- Since its first release,
RODE has added quite a few firmware updates
to the RODECaster Pro.
But by far the biggest one so far
has been the firmware 2.0 update.
This update adds a whole host of new features
and I'll put a link down in the description
to RODE's website where you can see
every single thing that it does,
but I wanted to cover just a few of the big ones
that I think are the most impressive.
In order to install the firmware update,
you just need to plug in the RODECaster to your computer
through the USB cable
and then open up the RODE firmware updater app.
I will say that for me
I had an issue where the firmware updater app
was only going to firmware 1.5,
and so I went to RODE's website
and downloaded specifically the 2.0 version
of the firmware updater
and then that let me install the
2.0 version of the firmware.
So just make sure that you have the right updater.
I'll put a link directly to the
2.0 version in the description
and then after that you just click update
and it takes one or two minutes
and then you're all set
and you have basically a brand new device.
The version 2.0 firmware seems to have a few specific goals.
One of them is just to clean up the interface,
make things a little easier to find, easier to use,
but the other one really seems to be dedicated
to people who use the RODECaster
for either more than one show
or share it between more than one person.
So there are a lot of features now
that make it easy to switch between
settings for different shows
or just entirely different workflows.
So just right off the bat you can see this
in some of the updates that they've added to the sound pads.
The RODECaster has eight pads
and now you have a lot more functionality.
Right on the screen there's now a music note box
that lets you see exactly how much time is left
on a sound pad once it starts playing.
That is incredibly useful,
especially for things like jingles
where you need to know how much time until it runs out,
it can just help your overall production
run a lot more smoothly.
The indicator also matches the color
of the pad that's playing
so it keeps everything much more organized
visually as you're recording
and playing all these different sounds.
You do have a lot more options when it comes to
the pads directly on the RODECaster.
If you tap that music note icon,
you can then see all off the queues
and sound effects that you have on your pad.
You can then take it a step further
and you can actually change the color for the pads
right on the RODECaster.
You can even record directly from
one of the inputs to the pads,
and you can adjust the pad functionality
whether it's latch, replay, or play,
and they added in a new pause functionality.
That is really useful for things
like interviews or longer clips,
where you wanna play a little bit of it,
pause it, maybe talk about it or discuss it,
and then keep playing some more.
That's just a functionality that
didn't exist before.
If you wanna add in a pre made sound effect,
you do still need to plug the RODECaster
into your computer
and then use the companion app,
it's super easy, just drag in files
and then they're all set.
But one of the biggest things this update does
is add sound pad banks
so you can now have up to eight different banks
of sounds for your sound pad
so eight pads times eight banks
is 64 different batches of sounds
that you can have
and of course that can be for different shows
so maybe one bank is for one show,
you've got your theme songs,
you've got your cues, your little segment headers
and then you can go over to another bank,
you can add in for a different show that you do
or a different project that you're working on
and you can kinda just keep going from there.
So the way you mix and match and use those sound banks
is totally up to you,
but it just turns these eight pads
basically into 64 pads.
And this ability to save different sound banks
kind of extends onto the desktop application
that goes with the RODECaster
where you can actually save an entire show.
So if you have all of your settings,
all your levels, if you have the specific,
you know, mics that you're using on each channel,
you have your banks of audio clips
and you have it saved on a RODECaster
that you're sharing with someone
and then they go to do their show
and they erase all of your settings,
now all you can do is just load your show back on
and then immediately all your settings are right there,
good to go.
So a lot of the 2.0 functionality
really works well for environments
where the RODECaster is being used
by a lot of people.
And when it comes to the interface,
RODE did do a few things to make
everything overall a little bit cleaner and neater.
Just like I said in my initial review for the RODECaster,
the touch interface works really well.
There's no delay, there's no funkiness,
it really is just as responsive
as like a smartphone or a tablet
so it does everything you would expect it to do
and that makes using it a lot easier.
They changed some of the icons,
like the record icon and the marker icon
so that way they just stick out
and you know exactly what's happening
a lot more easily.
If you go into each individual channel,
you then have the option to change settings
on that particular channel.
And just like you always could,
you can change the microphone that you're using,
you can adjust the level,
you can go in and adjust your voice.
They sort of cleaned this menu up a little bit
in terms of how you decide what
strength of voice you're using,
what tone you want for that voice,
and then how you mix it all together
and which settings you're using.
It's all very clean, simple, and easy.
You can totally do it on the fly.
For channel one through four,
that's not hugely different,
but for the USB, the smartphone,
and the blue tooth channels,
this is actually different
because now on each of those you can go in
and adjust the levels which is something
you couldn't do before
and there's also presets
so for example you can say is it going to be a phone call,
is it gonna be voice,
is it going to be music,
and then the equalizer will adjust
for those specific settings.
One of the features I haven't yet
had a chance to play with
has to do with phone calls
where now when you use the mute and solo buttons
on like the blue tooth channel,
if somebody is calling in,
you can actually talk to them in real time
without it effecting the recording.
So if you're recording a show
and somebody calls in for an interview,
you can have the show continue to record,
you can have somebody talking to
the person on the phone, you know,
prepping them for the interview
or how long it's gonna be until
they're on the air
and those two bits of audio are not going to overlap.
Jumping back into the interface,
you can go into the hardware menu
where you have a few more options
for the physical RODECaster
than you did in the past.
You can adjust the brightness of the screen,
how bright it is when it's active, when it's inactive.
You can go into your headphones,
you can limit the maximum volume,
you can boost the maximum volume of your headphones.
This is where you can do your blue tooth pairing
which is just as simple as it's always been
and you can also now go in and adjust
some of your audio settings.
This entire section wasn't here before
so for example you can go into the USB channel,
you can adjust exactly how that's going to function.
You can adjust your monitor outputs,
you can turn off the level knob.
So if you don't want that to effect
a monitor output
and you wanna just hear exactly what the level is,
you can now do that.
You can turn on PFL, pre-fade listen.
Basically they just added the kind of features
you would typically find in a much
more expensive mixer.
You can also go into multi track
and adjust some of those settings now
directly within the RODECaster which again,
something you just couldn't do before.
RODE has also said that they just
kind of went through
and reevaluated the sound engines
to make things a little cleaner and clearer.
I've always thought that the RODECaster
was incredibly quiet.
If I stopped talking,
there's just like no noise,
but apparently they've even improved that a bit more
and the way that it processes voice
and inputs from different microphones.
And all of these 2.0 updates come
on top of the 1.0 version updates
that RODE had continued to roll out
since the RODECasters release,
including things like record pause
which was a feature that I said
was missing in my first review.
They ended up actually adding that in
in a previous firmware update.
So now if you're recording
and you hold down the record button for two seconds,
it will pause the recording
and you just press it another time
and it will start the recording back up.
That is hugely useful.
For me personally I think that there's
only one feature still missing
and I fully admit that this might be
just totally personal to my needs
and my work flow,
but I would really like the ability
to record directly as an MP3 within the RODECaster.
And I know that that sounds crazy at first
because the whole thing about the RODECaster
is that it does really high quality audio
and now I'm saying I wish there were
a feature that kind of decreased the
audio quality a little bit.
But the reason for that is because
when I upload podcasts,
and especially if it's to a service like Anchor,
they usually need to be in an MP3 format
and my favorite part personally
about the RODECaster is that it lets me
do everything for an audio project
or a podcast without any editing.
So I can record directly,
I can bring in all these different inputs,
I can bring in sounds and clips
and then just as soon as I stop recording,
my podcast is done and ready to go,
but since it is a wave file,
that means I have to put it into something
like Adobe Audition and then convert it to an MP3
and then upload it.
It's a super first world problem
and honestly it only takes like two minutes,
but it is just one extra step
whereas if I could produce an MP3 directly in here,
I could just take the SD card,
put it in the computer,
and upload directly and be ready to go.
Like literally within a couple minutes
of finishing a podcast,
it could be up and available online.
That's really the only feature for me
that I think is still missing
and I fully acknowledge that it might
not be something that a lot of people need.
This 2.0 firmware update I think
really shows that RODE listens
to its customers and their needs.
A lot of the functionality and features
and new things that have been added
not only in this update,
but even in the previous updates
are things that I think a lot of
other companies honestly would save
for a 2.0 hardware version
and so you'd have to buy the RODECaster Pro 2
in order to get all of those features,
whereas they released this one,
it's a new, different type of device,
and they just keep adding functionality to it
that makes it better and better.
This is one of the most innovative
and fun, interesting tools that I have found
in the past few years
and I'm so excited about how easy it makes everything
and I'm so excited to see where
they continue to take it in the future.
If you wanna know more about it,
I do have my full RODECaster Pro review,
of course it was before the 2.0 firmware update,
but all of my thoughts and feelings
are either the same or even better
as they were in that initial review.
(upbeat music)