RØDECaster Pro II: How to Record in Multitrack

[Music] hey folks julian here now in this video i'm going to show you how to set up a multi-track recording session in a digital audio workstation with the road caster pro 2. while the road caster pro 2 is absolutely incredible as a standalone recorder that allows you to record a full scale production directly to an sd card or hard drive it also excels when used as an audio interface with a computer when you connect your broadcaster pro 2 to a computer it is read as a multi-channel audio device what this means is you can record each audio input on separate tracks in recording software like a daw now this process is known as multi-track recording this is perfect if you create your content at home or in a studio and you want to record to a computer and edit your audio further in post-production having access to each track individually allows you to mix edit and apply processing to every single one as required giving you loads of flexibility so i'm going to show you how to set up your rode caster pro 2 for multi-track recording and how to set up a multi-track session in logic pro while this will be super helpful for you to get a handle on the basics of how multi-track recording works the actual steps for setting up a session will be different depending on your recording software so we have also created a step-by-step guide for all of the common daws like reaper audition garageband and pro tools so be sure to check out those in the link in the description below we're going to be using all nine audio inputs just to show you how to set each one of those up in a multi-track recording session so i've got four microphones connected to emulate recording four physical guests in the room with me i've also got a bluetooth channel for dialing in remote phone calls and i've also got a separate computer connected via usb 2. the audio from the smart pads is also on its own separate track now this setup might be overkill for even the most complicated podcasts but what i want to demonstrate is that each of these audio channels that you see on the road caster pro 2's mixer board can actually be allocated to its own track in the recording software if you aren't using any of these audio inputs simply don't assign it to a track in your daw i'll touch on this a little bit more later on now before getting started it's important to make sure that your road caster pro 2's usb output is set to multi-track so you'll need to go to settings output multi-track usb and make sure that this is not set to off when this is set to off it will only be recognized as a stereo audio device so you won't be able to record each track separately now you'll notice there are two different multi-track settings to choose from pre-fader or post fader in pre-fader mode the audio that is sent to your software will not be affected by the fader positions meaning that the level will always be recorded at unity gain even if you have the faders all the way down you can also select to bypass all effects and processing as well as the fader position selecting both of these options will give you a completely clean unprocessed audio in your software now this is ideal if you want to do all of your mixing and processing like adding eq or compression from within your daw in post fader mode the audio sent to your software will include all processing and it will be at the level dictated by the fader positions now this is ideal if you want to do all of your mixing and processing from within the road caster pro 2. you can of course do more editing in your dow when recording in post fader mode but the processing and levels that you have set on the road caster pro 2 cannot be removed in post-production so you want to be sure that you are happy with your settings before recording and keep an eye on your fader levels to make sure a channel isn't accidentally muted in my case i want to record all of the road caster pro 2's awesome afex processing but i don't want the fader positions to affect the audio level that is being sent to my daw so i'm going to select pre-fader mode but i'm not going to select bypass processing next we'll just need to connect our roadcaster pro 2 to our computer using the supplied usb c cable or if your computer only has a usb a input use a rode sc-18 cable you want to make sure that you connect to your computer using usb 1 port this is because usb 2 does not support multi-track recording now that we've got our hardware set up it's time to jump into the software side of things as i said here i'm using logic pro on a mac but you can use any daw you like a quick note that if you're using the road caster pro 2 with a windows pc we recommend downloading the road caster pro 2 azo driver which will help manage the interfacing between your computer and the roadcaster pro 2. you can download this for free via the link in the description below the first step is to open logic pro and start a new project in the audio setup window here select road caster pro 2 main multi-track as your audio input and output device with inputs and outputs 1 and 2 selected then we can select how many tracks we need in this case i'm going to select 10 one for each of the nine audio inputs on my road caster pro 2 and one for the main stereo mix output before we move on it's important to explain how the audio inputs are organized on the road caster pro 2's multi-track output now the first two channels are the main stereo mix which is all of your audio inputs combined like you hear in your headphones this is followed by four mono channels for the combo inputs then the channels for the bluetooth smart pads usb main usb chat and usb secondary channels which are all stereo so they each have two channels this means there will be a total of 16 different inputs available on the multi-track output when selecting what audio source you want to allocate to a new track so that includes four mono sources and six stereo sources which have two channels each what might really help you is the reference chart in the multi-track guides or the road caster pro 2 user guide which lists out the audio inputs and how they're organized on the multi-track output this is extremely important for knowing what input number to assign to each track in your daw so check that out via the link in the description below for example if you have your mic connected to combo input 4 it doesn't matter where you have it set to on the mixer in terms of faders it will still be sent to channel 6 on the multi-track output remember the first two channels are the main stereo mix for the rode caster pro 2 followed by four mono combo inputs so combo input number four on the road caster pro 2 will always present itself as input number six in your daw okay with that out of the way let's continue setting up our session now i've just selected the road caster pro 2 as my audio device and that i want to create 10 tracks now let's create this session as you can see i now have 10 tracks to work with so i'm going to set these up in the same order as the multi-track output that i explained before first up is the main stereo mix so i'm just going to rename this track main mix by double clicking the name on the track header then i'm going to head down to the channel strip and select which channel i want to allocate to this track as i mentioned before the main mix output is stereo so i want to make sure that this track is a stereo track which is indicated by these two circles next to the input selector two circles means it's a stereo track and one circle means it is mono now the main stereo mix audio will be routed to this particular channel you also want to make sure that input monitoring is turned off so you don't get any latency in your headphones when you're recording next up is combo input 1 which i'm actually using for the microphone now so i'm going to call this track mic 1. now all these combo inputs are mono so i'm going to need to make sure that this track is set to mono now i'm going to select the input source remember the main stereo mix occupies inputs 1 and input 2 on the multi-track output so going along that list that we looked at before that would make this first input number 3. again this can be slightly confusing but follow the reference chart in the guides in the description below and you will be fine next i'm going to repeat the same process for mic channels two to four by renaming them and making sure that they are mono tracks and then i will select their inputs four five and six for them respectively next up is the bluetooth channel which needs to be a stereo track and it's on input seven and eight then we have the smart pads which are also a stereo track and they are on inputs 9 and 10. next up is usb 1 main which is a stereo track and it's on inputs 11 and 12. then usb chat which is also a stereo and is on inputs 13 and 14. then we have usb secondary which is stereo and it's on inputs 15 and 16. [Music] great now all of our audio inputs on the road caster pro 2 are allocated to tracks in the software and all that's left to do is record enable each of these tracks and then we're ready to hit record as i mentioned earlier in this demo i wanted to set up all of the available tracks to show you how to set up every single one but you only need to set up the ones that you want to use for example if i was only using two mics in this podcast plus the smart pads for triggering sounds and a phone for dialing in a remote guest i would only create five tracks then allocate the corresponding inputs to those tracks [Music] and that is how you set up a multi-track recording session with the caster pro 2. now be sure to check out those links in the description that we talked about before the step-by-step guide for your favorite daw but until then we'll speak to you later happy recording everybody [Music]

Channel: RØDE

Views: 47,426

Keywords: RODECaster Pro II, RODE, RØDECaster Pro II, RØDE

Id: WcXUWtO6mDg

Length: 11min 1sec (661 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 11 2022