- [Jordan Kettner] In this video, we're gonna show you
how to set up and connect a USB microphone
to your Rode Rodecaster Two audio mixer.
Now, there is a lot of information online,
even from Rode's website itself
that says this is not possible,
but we found a workaround as there typically is
with audio type stuff if you think about it long enough,
you can find a way to make it work
and we're gonna show you how we would make this work
to get a USB microphone into the Rode Rodecaster Two
in this video.
If you are looking for links or pricing or specs
for anything that you see in this video,
we do have links down in the description below
with up to date pricing from a variety of online retailers
to make sure that you are getting the best price possible.
Now, there are three reasons that I can think
of that you might wanna do this.
Reason one, if you want to add post processing
to your USB microphone, you want to add
some of the effects and compression
and that type of stuff that's built into
the Rode Rodecaster Two.
Maybe you don't want to use computer software
or you don't have a computer available
but you do have a Rodecaster.
This is a great reason to do that.
Next, if you just need to get your USB microphone connected
with other USB microphones, this will work for you as well.
That way allows you to use this
basically as a USB microphone mixer
and you can mix 'em all together.
And third is probably something that a lot of people
are coming with where they started with the USB microphone.
Maybe they eventually upgraded
to an XLR microphone with the Rode Rodecaster Two
but maybe they have an extra guest
and they just don't have enough microphones to cover it.
And even though this isn't the best solution,
they can have the option of connecting their USB microphone
with all their other XLR microphones.
They don't have to worry about syncing it all up
in post or something like that.
So a couple things that we need to cover here.
First, before we get into actually connecting it,
you do need to independently power your USB microphone.
We're gonna show you a couple different ways to do that
and then we'll worry about signal and set up after that.
So, to power your USB microphone,
we're using good old fashioned Blue Yeti here.
Probably the most popular USB microphone in the world.
It's outdated by about a decade now,
but it is still extremely popular.
There's a USB mini or micro on the bottom of this,
so I'm gonna connect the cable.
Now, we do need to connect this to power.
We're not worried about getting this signal
out of the microphone with USB,
we're just needing to power it.
So you can connect this other end
to a power block, into a power bar,
or you can actually connect it
to the back of the Rodecaster
if you have a USB type C connector
on the other end of that cable.
Or you can connect it to your computer for power.
Whatever works best for you, it doesn't really matter.
You just need to see this USB microphone power up.
So I'm gonna connect it
to the back of the Rode Rodecaster here.
And to do that, you can see here.
I've just connected it to the output one.
I'm recording this video right now
just onto the SD card of the Rode Rodecaster.
Okay.
So, you can see here that there's a red light
on my USB microphone. It has power.
That's step one.
Step two
is to take the headphone jack output
of the USB microphone and to get that
into one of your inputs onto your audio mixer.
To do that, we're gonna use a cable like this.
There's probably a couple different ways
now that you're thinking about it,
that you can make this work.
This is a balanced eighth inch TRS
to quarter inch TRS.
Now, it is a balanced cable, but the way that we're using it
right now is unbalanced because we're taking
an unbalanced stereo signal left and right outputs
of the headphone jack
and bringing that into the Rode Rodecaster,
Because we're using this in an unbalanced fashion,
because we're doing unbalanced stereo,
don't run this longer than ten or fifteen feet.
This will be really, really good for, you know,
six or ten foot runs.
You might have a little bit of noise,
but it shouldn't be too bad, you probably won't notice it,
but definitely don't run this longer than fifteen feet.
That's when you'll start picking up noise,
hiss, radio stations, all kinds of stuff.
So we're gonna connect this
to the bottom of our microphone here.
Your USB microphone might be different,
it might be on the front or back or something.
And then the quarter inch end, we're gonna take
and we're gonna connect that to channel two
in this TRS input on the back of our Rode Rodecaster Two.
Next, we need to set up the microphone
with the Rode Rodecaster Two.
So I'm gonna select the second channel,
you can see I already have the fader left up
from when I was playing around with it.
This is how I would set it up.
Put it on the dynamic microphone setting.
Now the reason I recommend that is very specific.
The Blue Yeti here is a condenser microphone,
but it's already self-powered from the USB power source,
so the last thing that you'd wanna do is
send forty eight volts of phantom power
to the headphone output of a microphone.
That's a pretty sure fire way that you're gonna damage it.
Second, I'm not positive that forty eight volts
of phantom power would actually come out
of the quarter inch output
of the Rode Rodecaster Pro anyway.
A lot of audio mixers will only send forty eight volts
of phantom power through the XLR inputs of the audio mixer.
So that's something to keep in mind.
Next, for the level,
you wanna find a nice noise to signal ratio here.
For us, the sweet spot was around twenty five DB
on the Rode Rodecaster Pro.
And then you wanna play with your gain
on the Blue Yeti or whatever microphone that you're using
to compensate and to find the sweet spot.
The other variable that you have here
is the headphone volume.
So for me, what I would recommend here is
that you set your headphone volume
to fifty percent straight up the middle.
You set your level to twenty five DB
on the Rode Rodecaster Pro, and then you play with the gain
on the back of the microphone to set your final level.
I'm gonna move over to the Blue Yeti now,
you're gonna hear how it sounds
as I set the gain and adjust everything.
Okay, so right now you can see that
my gain here has turned pretty much all the way down.
But if we look over at the Rode Rodecaster Pro,
my level here is right in the sweet spot,
right in that green band.
So that's exactly where you want to be.
Now, on the front of this microphone,
the headphone volume, like I already said,
is at fifty percent.
The reason that you don't want to go higher
than fifty percent with the headphone output is
that headphone outputs are really noisy
and hissy and gainy and they're not gonna be any good.
In terms of Pro's processing for this,
I would just copy the settings that I have here.
But I do think that this is a totally acceptable solution
that would allow you to get a USB microphone
into your Rode Rodecaster Two in a pinch.
If you are looking for links or specs for all the cables
and stuff that we recommend for doing this,
we do have links down in the description below.
If you have any questions about this setup,
will it work from my microphone?
Just leave a comment down in the comment section below.
And if you wanna see more videos
like this in the future, please like and subscribe.
Thank you for watching.
(upbeat music)