- Recording a podcast with all kinds of super fancy gear,
it's really fun
but what if all that you have is your phone?
This looks like a sponsored video
but I promise you, it's not.
Although, I did actually get this for free
and it is the RODE SC6-L Mobile Interview Kit.
Here's the thing, I do really like RODE.
I've made lots of videos about RODE stuff
but they do really cool things.
There's pretty much always a contest going on for RODE.
Sometimes it's video, sometimes it's audio.
They have really good prizes.
Last spring they did a podcast competition
which I completely lost
really badly
but the first 300 people that enter got this,
which is super cool and I didn't know what it was
and it's nothing that I would have actually
shopped for myself 'cause I didn't even know it existed
but now that I have it, I've been using it
so much for the past, like, four months.
And what it is, inside this box
you get a little pouch
and inside that pouch are a couple of microphones
and an adapter.
And what this does
is it let's you record two microphone inputs
directly into your iPhone.
You have this little adapter that plugs into your phone
and then you have two TRSS RODE Lavalier microphones
that can be plugged into channels one and two.
Then once you have your two microphone inputs
there is actually a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack
so you can even monitor your audio
while you're recording it into your phone.
And this is actually a really cool setup
and it works great for podcasting.
I've also been using it a lot for video
because I don't have a wireless microphone system.
And so when I'm out away from a microphone like this,
I've just been keeping my phone in my pocket
with one of these microphones plugged in
and then it works really well
if I'm not able to be near the camera
or near a microphone.
But the reason I wanted to talk about this specifically
is because in my review of the RODECaster Pro
which is a really great podcast audio mixer recorder.
One of the things I said was that
you shouldn't let equipment stop you
from recording a podcast
and if all that you have is your phone,
that's a great place to get started.
And on that video I've gotten lots of comments
where people are talking about using their phone
to record podcasts.
So I wanted to explore that a little bit,
especially because I didn't know
this was a thing that existed.
I knew you could plug in microphones to iPhones
but I didn't know there was a whole adapter
that lets you plug in multiple channels, plus a headphone.
So, this is basically how it works.
I don't know exactly which model the microphones are
that this comes with but they look a lot like
the microphones that are now shipping
and being used with the Wireless GO,
RODE's wireless microphone setup.
So I think they're pretty similar.
You could use your own
and the adapter by itself retails for about $80
on a lot of websites, which seems like a lot of money,
and it is, but it does give you a lot of options
and then decent Lavalier microphones
can range from anywhere from 20 or $30 up to
any amount of money you want to spend
because they can get very expensive.
So I believe that this whole mobile interview kit
with the adapter and the two microphones
usually retails for about $200.
But if you think about what it lets you do,
now you can record two channels of audio
directly into your phone
and then you can export that to your computer
or you can even edit it directly on your phone
and then post it directly to a podcast app like Anchor.
So, this does make it where this,
the phone in your hand, is all that you need
to record and produce a podcast.
So it eliminates a lot of friction between your idea
and a finished product.
And the way that I've been recording everything
with this little interview kit
is through RODE's Reporter App,
which is actually pretty cool.
It's a little buggy, I'll get into that in a second
but for the most part, it's a super solid app.
So, when you open it, you get this record screen
and there are three sections down at the bottom.
There's a library where all of your recorded audio will go,
there's the actual record screen,
and then there are some settings
where you can kind of deep dive
and really adjust your audio quality
in a way that I'm impressed by.
And then right using that, you can just hit record
and it's gonna record with the iPhone's built-in microphone.
If you plug in the little adapter,
the SC6-L adapter,
as soon as you plug it in, up at the top
you'll see now a configure option for this adapter
and this gives you more options.
You an adjust your input level,
you can adjust your direct monitor, so the headphones
that you're listening to,
which can be kind of nice sometimes.
You can even adjust whether you're channels are combined
or separate, so you have these two microphones,
by default, they're combined into one stereo file
where both voices are on the left and the right
but you could do them separately,
which means one microphone will be on the left
and one microphone will be on the right.
I'm not 100% sure why you would want to do that.
I always just do it combined
but it's really cool to have that flexibility
'cause, I don't know what you're gonna do with this thing
and that might be something that is really helpful.
As soon as I plug in the microphones,
then you'll start getting an input level.
And then all I'd have to do is start recording
and you'll see little audio waves forms pop up,
you'll hear my voice and then you're good to go.
You can pause it, you can continue recording.
When you're done you just press end
and then it goes into your library
and from there, you can export it out into your phone
or to your computer or to whatever app
you want to work with it.
So, it's actually a really cool, really simple interface.
It does have a few quirks.
It's a little bit buggy.
I've noticed that a lot of times once you stop recording
and you got into the library
and then you go back to record,
it didn't do it this time,
but sometimes that will cause the app to crash.
The good news is, I've never had the app stop recording
or crash while it was running.
That's only ever happened in between recordings to me.
While I've had it recording,
even if I've been going for a long time
while filming a video or something,
it just keeps going
and it seems to be super reliable in that regard.
And that's really important
because if you're recording a podcast with someone,
you don't want to get through a 45 minute interview
and realize that this thing
stopped recording after 6 minutes
and then everything is just gone.
So I've never had anything like that happen.
The other thing is the input level
seems to be super sensitive on here
and usually on most audio mixers and meters that I've used,
negative 12 is located right at where green becomes yellow
and that's usually where you want your audio levels
to kind of even out, especially for voice.
What I've noticed with this is that any time
you get into the yellow at all,
you start getting some clipping
and it sounds like there's a little to much gain
so it seems like it has a really,
I don't know, hot input, for lack of a better phrase.
And I've just known that now, to make sure it sounds good,
I have to kind of keep the recording input level lower
than I normally would on another mixer or another recorder.
But so far, those are the only quirks
that I've noticed with this app.
Otherwise, it works really well.
It is free so you could get it
and just start using it right now
with whatever you have on your phone.
I'm sure it would work with
other microphones you plug in or the phone directly.
And that's what I really want to see
and that's what I want to show you is,
what does this sound like
when compared to other bits of audio recording?
So let's compare the audio quality
of this mobile interview kit to other microphones.
Right now you're listening to audio
from the RODE VideoMic Pro+
which is located just out of the shot.
And this is the microphone I use
when recording pretty much all of my videos,
but let's switch over to the RODECaster Pro.
So, now you're listening to the RODECaster Pro
through the RODE PodMic,
gosh there's a lot of RODE products in here,
and this is a set up that's designed specifically
for podcasting and audio and voice,
so it should sound pretty darn good.
But that's also what this mobile interview kit
is set up for, so, let's switch over right now
to the RODE SC6-L Mobile Interview Kit
and you can hear what my voice sounds like there.
So we went from the RODE video mic pro
to the RODE PodMic into the RODECaster and now
just into one of the RODE Lavalier mics
directly into my iPhone and the Reporter App
and you can hear the difference between all those sources.
They should be pretty decent
and I've been using this, like I said, for video
quite frequently and no one has ever commented on it
or even noticed, so I figured that that's a good thing
because it doesn't stand out as being
any different from the microphones I normally use.
Oop see, the app just crashed right when I stopped
recording on the phone and clicked end.
But if I open the app,
it still actually saved the file.
So it did crash when I was done recording
but it didn't lose the file or anything.
That's what I was talking about when I said that it
crashes sometimes.
The other thing you can use if you want to record a podcast
are just the earbuds that come with your phone.
So if I plug in these iPhone earbuds,
and now this is what it sounds like
just using my earbud microphone here.
So this can kind of be
sort of helpful but this almost works like a Lavalier mic
if you don't keep the earbuds in your ear,
you can kind of talk to it and then
move it to another person.
That's like, a little bit super low budget but
it works and it gets the job done
and that's the most important thing is
are you able to make what you need to make with these tools?
AirPods and wireless headphones (AirPods clatter).
I haven't been able to get the RODE Reporter App to work
with AirPods or wireless headphones.
So just to recap a little bit, this is me recording
with the ear pods and the built in microphone on those
and now this is me recording directly
into the phone's microphone,
and finally this is using the SC6-L Mobile Interview
Microphone Kit, so you can kind of decide
if you think there is a difference,
what the difference is, if it's worth it,
if it's not worth it.
I think that it's really cool
and even though it's something that didn't know existed
before I had it, I would actually use it
and I do actually use it.
In fact, since these microphones wrap up so small
and the whole kit can fit inside
this little pouch that it comes with,
the whole thing ends up being really small
so what I've been doing for the past few months
is just keeping this in my bag whenever I go somewhere.
So, it just kind of lives in my camera bag
or my overnight bag if we go on a trip
because you kind of never know,
if I go to a conference somewhere
and I meet someone that's like, oh man, it'd be really cool
to record a podcast together, cool,
let's just go find a corner to sit in and talk for a bit
and do that or if I'm giving a presentation at a conference
and suddenly I decide, I want to record this,
I can just have the microphone
running directly into my phone and record it.
There have been so many times when Heather and I
are on car rides and we get into these conversations
and they seem really interesting
and when we're done, we're like, oh man,
that would have been a super fun podcast to record, oh well.
Now this is just right there and I can say hey,
let's just record it as a podcast right now.
Now this is the driving while talking test
and this might seem like kind of a pointless test
because how often are you gonna be recording
or podcasting while driving?
I don't know, but I do know that it is not uncommon
to do what I'm doing right now and want to talk to a camera
while you're driving and it's nice to have
a good audio source while doing that.
But also, like I mentioned earlier in the video,
Heather and I do a lot of driving.
One this I was always curious about with this was like,
could it be possible to drive in a car
and record and get good quality audio?
Or again, if you're just doing something like a vlog
or a video and you need a car scene,
is this gonna give you good audio
much better than just a camera so.
I'm using the GoPro to film this right now,
this is the GoPro's microphone that you're hearing right now
and this is the mobile interview kit.
The other thing I'm curious about with a car test
is, I live in the desert and it is right now 107 degrees.
I don't have the air conditioner on because it's loud but
it is not realistic to keep driving in 107 degree weather.
So this is audio directly from the GoPro,
my camera that I'm using, with the air conditioner on,
so you're probably hearing a lot of that air noise
and now this is audio directly from the mobile interview kit
with the microphone that's much closer to me
and hopefully, it's cutting down quite a bit
on that air conditioner sound,
especially because these microphones
do have the little windscreens on them,
so it should actually make a bit of a difference.
So again, I don't know how practical this is
but it is called a mobile interview kit
and I don't know of anything more mobile than driving
and again, what I've been doing
is just keeping this with me, keeping this in my camera bag,
keeping this just near me when I travel places
'cause you never know when something's gonna pop up
that you're gonna record,
especially if you're doing any video,
audio is half of your video
and if this can help you get better quality audio
in any way, especially just
using something you have next to you,
I think it's super worth it.
My goal here is to kind of give you an overview
of everything from typical video production audio
to dedicated podcast audio and now to
mobile audio or even just using the phone that you have.
Not only so you can hear
the difference between all these things
but more importantly, to emphasize the fact
that regardless of whether you have a big equipment setup
or you're just working with what you got,
you shouldn't let the equipment get in the way
of you actually making a thing.
The number one thing I would say with my YouTube channel,
with podcasts, when I talk to other people about it is
the biggest regret is that they didn't start earlier.
So if you're just constantly waiting until you have
the perfect equipment, the perfect microphone,
the perfect whatever, that's probably never gonna happen
so just grab what you have, do the best you can with it
and then upgrade as you need to as time goes on.
But don't let equipment stop you from getting started.
And there are so many tools
that make everything so much more accessible right now,
and in fact, if you want to check out more of those reviews,
I have my RODECaster Pro interview
and I also compared the RODE PodMic against the Shure SM7B
which is a pretty legendary vocal microphone,
so go ahead and check those videos out
and I will see you over there.
(reggae music)