The Bible Baptist Bookstore is pleased to announce that we have started a long delayed product format change. With digital technology taking over the music and entertainment industry, we have been watching for many years the industry to try to ascertain which format to use to transfer Dr. Ruckman’s audio recordings. The traditional CD (Compact Disc Wave file format) has time limitation to a maximum record time of 80 minutes. This posed some rather large logistical problems with most of the Cassette Bible Study Albums using 90 and 120 minute tape lengths, so a 16 tape album would become over 20 Cds in traditional (wave file) format.

Using the MP3 format (Moving Picture Experts Group - MPEG) we can now record over 23 hours of preaching or teaching onto one CD, thus any 16 tape album can be placed on one CD.

To play these MP3 Compact Discs you will need an MP3 compatible device. The good news is that you probably already own a DVD player and most DVD players will play a MP3 CD. Most computers with a CD-ROM will also play MP3 CD’s using Windows Media Player, Realplayer or other audio computer programs. The bad news is that a regular CD player (unless designated MP3 compatible) will not play an MP3 CD. CD players that are MP3 compatible are now available at many retail outlets (check specifications before purchasing your next CD player). For the computer savvy, using a computer to transfer files to a MP3 device with flash memory, many hours of recordings can be carried in a pocket MP3 device and played through headphones.

We intend to make available MP3 CDs of all existing Bible studies, digital collections of monthly preaching here at Bible Baptist Church, and collections of Dr. Ruckman’s and Bro Donovan’s preaching. Eventually we intend to transfer all of our current audio cassette (approximately over 4000 hours) recordings in MP3 CDs. We anticipate this project to take over 2 years.

The recordings span from the late 1960s to the present. We are utilizing industry standard software programs to transfer and enhance the recordings. Please realize that some of the older recordings are not to today’s standard but are still very much improved and, overall, excellent in quality considering the age and technology used to originally record them.

For the time being, we will continue the traditional audio cassette format along with the new MP3 format, but some time in the future we will probably have to phase out the cassettes.

We will announce on a monthly basis all new MP3 projects that have been transferred in the Bible Believer’s Bulletin and our web site.  If you have any technical questions regarding MP3 products, please call 850-477-8812, and we will attempt to answer your questions.