RODE VideoMic GO II Review (vs Rode NTG & VideoMicro, Deity DUO & V-Mic D3 Pro, Movo VXR10 Pro)

today on the audio hotline i'm going to be reviewing the rode videomic go 2. this is somewhat of an on-camera shotgun microphone but it does have a few really cool features up its sleeve and i could actually see this microphone being a really big deal for a lot of creators mainly because this microphone is also capable of being a usb microphone and this is even compatible with mobile devices through that usb but this microphone does come in at 99 and at that price point i can't tell you how many people i would have recommended this to there are a bunch of people that have asked me hey what usb microphone should i get i want it to be a little bit further away and my budget's around a hundred dollars in that case it's hard to recommend one of the dynamic usb microphones and a lot of people's first impression was just to get a blue yeti but that being far away it's not a great choice either because it's just not that directional but there being a usb shotgun microphone at this price point that's also capable of being an on-camera shotgun microphone for that reason i think a lot of people will end up going with this but in this video i will always be using the videomic go to until we do the comparison yeah a blind comparison and let me just put what microphones are going to be in that comparison up on the screen right now because i have no idea what i'm going to do yet one microphone i am sure i will use in the comparison even though it's a little unfair because it is quite a bit more expensive but it's the rode videomic ntg and if you're looking for a big brother version of the go 2 that has quite a bit more features but a lot of the same functionality definitely give the videomic ntg a look but i do just want to say really quick i do get to say whatever i want in this video rode is not telling me what to say mostly because they didn't send me this microphone rode has actually um never sent me anything but i just wanted to make sure you knew i was not sent this microphone i'm doing this review on my own dime and everything so i'm gonna say whatever i want about it but before we get into some specifics about the video my go too i do just want to let you know that right now i am recording into the zoom h6 into the line in i will of course go directly into a camera plug it into the computer do a bunch of other stuff and right now i'm sure you can tell i'm not using the chody little windscreen we'll of course be testing this short little thick thing out later but now let's go ahead and talk about what comes with the rode videomic go 2 if you decide to purchase it when you purchase the rode videomic go 2 it will come with the sm8r rycote shock mount it will come with a branded foam windscreen it also includes the sc14 trs2trs cable a branded silica style absorbent pack a little bit of documentation and of course the microphone itself the video might go too now when it comes to everything that's included with this microphone i think it's outstandingly built i rarely get a road product that i'm like wow the build quality isn't very good on this it's always pretty damn solid and this is no exception i mean i know that rode takes it a little far with their branding but come on guys the absorbent pack really next thing you know they're going to come out with like a microphone boom arm that has like gigantic logos all over it honestly i think it's cute i like it but that's the crazy thing about this setup is it is insanely light but it's still built really well and on their side it actually says it's only 89 grams which is crazy i use more grams of coffee than that in a day i drink a lot of coffee one thing i was a little bit disappointed in when it came to the accessories was the fact that it didn't come with any usb cable i figured since this is usb capable that they would have included one but they didn't so if you are going to buy this for its usb capabilities make sure that you have a cable you can use i'm gonna try to say the a word right i struggle with it so i just usually say it fast but i'm gonna try it now that we've talked about the accessories and the build quality now let's go ahead and talk about some of the features of the videomic go to i did it but it took me like 15 takes the videomic go to does not require a battery and in fact it actually has no switches or dials on it but this microphone does feature a 3.5 millimeter trs output this does also have a usb output that you can use with ios and android as well as mac os and windows this is also compatible with all of the road apps including road connect the features of this microphone really are would get me excited about it like i was saying the usb capability is fantastic recently i did do a review of the nt usb mini and that is compatible with rode connect also at that point in time there was only that microphone and three other microphones that were compatible with road connect and now this one is compatible with road connect but in that review i did take you through that software so if you want to learn a little bit about road connect you can go ahead and check that video out i'll link it down in the description but i will be trying out road connect here in just a little bit with this microphone but there are some great post-processing features that you can use and road connect is also amazing for live streaming as well as just being a good recording app however you can't edit in that software which is a bit of a bummer but firmware updates could change that well now that we've gone through some basics the accessories the build quality and the features now let's go ahead and nerd out and talk about some specs the rode video my go-to is a pressure gradient electric condenser microphone this has a super cardioid polar pattern and a frequency response of 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz this has an output impedance of 2.2 kilo ohms a signal-to-noise ratio of 79 dba an equivalent noise level of 15 dba a dynamic range of 95 dba a sensitivity of negative 31 dbv and a max input spl of 110 decibels in usb mode this does have a simultaneous stereo input and output and a usb bit depth of 24 bit and a sample rate of 48 kilohertz i will put the compatible operating systems up on the screen this does have a power requirement of two to five volts when it's plugged in through the 3.5 millimeter jack or a power requirement of 5 volts through usb now the only thing i really do want to mention about the specs is the fact that this does have a 15 dba noise floor level which is actually pretty solid for a shotgun microphone i was pretty surprised when i read that for a comparable xlr condenser microphone at a hundred dollars the audio technica at2020 i believe it has a 20 decibel noise floor level so this being 15 dba and a shotgun microphone which typically have a higher noise floor level is pretty impressive but now that we've gone through all the details all the fluff now let's go ahead and get to some fun stuff let's go ahead and start testing out the videomic go too during this testing section i'll make sure to label whatever test i'm doing down in the lower third and i'll also make sure to let you know what device i'm recording into but now let's go ahead and kick it off with a proximity effect test if you want to get really close to this microphone with no protection on and give it a little sniffy sniff it smells like dicks sporting goods dick's sporting goods now if you want to get really close to the foam windscreen that also smells like dicks here's how it's going to sound but this is going to get a little bit loud and kind of obnoxious you've been warned about six inches away directly at the microphone pickled penises pickled peanutses pickled peanutses pickled peanutses same distance from the mic angled pickled penises pickled peanutses pickled peanutses pickled peanutses now for the next test i have the microphone mounted right up here and i'm typing on some loud mx cherry blues on my desk here's how that's gonna reject that sound now i've angled the microphone to the point where it does reject noise the best now let's give that a shot now i'm typing on those same mx cherry blue same distance away but here's how it rejects that sound now we're gonna take the polar pattern test one step further with a white noise test right on cue blue just walked in it's time for a kitty purr test [Music] i didn't know he was gonna make out with the windscreen the microphone and windscreen is just covered in fur now let's go ahead and do some distance tests right now i'm about six inches away from the microphone now i'm about a foot away from the microphone now i'm about three feet away from the microphone now i'm about six feet away from the microphone now i'm about 10 feet away from the microphone and now i'm about 12 feet away from the microphone now we're going to do a couple tests outside of the studio now i'm outside doing a little bit of a vlogging test i guess you could call it i'm using the sony zv1 i figured that this would be a camera that gets used a lot with this microphone i currently have it set to 10 in the camera and there's snow and this is what it sounds like when i talk into the back of the microphone so there's just a real quick test for you i'm on the iphone 12 pro right now but here's how it sounds outside with a little bit of wind some cars definitely going by i did go into road central on my computer before doing this and turned on the high frequency boost i wanted to see how that sounded with the foam windscreen on but here's how the foam windscreen rejects that wind with that high frequency boost on now i'm gonna do just a real quick acoustic guitar test [Music] right now i'm in a completely untreated room and i am recording into my iphone 12 pro i'm recording inside the rode reporter app which is actually a really cool app you can record inside of it like you can with rode connect but actually it recognizes that the video might go to is plugged in so you can go and change some of those settings that the microphone is capable of such as the pad or the high pass filter at 150 or 75 hertz or even the high end boost now road reporter does allow you to go in and change those settings and i just want to let you know that if you do change settings in that app those settings will actually stay enabled until you disable them in a different app or the same app so if you engage the high pass filter and you're using it in your phone and then you plug it into rode connect that's actually still going to be enabled until you disable it but it's also really cool you can go into road central if you aren't going to use road connect and road central will also allow you to change some of those settings but you can't record inside of that software right now i don't have any of the settings enabled in this very reverberant untreated room i am plugged into my iphone with the sc15 cable from rode now this cable isn't very cheap and i'll probably mention a little bit later some issues that i had with some other cables that i tried but i actually ended up just having to get this but it's amazing i have the usb plugged in to my phone and then that 3.5 millimeter jack that's on the other side that you would usually plug the other end into your camera becomes a headphone jack so you can actually have latency free monitoring with this microphone when you're using it as a usb microphone which is fantastic but since we're in this untreated room we get to hang out with these adorable little cats this is where they always sleep during the day this is blue grim and keila you probably know them if you've hung around this channel at all i'm going to engage the high frequency boost which might cause some more issues in an untreated room but i want to see how that sounds without the foam windscreen on and then i will put the foam windscreen on see how that sounds but now i'm going to pause my rode reporter recording because you actually can't live change those settings but first here is just the foam windscreen on no other settings engaged and now this is with the foam windscreen on the microphone with that high frequency boost enabled now we have the high frequency boost enabled with no foam windscreen on well now let's go ahead and get out of this terrible sounding room right now i'm currently using rode connect in my macbook i have it connected up with just a cheap amazon usb c to usb c cable i believe you can get a three foot or a six foot cable for around seven dollars i'll be sure to link that below but like i said previously if you want a little bit of a tutorial for rode connect be sure to check out my review of the nt usb mini i go through it pretty thoroughly in that video but right now we're just going to test out the usb capability in road connect and i will just show you a couple basics right now it's just showing me my level and it just shows my fader and i can turn it down or turn it up right down here you can solo the track or you can mute it if you press on the number above it then you can actually change your level in here you can choose whether it uses a pad or not we can also do a base roll off one that's at 75 hertz and another that's at 150 hertz in addition to that we can also do a presence boost with this microphone underneath that is where you'll find your post processing options you have a noise gate which i've had not very good success with you can go ahead and turn on the compressor which i do think does sound pretty good you can turn on the afex exciter which sounds like this or you can turn on the afex big bottom which sounds like this but actually the main reason for that presence boost is when you have the windscreen on the microphone because windscreens like this do tend to you know kill a little bit of detail kill a little bit of high end so just as a quick example here is the presence boost on with the foam windscreen on now i'm gonna take the presence boost off as well as the windscreen and now here is how that sounds without the presence boost on and no wind screen here is no presence boost but with the exciter on and now here is the presence boost with no exciter on but in addition to this being a test of the compatibility and the sound with rode connect and this microphone this has also been somewhat of a post-processing test as well right now i have the compressor exciter and big bottom on and like i said before this is what i usually use in road connect if i do have a microphone plugged into it and want a little bit of post processing on it well now that all of those tests are out of the way now let's go ahead and get into a blind comparison with some competitors of the videomic go to i'll once again label the microphones up on the screen all of them will be recorded at the same distance i'm going to have them right out of the frame which will probably be anywhere from 8 to 12 inches away i'll label that up on the screen but let's go ahead and start with a real quick palette cleanser then right after that we'll jump into the blind comparison here is just a real quick palette cleanser microphone before we get into the blind comparison technically this microphone i am using could be involved in the comparison but i didn't want too many microphones in it that were quite a bit more expensive than the go 2 but right now you are listening to the saramonic v mic 5 pro which i believe goes for about 250 dollars and the device i used to record all the microphones was the tascam dr-10l well get ready for some very repetitive phrases and let's go ahead and get into that blind comparison right now i am exactly 12 inches away from microphone a and here's how mic a sounds right now i am exactly 12 inches away from microphone b and this is how mic b sounds right now i am exactly 12 inches away from microphone c and here's how mic c sounds right now i am exactly 12 inches away from microphone d and this is how mic d sounds right now i'm exactly 12 inches away from microphone e and this is how mic e sounds right now i am exactly 12 inches away from microphone f and here is how mic f sounds once again this is microphone b b as in bad bronson booty bumped bob once again this is microphone d d as in damn dave did da duty once again this is microphone f f as in farty fat frank farty farty farted once again this is microphone a a as in abrupt ashley accidentally axed aaron once again this is microphone c c as in cackling chris canoodled chloe once again this is microphone e e as in egregious edward expected ooey earwax here is the abrupt ashley accidentally axed aaron microphone microphone a here is the damn dave did to duty microphone microphone d here is the bad bronson booty bumped bob microphone microphone b here is the egregious edward expected ooey earwax microphone microphone e here is the cackling chris canoodled chloe microphone microphone c here is the farty fat frank farty farty farted microphone microphone f are you all ready for the big reveal of the blind comparison results i hope you're ready because what you're about to hear is extremely shocking i'm just being a tool here are the results microphone a was the deity v-mic d3 pro which is currently going for about 140 dollars but it can go up in price a little bit sometimes microphone b was the rode video micro which usually goes for around 60 dollars microphone c was in fact the microphone this whole video is about the rode videomic go 2 which currently goes for a hundred dollars microphone d was in fact the rode videomic ntg this is essentially the big brother to the go to this microphone goes for 250 dollars microphone in this blind comparison was the deity duo this microphone currently goes for 68 and it's been at that price for a little while i'm not sure if it'll go back up closer to 80 like it used to be but this microphone does in fact have a capsule on the front and back so if you are a vlogger that likes turning the camera around and talking into the back of the mic this could be a good option for you microphone f was the movo vxr 10 pro this microphone goes for about 50 dollars well it's about that time we went through all the details we tested this microphone out we did a blind comparison with it now i'm gonna go back edit this first section of the video listen to this microphone a bunch listen to the comparison a bunch then i'll be ready to give you my opinion of the video mic go to see you in a couple seconds in a completely different outfit well now that we've gone through everything about this microphone and also put it in a comparison now i'm finally ready to give you my opinion of the rode videomic go 2. and to briefly touch on that comparison i think the video might go to did a really good job up against the competition i thought it sounded really solid it wasn't too thin like some of the other microphones but when it comes to the videomic go to it does have a good sound to it but you're getting a lot more for your money i think the best way i could put it is that the rode video might go to is a middle child and i don't mean middle child literally i mean according to the sounds and the features it kind of lives in between the micro and the ntg it's not insanely small and essentially featureless like the micro the micro is still really great in the sense that it's super easy to use there's nothing else no other bells and whistles you just plug it in which a lot of people like but i did think the micro sounded a little thin compared to this but the ntg definitely has a lot of nice features on the microphone itself i would say it rejects noise and is a little bit more directional than the video might go to and being able to set the gain on the actual microphone itself is super valuable and you can set up a safety track in the ntg i believe fellow youtuber ian craig mentioned it made a video about how the safety track there's something wrong with it if you're interested in that i'll put it in the description but hopefully it's something they figure out in firmware but the fact that the ntg is a little bit more directional rejects sounds a little bit more sounds a little bit better they do resemble each other absolutely but it having all of that and the nice features on the actual microphone i get why this is definitely more expensive but i do have a little bit of a hard time with the ntg being more than twice as much that seems a little high but it's not really the ntg's fault i just think it's the fact that the go 2 offers so much because initially when i tried out the ntg and knew it was 250 dollars i did not have a problem with it it's not that i necessarily have a problem with it now it's just that i'm very happy with the capabilities of the videomic go to where the ntg and the video might go to really shine though is that ability for them to be usb microphones but the fact that the video might go too comes in at such a friendly price point is an absolute win now i know i've been talking up this microphone a lot but it's not all good it's not absolutely perfect one of the things that frustrated me is when i got this microphone i was like okay i need a cable that's usbc to lightning so i can plug it into my iphone and guess what every iphone comes with one of those it's the charging cable so hell yeah i was stoked that i already had that and that literally everyone with an iphone would have that so i tried plugging it in with this cable and it did not work i did have a couple other like third-party brands that i also tried i couldn't get any of them to work so i did see that they had the sc-15 the cable that i mentioned earlier and that cable actually goes for 25 yeah for this little guy 25 bucks i will say though this cable works beautifully so the fact is if you want to plug this microphone into your iphone and have a cable to work consistently you're going to have to spend the 25 bucks so that makes this microphone 125 dollars if you want it compatible with your phone now if you want to be able to plug this into your computer at all and you don't have another cable you're probably going to end up spending somewhere around 10 for a usb c to usb c cable depending on the length that you want so now we're creeping up on the 130 135 dollar area which is close to like the blue yeti for 135 dollars you get so much versatility with this microphone compared to the blue yeti that you absolutely can't put on top of your camera and vlog with or the blue yeti that you would also have to spend additional money to get it to plug into your phone and work but on top of all of the different devices that you can plug this microphone into you're also getting access to three different softwares that you can use with this microphone you can use road connect road central and road reporter but the fact that you have three softwares to be able to manipulate record or do post-processing with this microphone that's wild and one really cool setup that you can do with this microphone that i'm doing right now is that i have it plugged in through usb into my macbook i'm running rode connect with the post processing i'm recording inside road connect but then i have a 3.5 millimeter cable to 3.5 millimeter cable going into my mic input on my camera so not only am i recording this sound quality directly into my camera but i'm also recording a backup file into rode connect and then i'm monitoring all of this audio with the headphone jack on my computer so this is a fantastic setup of being able to get a backup audio track still be able to use post-processing and still be able to monitor yourself it's pretty cool i'm gonna be honest i was not expecting to kind of gush over this microphone i thought it was gonna be fine i thought it was gonna be good rode puts out some good stuff and even though i'm a little about it not including a usbc cable but all things considered if you can get this sound with all the cables you need recording software post processing software on your phone to be able to record and software you can change the settings inside the microphone to get the exact sound you want even if all of that was for 150 dollars i would still say that's a good deal and i absolutely think i will be recommending this microphone to quite a few people do i wish it was a little bit more directional and could block out some room noise a little bit more yes but for what this isn't what you get i still think this is absolutely an incredible deal so the grade that i give the rode video might go to is an a thank you all for watching this review of this 99 road videomic go to i hope it helped you out helped you decide whether you want to get one of these or not but most of all i hope you had fun i do just want to give a very big thank you to everyone that's a member of the audio hotline if you enjoy this channel and you do want to become a member you will get some perks so definitely go check that out but thank you all for watching the audio hotline i'll see you audio nerds next time [Music] you

Channel: Audio Hotline

Views: 15,004

Keywords: mic review, mic test, audio gear, audio hotline, microphone review

Id: X9iT9lQuplg

Length: 24min 21sec (1461 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 25 2022