if you're looking to buy the DJI mic wireless system or the rode Wireless go to then this
video is going to help you out a lot to start off with we have to talk about audio quality so right
now you're listening to the rode Wireless go 2 which is good overall but I do find it to be
a little bit muffled sounding and no matter how much you change it if you talk loudly or have a
lot of sound that comes loudly at the it tends to distort in the mic and no amount of changing the
output gain of the receiver can change that and no amount of changing the output or the input gain of
the camera changes that and now you're listening to the the DJI mic now the DJI mic I find sounds a
little bit better out of box you straight out just the way it is but it also does better overall with
loud sound so if you have somebody who's talking really loudly like this it doesn't distort quite
as badly that coupled with the fact that you get a much more granular control over not only
the transmitter loudness settings or the the input settings on the transmitter but also on the output
of the receiver so you can just get much more fine detailed control over how this microphone sounds
but then what happens if you plug a lavalier into now this is the Countryman B3 which is a good 200
ish microphone but it's a good overall lavalier just in general now this is where the road and
the DJI do differ quite a bit is the road when you plug an external mic into it still maintains
a relatively clean audio uh not a lot of self noise now I've switched to the DJI mic same
exact system same microphone but the DJI mic has a lot more self noise so if you're going to use
this with a lavalier plugged in you either need to use the road system or you need to use this
sure mvl lavalier mic this particular microphone works very well with the DJI microphone system
I don't know why it has a much higher output but it just does a lot better than any other lav that
I've tested with the DJI mics and that's where we come to the distance that both of these will go
the wireless go to will go 200 meters whereas the DJI system will go 250 meter here we are with the
DJI mic now one thing you'll notice is that as I turn around and turn away from the camera and
start walking that direction you'll lose signal very fast because of the way it enter your body
interferes with the signal that's one thing that's bad about these mics is you don't have to go very
far before you start to get breakup because of the very small size and the frequencies that
they're based on of course the output power but then as soon as you turn around you get
much better uh signal and you can go quite a distance so right now about 150 feet away
now I'm a couple hundred feet away maybe two 300 200
. and then 500 feet away oh man that wind is cold
as soon as you got a good clear line of sight you get good signal and it has no problem
you start losing signal but so long as you maintain a good clear line of sight
this system will go really far it's just that as soon as you get into RF dense environments or
places where there's a lot of obstacles between the transmitter and the receiver you start to get
problems next we'll try the rode Wireless go too here we are with the real Wireless go too so same
thing I'm going to start walking away and see how fast does it start to break up or lose connection
because I'm directly between the transmitter and the receiver is it doing it now does it come back
as soon as we go here I feel like there's some very big distinct differences between ninja and
the road as far as how they handle transmission and reconnection and loss of connection
so now I'm probably 250 maybe 300 feet away
so long as I've got good you know direct line of sight should be fine
so now I'm back where I was 500 feet away with the DJI mic if I turn put my body between the receipts
out and then how fast does it come back in also how good is the wind resistance because it is
windy and cold I don't know why but I keep going to wintry places in the winter and hot places
in the summer I need to reverse that somehow so beyond audio quality this is where DJI has really
set itself apart this little case is absolutely fantastic not only is it a charging case that
keeps everything charged up when you're traveling to or from Shoot locations but as soon as you open
it everything turns on and you can clearly see the battery levels of each and how much recording
time you have left on each individual unit which is fantastic plus it also stores a USBC adapter
and a lighting adapter if you're going to do something like plug this directly into a phone
or other device on the other hand with the rode Wireless go you get none of that you basically
get these two microphones and the receiver which you turn on by pushing this button here and this
button down here and then after a minute they will turn on you can tell they're linked and
working obviously by the blue light and that's it now you can buy a charging device like like this
which you plug each of the road mics into but I found that this will continue to charge the
microphones or these units even after they're fully charged so they do get hot and that will
destroy your batteries so if you're going to use a case like this I wouldn't recommend just leaving
it in there on battery life the Rogue Wireless go 2 will give you seven hours on a single charge
before you'll need to charge them or about seven hours where the DJI mic will give you about five
and a half hours for the transmitters and about five hours for the receiver before you'll need to
put them back in this case and let them charge up again the nice thing is that anytime you're
moving between shoot locations or doing anything like that all you have to do to charge them is
because they have these little tiny connectors or a little SMART connector on the bottom
pop them in they start charging automatically you throw this in your bag and by the time you get to
your next location these will probably be fairly fully charged again and with the battery case
you can record for up to 15 hours when uh putting them in here to recharge in between shoots one way
that the DJI mic separates itself from the Rogue Wireless go to in a massive way is the usability
now I already covered some of that as the fact that you just simply open the unit up and then
they turn on and once you pull them out they're ready to go but of course you can go a whole
another Direction with programming these to start recording as soon as you pull them out or you can
push the button to start recording you can see the little red light turns on and then they won't
stop recording until you put them back in the case or you push the button depending on how you want
to set it up there's a huge amount of ways to set this up to operate the way you want it to operate
and the best thing about the wireless mic system is the way that you get around to adjust anything
swipe down here you can change it from mono to stereo which means you have one of these on the
Left Channel and one of these on the right channel you can change it to Mono with a safety Channel
which means it records at a regular volume and then a lower volume so in case you have somebody
who suddenly shouts wildly into the microphone you won't get a bad audio feed and then of course
you can make it left or right right or left then you can go into the receiver gain settings and
adjust all your receiver gain you can change your headphone volume you can change your transmitter
settings from the low cut filter to the gain settings to the auto record feature so if you
wanted to record when it comes out of the box or not be able to start and stop recording using the
button you can do that there you can have it auto record as soon as you take it out of the box you
can turn the vibration on or off you can change the LED brightness to low high doesn't matter you
can change all that and then you have settings in here the brightness you can link or pair devices
but they do do that automatically anytime they go in the case together but because both of these
units record internally on the transmitters you have the opportunity to not lose any of your audio
recordings even if there's an audio dropout now it has come in extremely useful for me on a lot
of different shoots especially with the wireless mic system from DJI because I've used that feature
a lot when I wasn't sure about the environment we were going to be in and how stable the recording
would be however when it goes to getting the recordings off of the units it's extremely
different with DJI you plug it in Via USBC and you pull them off simply like you would a USB
drive or a card off your camera or anything like that operates much the same way with the road you
have to go into the road Central app you have to export the audio files from these on your computer
using the rode Central app and then import them into whatever software you might be using
while it's not insanely difficult it is more difficult than just being able to pull them
off like you would a USB thumb drive or something like that hey if you're enjoying this video then
consider subscribing I test and review lots of filmmaking equipment in Alaska and I give
you tips and tutorials on how to use it now with the road system you can change a lot of settings
but you have to be able to plug it in Via USBC either into your phone using a special cable
or into a computer and use the rode Central app but the only settings you can change on the unit
itself are the DB output settings here where you can change it from uh I think it's 10 different
steps maybe it might be a few more than that I'm pretty sure it's 10. the only other thing you can
change beyond the output of the receiver is the uh mute and unmute so there you can mute channel two
and you can change the output or you can mute and turn on channel one other than that everything
else has to be done through the computer app or through the phone app using if you're going
to use the phone app you have to get a special cable or through the computer you have to use
their program which if you don't have a computer with you like when I bought these to go up into
the Arctic and record something up there uh as it for a documentary it became very frustrating
because I didn't have an ability to get online and I didn't have any way to change any of the
settings on the road now fortunately it worked out for me okay but being able to change all of your
settings through the touch screen on the receiver on the DJI makes it incredibly valuable and really
user friendly there are a couple of ways that the road does beat up the DJI system one is something
I already covered which is the self noise of the units rode just has a cleaner sound straight out
of the units as far as self noise and especially when you're using lavalier mics or lapel mics it
has a cleaner self noise with the electric Tronics for that whereas the DJI mic definitely has higher
self noise but if you use the right lapel it's not a big deal as I showed earlier another way that
I do actually like the road system better is the cold shoe hot shoe Mount the road system slides in
and out of cold shoes hot shoes just a lot easier than the DJI mic does it just slides in slides out
whereas the DJI mic because they've made this system modular where you can put this in or use
one of the other units to plug it straight into a phone but this thing even though it does fit it's
much much much tighter than the road system to be able to take in and put out now I could probably
just file a little bit down and make it fit a little bit better but it does make me wonder how
long this little piece will last if you're forcing it in and out of a camera hot shoe cold shoe that
often another great design of the wireless mic is the fact that the touchscreen gives you all the
data you need and you can face it forward so that if you're using the camera from the front you can
see it or if you're going to be behind the camera you can simply face it backward and then from
behind the camera you see all the information this little loled screen is nice and bright you can see
it well outside and it works well depending on how you're going to use it where the road system
it is on top so the only way you can see it is by looking at the top of the camera or trying to
mount it in some other way that is a little bit less useful and a little bit less user friendly
than the wireless mic system or the DJI mic system is also size can be a factor now neither one of
these is very heavy in fact I would say the DJI maybe weighs just a slight bit more but right here
you can see the size difference between these two is substantial and that's where I do really like
the DJI system a lot better and the fact that you can turn the LEDs on or off on the units so
they're not like distracting or showing up really well makes it really nice another thing to note is
that the back of these is magnetic on the wireless on the DJI mic so you have this little magnet
snaps on there and you can attach it basically to anybody's shirt using the magnet right here
and just like that the microphone is fixed onto the shirt of somebody or if you have a magnetic
necklace or something like that you could also use that to attach the DJI mic whereas with the
rode system you don't have that option without some more accessories or other things another
great feature of the DJI mic is the fact that you have a headphone out cord or Port right
here so you can monitor directly off of this if you need to but something else I really like is
that if you unplug this or if it becomes unplugged it lets you know that right here on the screen and
you have to confirm it and of course we have to talk about price now for the real Wireless go 2
you're going to spend about 300 whereas with the DJI system you're going to spend 330 dollars but
I really do think it's worth it considering with the wireless go 2 if you want to have a charging
station you've got to buy this which is an extra 30 to 40 dollars depending on where you get it
if you want single units they both do sell single units the DJI mic I can't remember what the price
is 200 something it'll be on the screen and then the rode Wireless go to as far far as what comes
with each microphone you get the DJI case here the two transmitters the receiver all these little
accessories in here you get a couple of these little dead kittens I guess is what we like to
call them and this little uh wire here and then a bag which I don't have and don't use now for the
road Wireless go to you get two transmitters and one receiver you also get a cable to go from the
receiver to your camera and you get a nice little pouch that I have somewhere and I couldn't find
it but uh yeah and then you also get a couple of these little also very much similar dead kittens
to be able to cut wind noise and they do do on both units they do do a very good job of handling
wind right now I think the DJI mic is probably the best value unless you plan to use something with
some high-end lapels or different lapels that you maybe already have the sure lapel at 60 something
dollars is a great option for the DJI wireless system but you're going to want to watch this
video right here to see what the best on camera options are for under 250 dollars I'll see you
over there as always if you have questions ask me in the comments below or join my live stream
Wednesday nights at 4 pm Alaska time 8 PM Eastern I'll see you again soon in the next video cheers