- If you're somebody who works with an audio mixer,
then you want to be sure to add mix-minus to your workflow.
"But what is mix-minus?" you're asking.
It's basically a way of you telling your mixer
or your recorder to include all of these channels
into the final mix, minus whichever ones
you have selected, mix-minus, it's pretty simple.
Now if you're using the Rodecaster Pro,
mix-minus is an essential feature
and there are two different ways to use it
with the Rodecaster,
so that's what we're going to talk about today.
And I know you also might be asking,
"Hey Tom, if I just want to subtract
"a channel from the Rodecaster,
"wouldn't I just turn the volume on that channel
"all the way down?"
and you would be correct,
except there are times when you would want the audio
coming in for you to listen to,
but you don't want it going out to the final mix.
For example, if you're using the Rodecaster
on something like a Zoom call or a remote interview,
you want to be able to hear the person you're talking to,
but you might not want their audio being recorded into it.
Maybe they're recording high quality audio on their end,
or maybe you're using some kind of software application
that's recording high quality audio
so you don't need the Rodecaster,
but you still need to be able to hear them
to actually have a conversation.
In that case, the first type of mix-minus
you would want to use is a USB mix-minus
and as U's better B-lieve it's super easy to access.
All you need to do is go into...
I'll have to stop my recording.
So I'm going to switch from this one microphone
to the Videomic Pro because I can't change it when...
Anyway.
All you need to do is go into the Rodecaster's menu,
click on Advanced, click on Audio,
and then go into Processing.
And USB mix-minus is right there at the top.
If you turn it off,
then that means anything that's coming through
the USB channel will be recorded onto your final mix
or output into your stream.
If you have USB mix-minus on
that means you'll be able to hear everything
in this channel,
but it won't be sent as an output.
And the best way to think of it
is that anytime you're doing something
that involves two way communication
with the Rodecaster Pro, use USB mix-minus,
because that's going to prevent any sort of echo,
if you or the person or people you're talking to
hear an echo or start complaining about an echo,
then that probably tells you,
"Hey, I should turn on USB mix-minus."
Now, based on my experience,
USB mix-minus is the method you're going to be using
like 90% of the time,
but there is another way to do mix-minus
and it involves these mute and solo buttons down here,
these Christmas red and green buttons.
And so if you're not familiar with these,
the mute button mutes a track,
it's tough to believe, I know.
But that will basically stop a track
from being recorded or sent out.
The green solo button does not affect the output,
it just isolates a track for you to listen to.
So if there's four people talking
and you push the solo button on one of them,
that means in your headphones,
you're just going to hear that one track.
But all of the other tracks are still going to be sent out
on the stream or put into the actual recording.
But here's where there's a little bit of magic
is if you do them both at the same time,
you've effectively created a mix-minus situation,
because you've muted a track,
which means you've taken it out of the recording,
but you've also isolated the track,
which means you can hear it
while you're monitoring the recording.
So say for example, you're talking to someone
on the smartphone channel over the phone
or the Bluetooth channel,
and they're recording audio on their end,
but you still want to be able to talk to them.
You can mix-minus them by pressing
the mute and solo buttons
and then you can also solo yourself
and that way you can hear yourself, you can hear them,
but the only thing the Rodecaster's
going to record is you. And it's not going to record them.
Now, you also might be saying,
"But Tom, the Rode caster is a multi-track recorder,
"why wouldn't I just use multi-track to do this?
"And that way I can just take out the tracks
"I want to use and ignore the rest."
And again, you're a very smart person
and you are correct, but even though multi-track
on the Rodecaster is really, really cool
and super useful and quite excellent,
currently it only lets you export everything.
So you can't select,
"Hey, I'm only going to use track one
"and the smartphone channel, I don't need everything else."
You have to export all of the tracks all of the time
and if you record something long,
that's like an hour and a half or two hours,
which isn't that uncommon for podcasts
and streams and stuff, it can sometimes take like 30 minutes
using the companion app to import
and convert all that stuff.
So by using this method, you can skip using multi-track,
keep everything in a stereo file
and still end up with only the isolated audio
that you actually want to use on your recording.
So it's just a way to speed up your workflow.
Now, obviously, if you're using the USB channel,
it makes sense to use USB mix-minus
because that's the most effective way to do that.
But if you're using any of the other channels,
this method of mute-solo plus then soloing whatever
else you just want to listen to is really helpful.
You don't have to solo your track,
you could just mute and solo theirs,
but it's going to sound weird to you sometimes
because you'll hear them and you won't hear you.
I have found that to make myself feel less crazy,
it's nice to hear myself talk and that's why I use that.
And those are the two ways of using mix-minus
with the Rodecaster Pro
so even if you're not a mathematically inclined person,
you don't have to be scared of multiplying
the quality of your workflow
by adding in mix-minus equals success.
Thank you so much to everybody who supports my channel,
I really appreciate it, it means a lot to me.
And if you want to know more about the Rodecaster Pro
I've got like 20 videos about this thing,
so you can check those out
and then YOU can become the Rodecaster Pro.