy of the audio in Real Audio format. We compress the file down to a format suitable for streaming over a 28.8K baud modem. We also use a program called Xing Encoder to compress the WAV file into an MP3 file. Again, we compress the file to a size suitable for delivery over a modem. With both compressions we end up with files that are about 13MB in size.

After compressing the files we make durable digital copies of the messages. For each message we produce 3 CDs. One CD, the data CD, has the original WAV file, the compressed MP3 version, and the compressed Real Audio version. Then we make two identical audio CDs. The audio CDs are identical to a CD that one would play in their home stereo or automobile. The audio CDs gets stored at different locations so as to protect the content in the event of a disaster.