If you're feeling mixed up about mix minus on the RODECaster Pro II let's
minus those concerns by explaining it right now, because the RODECaster
just got its biggest update ever
when it comes to mix minus. The original RODECaster Pro had one USB port,
and one way to do mix minus. The RODECaster Pro II on launch had two USB ports and
three ways to do mix minus, but now the possibilities are basically endless.
But you know what won't be endless?
This video, because we're going to cover it quickly.
So first and foremost, on the RODECaster Pro II, you do have
two USB ports and across those two ports, you have three USB devices.
USB 1 gives you two
input and output options for USB.
And the second USB port gives you a secondary option called
"RODECaster Secondary."
It makes sense.
There are a few different ways you can get into the input/output routing.
If you have one of the USB channels or the Bluetooth channel mapped
to a physical fader, you can just press that channel's button
and then you're going to get the options for that channel,
and you can tap on Output Routing. Or you can just press your settings and go to
Outputs and then tap on Routing and you'll be at the exact same menu.
And this is the menu that you'll see for four different channels on the RODECaster Pro II.
It will be for USB 1, USB 1 Chat, USB 2, and Bluetooth.
And basically you have three simple options.
You have a main mix, mix minus, and a custom.
And between that, you can do pretty much anything you want. In this case,
we're on main mix and there's a brief description, which basically
means that everything is going to be included in the main USB output mix.
So if you have a channel with main selected,
everything that's going into the RODECaster Pro II
is going to go out into anything where
it's selected as the source.
Now, there is a little warning on screen that says this setting can cause
unwanted feedback if used incorrectly.
And basically what that means is if you have audio coming in on a
USB channel, it's probably going to cause feedback because it's going to
go back out on that USB channel.
So if you are talking to somebody, if you're playing music from your
computer that you want to monitor
on the RODECaster that's where you might have problems.
Basically, if you have any audio
coming from the computer that you don't want to then have
sent back out where it's going to loop and create an echo. If you're not concerned
with anything like that, and you just want everything the RODECaster's doing
to go out to your computer, then main mix is fine. For the most part though,
I think it's probably a safe bet to just use mix minus.
And this is just a simple on/off feature
that's going to turn whichever channel you select as mix minus.
So right here, you can see it's USB 1, but I can go over to USB Chat 1,
I can go to USB 2, and then I can go to Bluetooth and I have these same options
but all with independent settings. And all that the mix minus option does
is it just takes the entire mix MINUS whichever channel you have selected.
So this is the thing to use for any channels that you're talking to
somebody else with over the computer, or if you have audio coming in from
your computer again, that you don't want to go back out, maybe it's music
or some kind of other chat channel.
Or you have an instrument plugged into the RODECaster, and you're playing
along to a backing track or a click track, and you don't want that to
then be sent back out, that's where you would want to use mix minus.
But here's where things get really, really exciting is this
third option over here: custom.
And I say that custom is really exciting cuztom is really
appreciative of a lot of the features that it brings in.
Once you tap on custom for any of these channels, again, you have all
of these options for every channel in the custom tab, you will see all
of the RODECaster Pro II's inputs.
So you have all of your XLR channels,
you have Bluetooth,
you have sound pads, you have the USB's, and then you can decide what
you want to include and exclude.
All you have to do is tap on the ones you don't want to include.
Any inputs that are grayed out with a red X will not be included in the mix output
for whichever channel you have selected, and any that are highlighted with a
green check mark, those will be included.
So you could create a really simple mix minus if you don't want to use the
mix minus setting, you could just go to custom, turn everything on
except for the USB that you don't want to include,
and then you've created a very simple USB mix minus. And these are ordered
in the way that you have them assigned to the faders on the RODECaster.
So they will change if you change your fader assignments.
So between three USB outputs, plus Bluetooth, plus these three different
settings for each channel, you can probably achieve just about any kind
of mix that you can dream of. But we can take things even further.
Earlier I mentioned
that the RODECaster Pro II, even though it has two
USB ports, has three USB devices.
Let's talk about that.
So right now I have USB 1 connected to my computer and if I go to my audio
output, You will see that I have RODECaster Pro II Chat and RODECaster Pro II Main Multitrack
Now what this means is even though I've only got the one cable connected,
I still have those two input/outputs.
So what I could do over here is on USB 1, I could create like a main mix.
So that way everything that's in the RODECaster Pro II will
just go out to my stream.
So in my streaming software, like Ecamm or OBS, I can select Main
as the audio source and everything in here is going to go out there.
But say I'm doing something where I'm
talking to somebody on Discord, or I have some kind of other audio source
coming in, then I can go over to Chat.
I can turn on mix minus or even just do a custom mix.
And now in Discord, I can select that option
and then there will be no discord among my settings because everybody on Discord will
have a mix minus situation, but everything on the stream won't have a mix minus,
but there won't be any echos or overlap between any of them.
And despite its name, the Chat channel doesn't have
to just be for things like chat.
It's just another USB channel.
You can use it for whatever you'd like, you can assign it however
you'd like, and configure it
however you'd like as well.
But there's also USB 2 and I would B 2 reckless if I didn't talk about
some of the things you can do with that.
So now that I have a USB cable connected to the second output, I can
run this into an entirely different device, a totally different computer.
And then on USB 2, I can then select that routing table configuration to be
however I want it to be. But I could also take this cable and connect it
to my same computer that I had before.
And now when I go to my input output options, I have three RODECaster Pro
options right here: Chat, Main, and Secondary, and I can configure them
however I want and select different ones within different applications that are
running simultaneously on my computer.
It's kind of crazy.
Now, there has also been a change with how USB 1 interacts with your computer
in terms of multitrack versus stereo.
Right now, if I look at my computer and I have the sources, I have Main Multitrack,
and if I go into my outputs on the RODECaster Pro II and I tap on
Multitrack, there's an option at the top here to select USB, and I can select Off,
Pre-fader, or Post-fader. If Pre or Post-fader is turned on, then on
my computer, I'm going to see that as a multi-track source. But this is very
important because some software does not like working with the multitrack USB.
So if you're having issues with that, you can just turn that off
and then once you have that set, your computer will then see that as
RODECaster Pro II Stereo. If you don't know which setting to use, just keep
it to stereo and you'll be fine.
But if you're somebody who wants multitrack, you have that option too.
So hopefully you can see with an update like this, just the number of
possibilities that are opened up to you and how you want to use
the RODECaster Pro II
within your workflow, which just continues to make it,
I think, something that's incredibly valuable to have. And speaking of
things that are incredibly valuable to have, thank you to everyone who helps
support my channel through Patreon and YouTube Channel Memberships.
And if you want to learn a little bit more about the RODECaster Pro II
check out these videos too!