- I've really been looking forward to making this video
because I haven't been this excited
about a tool in a long, long time.
In fact I think the last thing I found
that had this much of an impact on my work flow
was probably the camera that I'm filming this with right now
which is the Canon 6D Mark II.
And what I'm talking about today
is my new favorite thing which is the RODEcaster Pro.
And basically, this is an all in one
podcast production studio in one little device right here.
And as somebody who has set up
several different podcasting studios
at a couple of the schools that I've worked at
over the years and at broadcast studio.
There's so much that goes in to anything like that.
There's just so many different parts,
and pieces of equipment, and wiring,
and it's always a lot of work.
And this thing is like, revolutionary.
I haven't found anything quite like it,
and this is definitely in no way a sponsored video,
I paid for this with my own money, and it was back ordered,
and I had to wait a really long time
for it to actually show up.
But it showed up and I've been using it for several weeks,
and wow, I really like it,
so I wanted to kind of explain why I think
that it's so fantastic.
So the reason that I was even interested in this
RODECaster in the first place is that
in the beginning of 2019,
I finally started a podcast because
why not wait until the market is super duper saturated
and then just jump in with no idea of really what to do.
But this actually isn't a shameless plug for the podcast,
that was just sort of the catalyst
for me wanting to improve my audio production equipment.
And when I started the podcast,
I didn't want to invest any money in equipment
because I didn't know if I was gonna like it.
I didn't know if it was something I was gonna keep doing,
so I wanted to just work with what I had.
And that's probably the first thing that I want to point out
is if you want to do a podcast,
you do not need to buy anything.
Just start making your podcast.
And so what I actually started off with
was using the Zoom H4n,
and then I just plugged the RODE VideoMic Pro
that I use to film all my videos
into the back of a Zoom H4n,
and that was how I did my podcast.
And what I learned about the RODE VideoMic Pro
is that when you have it pretty close to you,
the audio quality is really, really good.
And so I was really really happy with that audio quality.
But the problem came when I wanted to incorporate
more than one microphone,
when I wanted to do interviews.
The Zoom H4n does have two XLR ports
but the controls for adjusting the different levels
on the two mics isn't really the most intuitive,
and if you wanna start having more than two people
it becomes a bit of a hassle.
And Zoom does make a couple of other audio recorders
that have multiple XLR inputs,
but they range in the like the 300, 400 dollar
price range and I didn't really wanna spend
that much money on just a dedicated multi track recorder
when I already have this one.
But the point I wanna make is that
you do not need to buy anything,
even if you don't have an audio recorder
lying around at home,
chances are you have a phone and in many cases,
the earbuds and the voice memo app
that already is on your phone
is more than enough to produce a great sounding podcast.
It's much more about your ideas and your perspective,
than the equipment that you're using to make that.
And then you can adjust your work flow later.
And that was really my main driving interest in the
RODEcaster Pro was simplifying my work flow.
So when I was recording into the H4n,
it records to an SD card,
I was putting the SD card into my computer,
loading it up in GarageBand,
cutting out bits and pieces of the podcast
that were kind of mistakes or that I didn't want,
and then adding in, you know the intro song
and the outro song and then exporting it
and then uploading it to Anchor
to send out to all of the podcast platforms.
My podcast editing is pretty simple
but even that process took a bit of time.
And since I like to make as many videos as I can
and these take a long time to film and edit
and I'm busy at work,
I didn't want to take on another project
that was gonna be something else that I had
to spend a ton of time editing and putting together.
And that's where the RODEcaster Pro came in.
And basically the RODEcaster Pro takes
all of these different pieces of equipment
and puts them into one device.
It records internally to a micro SD card
but you can also have a USB cable plugged into a computer.
If you want to record directly into a computer.
But the beauty of this device is that
you don't have do that.
It has four channels, four XLR channels,
that you can connect you know any XLR mic to.
It has great settings that you can go in
and dial in the tone for each of those microphones.
In fact actually, I should probably be recording
with this right now.
So let's plug it in,
let's turn it on,
Let's grab a microphone
and one of my favorite things about the RODEcaster Pro
is when you're ready to start recording
it has this giant glowing record button
that like just begs to be pressed.
So if I were to press that button,
Now I am recording into the RODEcaster Pro.
And I'm using a RODE NTG2 right now
that I've borrowed to kinda see which
microphones work best before I think about
spending any money to get my own,
nice quality microphones.
But the beauty of this device right here
is that these four channels really let you dial
into the sound so, let's see.
If I go into this channel here,
you can go in and change the sound of your,
Not the sound of your voice but
the quality of your voice.
You can even go in and change,
like they have this effects processor on board
so you can adjust the bass, you can adjust
you know the different quality and the different
editing of how your sound works.
So you can find things that really work to you,
to your voice, to the voice of the guest
or someone that you have and then,
in addition to these four XLR channels,
it also has a USB channel it also has a
channel to connect a phone and
there's even a Bluetooth channel,
so you can connect a phone, computer, tablet
via Bluetooth and play music that way,
or play sound effects so you can do
phone calls really easily, so if you're looking for
a way to bring phone calls into a podcast,
this does it right away.
It also has something that I've often struggled with,
which is headphone amps.
So there are four headphone channels in this
RODEcaster pro and each one has independent volume
so I can adjust the level of my headphones
and if I have up to three other people,
we can adjust the level of their headphones as well.
And then it has these buttons right here
which almost look like some kinda DJ console.
And it comes with a lot like cheesy sounds,
pre programmed into it like you know,
why did the bicycle fall over?
Because it was too tired.
(rimshot)
- There we go.
Or you know, if I make a bad joke.
(losing horn song)
- But through your computer,
you can very easily drag in any other sounds
that you want to these sound paths,
like the simplest interface,
you just drag sounds over.
They can be any length so you can play
music cues, you can play interviews, clips
you can do everything all in one.
So for example, I just play my intro music.
(upbeat electronic music)
- And then when I'm ready I can fade it out
and start talking
and be like, "Whoa what's up this is my podcast".
That's not how I talk on my podcast,
it's just a thing and I talk about
all my different stuff and then
when I make really really good points
I can add in like, you know,
(explosively dramatic music)
Oh my god.
I don't have a lot of crazy sound effects on the podcast.
And then I can talk for as long as I want,
I can mix in different channels,
mix in different levels.
And then when I'm ready to go,
I can just cue the outro song,
bring in the levels as I go like,
"Oh thanks for listening, bye.
Blah blah blah blah blah."
(electronic music)
And then when that's done,
I just hit record turn it off and then that's it.
The first time that I used this on one of my podcasts,
the episode was up and available within
12 minutes of me finishing recording.
Which was just fantastic.
So I absolutely love that.
So that's really why this has become
one of my favorite devices,
is because it get the technology out of the way.
And just lets you focus on the thing
that you're trying to make.
So I do have my little list of pros and cons
that I've made about what I like
and what I don't like about this.
And let me tell you the pros far outweigh the cons.
The biggest pro obviously is what I just said,
simplifying the workflow and just allowing me to
do something I'd wanted to do for a long time,
produce a podcast without it really taking
any extra time away from my schedule.
Another pro is the sound quality,
you can go in and adjust and equalize everything.
I'm still learning some of the finer points with it.
But I really have noticed is that when you're quiet,
the unit itself is very, very quiet.
There's no background noise,
there's no static.
Another pro for this, which doesn't really affect me
too much but a lot of people want,
is the multi track ability.
So when the RODECaster first came out,
it exported everything as a single .wav stereo file.
And people got really upset about that,
because they wanted to be able to go in,
and post process each individual track.
And RODE actually addressed that in a firmware update.
They updated it and now it can export
up to 14 separate tracks.
So it has all of the multi track options that you need.
But for what I'm doing right now,
I don't need multi track,
all that I need is that one stereo file.
So it makes things very simple for me,
but it's nice to know that that extra versatility
is always there in case I need it.
Another pro as I mentioned is all of the different inputs.
The back of this thing, there's so many different
like ways to incorporate sound and voice
and different elements into your podcast.
Another pro is the sound pads,
because like I said, there's no limit on these.
They're super easy to use.
Of course they can be cheesy and corny
if you just fill 'em with a bunch of sound effects.
But if you're trying to do what I'm doing,
and produce a podcast where you don't have to
edit it at all when you're done,
being able to load up different clips
and things like that into these,
really, really helps and then you don't
have to do any post production on your podcast.
Another thing that I like about this a lot
is the overall build quality.
The sliders themselves they have a little bit of
like a slight roughness to them.
I don't know if you can hear it
(metal sliding against plastic)
- But they feel pretty smooth and
the buttons themselves are actually made out of metal,
which is really nice.
And basically the whole unit's made out of metal.
And then one of the last pros that I haven't mentioned yet
is the interface of the device itself.
On the front of the RODEcaster,
this right here is a touch display
and normally I get really bummed out when devices
try to incorporate touch screens
because they're usually terrible.
This is the first touchscreen I've found
on a device that really feels and acts
just like a phone display.
So the way that your smart phone works
where it's really responsive and really smooth
and the menus you know are very easy to navigate.
It's exactly how this works.
Even without reading the instruction manual
which by the way this is the instruction manual.
They gave these like giant cue cards with it
that explain everything.
I have no idea why, but if you want to like,
learn everything about the RODEcaster,
it's all here in the giant instruction manual cards.
But you don't really need those
because this is so intuitive and
actually even though I've had this for about a month,
I've been waiting to make this video,
because as you notice, there's a weird looking
thing on the screen and this was my chance to
finally peel off the,
the stuff on the screen.
So let's do that real quick.
Because as you know the most satifiying part
of getting a new thing is peeling all the plastic
protective stuff off of it.
(plastic crinkling)
- Turns out that basically made no sound at all
but ooh, now I have the nice display so.
Now that being said even though it's
basically perfect for my needs,
it's not a perfect device and everybody's need vary.
I've really only found two big cons
that I don't like about the product so far,
and fortunately both of them could I think,
be updated with firmware updates in the future.
So they might not be cons forever.
And neither of them are deal breakers.
The first one that I find kind of annoying,
when you're recording you can add markers
to your recording really easily,
there's a big blue button that
pops on the screen that says "Add marker"
but you can't do any kind of record pause.
And when I use to record with the H4n
I did love being able to press pause and
you know get a drink of water or answer a phone call
or do something in the middle of a podcast.
And the other thing that I don't really like
in terms of trying to simplify my work flow,
is that the only option to record the stereo file
is a .wav file.
I would love it if I could record directly
as an MP3 even though the quality isn't as good.
Since I use Anchor the distribute my podcast,
and I know a lot of people use Anchor or similar services
They only accept MP3 files and the one thing that's
slows down my work flow is when
I take the memory card out of this,
I do need to put the file into either
Audition or GarageBand and then convert it to an MP3.
And then upload it to Anchor,
So that doesn't take very much time at all,
but it takes a tiny bit of time
and it's opening up one more application,
and if I could really just literally
take this out put it in the computer,
upload it directly and be done with it,
oof that would be awesome.
I would really love the ability to do that.
With that being said,
If you wanna start a podcast,
don't think that you have to buy a
bunch of stuff in order to do that.
If you wanna start a podcast the
only thing that you need to do,
is start a podcast.
Whatever you got, what ever kind of
recording device that you've got,
just record your thoughts, share your perspective,
and then upload it.
Starting today with maybe slightly less quality
is way better than waiting for some distant
day in the future that you think you're gonna have
everything and it's gonna be perfect,
and your ideas are gonna be great.
Just jump in do it and improve along the way.
That's the best advice I can give.
So as much as I love this,
Please don't wait until you get one to start your podcast.
Start with whatever you've got.
So I hope that was very helpful.
I hope that that was informative,
and please let me know if you've got any questions.
Thanks so much for your time,
I'll see ya in the next video.
(upbeat electronic music)