- Hi, I'm Jordan from Kettner Creative.
In this video, we're going to show you
how to set up and connect the Rode PodMic
to the GoXLR audio interface.
We're going to show you what settings I would use
and how I would recommend setting this up with your software
for live streaming.
If you are looking for pricing or specs
for anything that you see in this video
as we connect and set everything up,
we do have links down in the description below
with current up-to-date pricing
at a variety of online retailers.
So if you are looking to buy anything,
please do check out those links
and it'll help you find the best price possible.
Now, the Rode PodMic is designed for vocal recording.
It's a good looking, very popular microphone
that a lot of people use for live streaming.
And likewise, the GoXLR adds a lot of functionality
for live streaming.
It's a purpose-built device
that's really, really good at handling audio
for a variety of online live streams.
So, hopefully you do already kind of know what these are.
We're not gonna talk about them a lot,
we're just gonna get right into setting them up
with the best settings possible.
So first of all, we're going to connect the Rode PodMic
to the GoXLR.
Now, when we do that, don't use a cable like this
that would go XLR from the mic to the headset input
on the front of the GoXLR Mini.
You do want to use a proper XLR cable
where it has a male to female XLR end.
This will give you a better preamp, more power,
it's built for an XLR microphone.
So do definitely use this input
instead of the headset input on the front.
So we're going to connect this
and plug it into the back of the GoXLR.
Next, for the Rode PodMic.
I do recommend a bigger windscreen than what comes with it.
This microphone is marketed
as having good plosive protection
when you make P and B sounds right into the microphone.
I don't find it all that good.
For an extra 10 bucks, I do recommend the larger windscreen.
If you are looking for one,
we do have some links down in the description below.
Let me put that on.
Next, let's set up the gain for the Rode PodMic.
So now you can hear the Rode PodMic here,
before you were listening to the lav mic
that I have clipped onto my jacket here.
And for this microphone, for me and my voice,
I recommend that you set it to about 55 decibels of gain.
It is recommended that you put this
on the dynamic microphone setting,
because the Rode PodMic is a dynamic microphone.
You don't need to use the condenser 48 volts option.
It shouldn't hurt the mic in any way.
You would need to use the condenser mic option
if you are using a Cloudlifter.
But with all the testing that we've done,
I don't think a Cloudlifter is necessary
with the GoXLR Mini.
So you don't need to use that for this
and definitely don't use the 3.5 millimeter.
So set it to dynamic
and then set it somewhere in the range of 55 decibels.
You can see here as I'm speaking
that we're right in the middle of the section.
As I speak naturally throughout my live stream
or this video recording,
that's right where you do want to be.
You can see I'm a little on the low side for me,
maybe I'll bump it up to 56.
That would put us closer to the high side of middle there
and that's the setting that we're going to use,
so I'm going to click OK.
Next we can set up the gate.
What the noise gate does
is it essentially auto mute your mic
when you're not speaking into it.
How it does that is it sets a threshold
and when you break that threshold,
as the microphone captures more sound
than what your threshold is set to,
it breaks the noise gate and activates the microphone.
A noise gate comes from the live sound world.
Famously they're used all the time on drum kits.
That's the best example of when you would want a noise gate.
If you can imagine a drum kit,
there's probably six or seven microphones on the drum kit
at any given time.
The snare, the rack toms, the floor toms,
the symbols, the high hat.
And when you hit this snare,
you don't want the microphone
over on the floor tom to activate.
So what you do is you set a noise gate.
All your drums are very loud,
so as you hit the snare
you want it to quickly break that noise gate,
open up that microphone, let the sound through.
And when you're done hitting the snare drum,
you want that microphone to automatically mute.
Likewise, as you move across the drum set,
you do want it to auto mute
and turn off the mics to a certain extent
and it gives you much better control.
The same thing for live streaming.
If you're in a loud environment,
if you have something like a fan
or you have a really loud PC right beside the microphone,
or if there's background noise in your recording environment
you might want a noise gate
to automatically mute the microphone
when you're not speaking into it.
This is really good for if you live with roommates
or something like that,
it'll help to mute the microphone
when you're not right up on the microphone
like I am in this video.
The downside of a noise gate
is that sometimes you can hear it clicking in and out.
So we're going to play with some settings here.
You should be able to hear it click in and out.
For a live stream, it's not super, super bad
if you hear that noise gate clicking in and out
because it is masked by the game noise
that you're live streaming.
That being said, if you're doing a video
like what I'm doing right now,
that could be distracting
if you kind of hear that noise floor kicking in and out.
So, for a talking head video, like this one,
I'd recommend no noise gate.
But if you can mask it with live sound or a game sound
or something like that with your live stream,
then go ahead and use the noise gate.
We're going to walk through some settings now.
Just gonna put on my headphones
so I can hear what I'm doing.
So before I raise the threshold
I'm just going to set the attenuation to a hundred percent.
I'll explain that in a minute.
So as we raise the threshold here,
hear the noise gate and out.
It's muting the microphone.
And as you can hear, it's way too aggressive right now.
It's actually muting me
when I'm speaking into the microphone.
So for me, I like to keep this somewhere around minus 55.
I keep it really conservative
so the noise gate will break
and open up the microphone very easily
if I'm speaking into it.
You can be more aggressive with it
but you do risk clipping syllables,
like you just heard when I was setting it to aggressively.
So do keep that in mind.
Next, the attenuation is how much of the microphone sound
is getting muted when the noise gate is closed.
For me, I like to set this somewhere around 50%.
Again, it's nice and conservative
so you don't hear the noise gate
clicking in and out all the time.
So if the noise gate is in and your microphone is muted,
it's really only silencing about 50% of the input.
This makes it sound a little bit more natural
as it comes in and out.
You may want to play with these a little bit
depending on your environment,
but if you're in a relatively quiet environment
like I am right now, minus 55 and 50% on the attenuation
is a really good setting.
I don't recommend going any more aggressive
than minus 50 or minus 45.
That's when you start to get into trouble
where the noise gate actually becomes more of a distraction
than it's worth.
For this video, like I explained earlier,
I am going to turn it off now
just because it is distracting
when I'm in a closed studio environment
for a talking head video like this.
But this is how I would set it if I was in a live stream
and the noise gate is masked by game sound.
Okay, so next we have the EQ.
I'm going to open up the EQ here.
So the goal of the EQ,
if you like the way that the Rode PodMic sounds
and you're doing a video like I'm doing right now,
just leave the EQ flat.
That's why you bought this microphone,
you liked the way it sounds.
But, what I Tend to do with EQ for live streams,
is I want to make gaps in the microphone frequency range
to make space for the game noise.
You don't want everything competing
for the same frequencies.
You want to be able to hear the microphone clearly
above the game noise.
So we're going to do some bumps and some cuts
to make this more clear
while making room for the game sounds in your livestream.
Another way to think about what I'm going to explain here
is if you're making a live band
or if you're attending a concert,
you'll have something like an acoustic guitar,
a piano and a vocalist that have the option
to all be competing in the same frequency range,
likewise for the bass guitar and the kick drum.
So what you need to do with EQ,
is you kind of need to slot all of them in
to their own frequency range,
so when you stand back from the mix
you can clearly hear each instrument in its own space
and you don't hear those frequencies competing too much
or creating too much mud.
That's what we're trying to do with this setting here.
So in order to get the best options possible
I am going to turn on this Enable Fine Tune button here
and expand it.
So what that Fine Tune button does
is it allows us to swing the frequencies if we want
while we're tuning this microphone.
The first thing I'm going to do
is I'm going to reduce the 30 hertz here
all the way down to zero.
This is basically creating a high pass filter
or a base roll off on the bottom end of this microphone.
It's basically taking this microphone
right out of the subwoofer of your guests
who are watching your live stream.
There's nothing useful in your voice
in the sub frequencies like that.
It does boost it a little bit
but in terms of a live stream
it's not going to help you stand out amongst the game noise.
And that's where a lot of game noise and special effects
tends to hang out,
so we're just going to separate these two.
Now, depending on most people's subs
as they're watching your live stream,
it'll tend to roll in to that mid range speaker
somewhere around 80 to 120 hertz.
So for me, I'm just going to leave this at 120 hertz here.
I'm just going to type it in, 120.
And this will make sure that the base roll in
is back to a hundred percent by the time it hits 120 hertz.
This is very common.
If you do have a voice that is a little bit higher
than my voice is, my voice is quite deep,
you may want to extend the low range of your filter here
all the way down to a hundred hertz.
You can do that by just clicking it and typing in 100,
and that will give you a little bit stronger low end.
But for my voice, I'm going to set it to 120.
Next, you can see here that I've already typed it in,
but I'm going to type in 400 hertz
and I'm going to do a mid cut of minus two.
You're going to really hear this microphone open up here.
That really just puts a mid low scoop in.
Again, this is where a lot of video game noise is
and it's where a lot of mud from your voice is.
Removing that frequency,
that's a common thing that I do on almost every vocal mic
in a live sound environment
or live streaming or anything like that.
It just creates more clarity in the voice.
The next options here is that we're going to go to 2K
and 2.5K or 2.6K.
We're going to boost those by one or two each.
So the main clarity of your voice comes between 1.5K and 3K,
somewhere in there, depending on your voice.
That's where the real articulation
and the clarity comes from.
So by boosting that we're helping you stand out
amongst the game noise so people can hear you,
no matter what you're doing in your live stream.
Next, we're going to go to the high end of this EQ graph,
we're going to type in 12 kilohertz
and we're going to drop it off at minus three.
Most vocal microphones have a cliff
after 10 kilohertz anyway.
So by cutting it after 12 kilohertz,
this really does just create more space.
Again, a lot of special effects are above 10K in video games
and that type of thing,
so we're just creating more room for those frequencies.
So this will help your microphone be a much more clear,
less muddy, and stand out amongst the game noise.
Next, we're going to set the compressor for this microphone.
What the compressor does
is it really narrows the dynamic range or the volume level,
depending on how you think about it, for your live stream.
This makes sure that if you get really excited,
it'll squish your volume for you automatically
so you don't have to turn yourself down.
Likewise, if your tends to drift a little bit
throughout your livestream,
this will bump it up just a little bit,
to make sure that your voice
is always within that desired range for your live stream
and you're not having to turn the fader up and down too much
throughout the live stream,
this will automate some of that.
Now the risk of over compressing
is that it basically sounds like a limiter,
it'll make you sound like a robot
and it'll take all the emotion,
all the swing out of your voice
and emotion is very important on a live stream.
We want to use this as a tool,
we don't want to use it as a crutch.
So what it's going to do is just going to
narrow that dynamic range,
make the loudest parts a little bit quieter
and make the quietest part just a little bit louder
which will improve the audio consistency
for your live stream.
So we're going to lower the threshold here
to about minus 15.
What this does is now everything over minus 15,
zero is where we clip, so minus 15,
everything over that will now get compressed by 3.2:1.
If you want a more aggressive compressor
you can go to 4:1.
But keep in mind that 3.2:1 is already quite aggressive.
Everything over minus 15 is getting squashed 3:1.
So that does take quite a bit of the dynamics out
but it's still in the range
of being pretty good and flexible
and allowing that emotion to come through.
The attack and the release at two milliseconds
and a hundred milliseconds, respectively, are set great.
Those are good.
And then we're going to add about five DB
of makeup gain here.
So this is going to make the quietest parts
of this microphone just a little bit louder.
So this is going to push us up into that compressor
a little bit, and then it's going to squash it down
into that narrower dynamic range.
I really do wish that the GoXLR Mini here
had a graph showing you the compressor squish,
it is pretty interesting to learn.
It's a good way to watch and see what's actually going on.
But we don't have that option.
But maybe you can hear it, maybe you can't.
Sometimes it takes a while to learn how to listen
for the working compressor there.
But this is the setting that I would use
and what I recommend.
Now, this isn't the full GoXLR,
so we don't have the de-esser that is available with that.
If you want our recommendation for that setting,
we have a Rode PodMic and the full GoXLR tutorial
where we recommend a setting
for how to use the de-esser on that.
Again, if you are looking for pricing or specs
for anything that you've seen in this video,
we do have some links down in the description below.
If you have any questions,
if there's anything you were expecting in this video
and you didn't see, or you have any more questions
about setting up the Rode PodMic with the GoXLR Mini,
please leave a comment down in the comment section below.
And if you want to see more videos like this in the future,
please like and subscribe.
Thank you for watching.
(upbeat music)