- It's been a few months since Rode released the beta version of the 2.1 firmware update
for the Rodecaster Pro, and now you beta believe the
full release is ready to go. (joke drum sequence plays) So despite that pun, if you still wanna go
with me on this journey, I'm gonna cover what has
changed in that release, some of the new features that are added, and what that means for the
future of the Rodecaster Pro. All of the links are in
the description below where you can go download the
official 2.1 firmware update and check it out. If you haven't seen my video where I went over the beta release, you can check that out here too. Things have changed, but not drastically. Everything has just kind of
been improved and polished. And what I've noticed going through the actual
release of the firmware update is most of the changes I found have been interface-related. Some of the menus and colors and things have been tightened up a little bit to just be a little more
usable and a little better. But we'll jump in and I'll kinda show you
everything about this 2.1 update. And of course, this is
not a sponsored video, but I did mark the sponsored
little tag on YouTube when I uploaded this, just because Rode did send
me a few fun accessories that I might be using in this video, and I just wanna make sure
you know I got those for free and they're pretty cool. They do include the USB power thing so I can run the RodeCaster without plugging it into the wall, which is kind of awesome. And then also one of my
favorite new accessories, which I just dropped, are these little ID tag. If you notice this cable has pink and this mic has pink, they're just plastic clips
that go on any XLR cable and let you easily identify stuff. Of course you could do that with just tape or any other number of things, but these are easy to
use, they're durable, and they're super bright colors. They're actually kind
of my favorite colors, which brings us into
one of the first changes in the release version. So what you might notice,
channels one, two, three, and four all have different
brighter, more bold colors, which do tie in directly to the colors for these tags right here,
and the pink one is there. One of the biggest features
added to this firmware update is the ability to add in effects editing to all of your channels, and that has been modified a little bit on this release version. So for example, if I go into channel one, which is what I'm using right now, and go into Audio Processing, by default it has everything turned on. I don't necessarily want
all that stuff turned on, and I can turn on and off the depressor, depressor (laughs), that's depressing, the compressor and the de-esser
and all of those things. If you wanna adjust these further, what I recommend doing is hopping into, actually this is the first two things I recommend that you do, and it's the same as in the beta release, is go into the menu setting, which, by the way, I've still noticed that even in the release version, when you're recording, like right now, you can see I'm
recording on the RodeCaster, I can't easily access the menu. I can go into the channels
or press the SD card button and then I can go back
and get into the menus, but when you're on the home screen, there's no easy-access menu button that takes you to home menu. So anyway, I'm gonna go into Advanced and Audio, and I'm going
to go into Operations, turn on broadcast meters, and I'm also going to go into Processing and turn on effect edit mode. So right away you kinda
heard my voice change there in this microphone. Broadcast meters added in all of these, the decibel levels that you
can see on the mic right there. And then effect editing, now when I got into my channel and I click on Audio Processing, it's not just a matter of
turning each effect on or off. I can go into that, turn it on, and then now I can adjust all these fine (audio glitches)
settings, oops (laughs). I don't want that one turned on. You also, one thing they've
added in the release version is there's an undo button. So if I go into the
noise gates and, uh oh, and I make everything sound
like I don't want it to sound, I can just undo that and it puts everything
back to where it was. There's also a master processing
button that has been added, so this will turn all processing
on, all processing off. If this is turned on and you
go into any of these effects, each one has its own
individual on and off button. So each effect, as I
mentioned, can be modified, and some of them have a lot of options. So the de-esser, you can
go through all of these. There's two dots down here, which actually has page two. One thing you might notice also, if you watched my beta release video, is the touchscreen for that release was kind of non-responsive at times. In the actual release,
it's much more responsive. If you've used the RodeCaster previously, its touch display is very
much like a smartphone, it's very responsive, which is great. The beta release was a beta release. The final release has that responsiveness brought back to it. So if that was an issue or something you were concerned about, that has been addressed. You might notice, compared
to the beta release, some of these logos
and icons have changed. Everything just got polished
up a little cleaner. You've got your high-pass
filter, your noise gate. I haven't found great
settings for the noise gate, so right now, if I stop talking, (background hissing softly) you can hear a little bit
of that background hiss. If I turn on the noise
gate and I stop talking, you can't hear anything. The problem is getting it where that transition from being off to on when the gate opens and closes
where it's not noticeable, I haven't found my perfect settings yet, so I'm still working on that. There's a de-esser, so I can
turn that off or turn it on, and you can, again,
adjust all of the settings that just suit your voice. A lot of people have been asking me what my specific settings are. I don't have 'em yet 'cause I'm still experimenting, but also it kind of changes. The settings that I use for my voice are definitely different than the settings I would use
for somebody else's voice. And so I kind of just do it on the fly. It's probably a little bit sloppy, but it works for me. We've got the compressor, of course. And now on the compressor you can actually see your
audio meters right there. So when you turn it on, you can see right away how it is affecting your output signal. So you can see here this red going down is showing you how much it's
compressing that signal, which is kind of a cool visual just to understand how this
is affecting your overall, whoa, look at that gain, your overall audio quality. I'm just gonna turn those off 'cause I don't wanna mess something up for the rest of this video. Of course, we've got all
of the Aphex effects, like the aural exciter, and then the Big Bottom, which adds in more bass to the voice. I don't use personally the
aural exciter that often because I have a nasally
voice to begin with and I don't need to make it more nasally. I do like the Big Bottom though, because it does kind
of fill out the sound. If you're using a mic like the PodMic, it can definitely benefit from a little more low
end in the frequency. So playing with these is something
I definitely do recommend to get your sound as good as possible. If you go into each channel, you still have your
same microphone settings as you've had before. So if you have any specific mics, you can just go right into those. I am using the PodMic setting. But of course, I you don't
have a Rode-branded mic, you can go to just general
condenser or dynamic microphones. And of course, even if it's not a PodMic, you can use another mic with that setting and it might still sound good, always worth experimenting
with that stuff. And you can play with your gain and turn on phantom power, just like always within each channel. Now this screen here looks different, this channel screen. This isn't how it looked before. Everything is color-coded as it was, and now you have more
options for smartphone. You can go into Presets. So if you're gonna use your
phone connected for Bluetooth as a phone call, for speech, for music, it'll kind of adjust these
settings accordingly. You can also adjust the
gain level on your phone. This is something that I think Rode did in response to people using the RodeCaster on livestreams and Zoom meetings, which have gone up a lot
lately in popularity. Depending on what device you're using, the signal might be too
high or oftentimes too low, and now being able to adjust
the gain for your phone let's you fix that, which is great. There's also the same settings
for the Bluetooth channel. The smartphone channel also works with things like computers
and other devices. I plug my computer into it all the time and play music from there directly or play interview clips
from there directly. And then there is a master compressor. So in addition to the effects, you have a compressor that
you can add to every channel all at once if you want to, or you of course, you can turn that off. And you can kinda hear the difference, this is with the compressor, and of course, this is
without the compressor. We can go into sounds and
play with the sound pads. This hasn't changed too
much from the beta release, but if you go into sound pads, the biggest thing here is you can change how the pad functions. Do you want it to be a
latch, a pause, a replay? Or you can actually record
on the sound pad itself. So for example, I have
a blank sound pad here. Hey Tom, how are you doing today? And now when I play that back, hey Tom, how are you doing today? And now I can click Overdub, and I can actually record on top of that. So this has been cleaned up a little bit from the beta release. And now if I do the same thing, hey Tom, how are you doing today? I'm great, thank you for asking. And now when I play it
back off that sound pad, hey Tom, how are you doing today? I'm great, thank you for asking. So this is a useless
example of that feature, but I'm sure in your own creative brain you can figure why it would be helpful to be able to add things and edit them and overdub them on the
fly while you're recording or just right here in this single unit, especially now that you
can run it off of USB power or a battery pack, because now you have a very portable, usable editing studio right there. Let's talk about multitrack a little bit. I'm just gonna warn you right away that I don't use multitrack
personally that often just because when I do my podcast, and the whole reason I got the RodeCaster was to keep things simple. So I like that one file that I can then upload and distribute. But many people who use the RodeCaster rely heavily on multitrack
because it's a great feature. So if I go back into the
menu and I go to Audio, now we have the multitrack function. Just in case you didn't see it, if you go into Processing, these are your options that are there now. And if you go into Operations, these are your processing options that, not processing, these are
your operation options that are available to you. If we go into Multitrack, now we have a few new options. One is USB, which means you
can do multitrack over USB, you can bypass the audio processing. So if you have all these effects turned on while you're recording and
sending outputs in here, your multitrack recording
won't have any of that and you can add all that in
your editing software later. And there is now a post fader option, which is sort of the opposite of that, meaning that your multitrack file will include all of your effects, all of your settings and audio processing that you've included. So you have both options
now in terms of multitrack. When you do export your multitrack file, regardless of how many
channels you're using, you get full 14 channels. So when you put it in your software and you see many, many channels that you didn't necessarily
use while you were recording, it's no big deal. You just delete those or disable them and just focus on the ones that you are actually using. So right now I think it's a good time to jump into the companion app, because that's a huge part of a lot of this functionality. There's a USB-C port in the back, and then I'm just plugging
that right into my computer. And as soon as you do that, the RodeCaster should
also show up as an option in your streaming software or your video conferencing software. So if you wanna use it for Zoom or OBS or any of that kinda stuff, as soon as it's plugged in, it should automatically show up. So as I mentioned previously, the companion app for
RodeCaster Pro is huge, and that's where a lot of
this added functionality can be unlocked. So I put a link in the description where you can go download that. Be sure to download a new version of that. If you have an older version
that you've been using with an older firmware update, delete that and install
the new companion app, because that's gonna give you some of that new functionality. So I'm gonna stop recording on
the RodeCaster Pro right now and switch over to the VideoMic Pro+, so that way I can transfer some files and sort of show you some
of that functionality. So now we are using the VideoMic Pro+. I can take off my headphones, I don't need to be a DJ anymore right now. So now to really take advantage
of some of the features of the RodeCaster Pro's firmware update through the companion app, once you open the app, you will see all of your
sound pads as usual, which is something that isn't new, and that's where you can add stuff, you can adjust them, you can name 'em. Basically all that functionality also now lives in the RodeCaster, but it's also now within
the companion app, too, which is great. The companion app is also
how you update the firmware. So if you want to do that, you don't need the two
separate apps anymore. It's all right there
within the companion app. If you notice on my RodeCaster right now, if I go to Information, you can see I'm running firmware 2.1.0, and no longer on the home
screen does it say beta up here. So it is the full release version. That's how you can tell which
version you are running. If you are moving from the
beta to the full release, re-install the companion app just to make sure everything works okay. Now if you want to start
transferring over your podcast, you can click on Podcasts. You can either go into the microSD Card
setting of the RodeCaster and enter podcast transfer mode, or right here within the companion app you can click Podcast Transfer Mode. And that will put your
RodeCaster into that mode, which means from here, you can see any podcasts that you have and you can transfer them
directly to your computer. So I'm gonna click on
this one, podcast three, that was the audio that
I was recording here just a moment ago. It's 16 minutes and 17 seconds long. I can name it, I can select the platform that I want to optimize it for. I use Anchor personally, but
you can choose any of these. They've added to this list, so now instead of just
iTunes, Spotify, and BBC, you've got Anchor,
Spotify, Whooshkaa, iTunes, Himalaya, SoundCloud,
Buzzsprout, Blubrry, Libsyn, or a custom setting that you want. You can also go into
some advanced settings and just set those things yourself, which kind of eliminates
that problem all together. So I'm gonna do Anchor
'cause that's what I do, and we will export it as an mp3, yay, straight to my desktop. Now in the beta version of this firmware, some people were complaining that the transfer speed was slow. It seems like they've improved that a bit. This is a 16-minute audio clip, and it's taking, as you can see, maybe 40, 50 seconds to
transfer over to my computer, so that's not too bad. Maybe a little bit slower than just doing a direct SD card transfer, but it's not bad especially, 'cause now it's already
converted into an mp3. So here we go, we've got podcast three, and it is just a file as an mp3. I could just upload
this directly to Anchor, which is what I use. I don't have to open up any
more third-party software to do those transfers. Something that has been
updated from the beta version, I was having a weird issue
with the podcast transfer mode where, when I was doing an mp3, it would just automatically
add in blank audio at the end, sometimes a lot. So sometimes if I did
a 13-minute recording, it would add in 13 minutes
of blank at the back. Sometimes it would just
be if I did 23 minutes, it would be two minutes
of blank at the back, and it was kind of odd. I don't really know
why that was happening. I submitted that feedback to Rode, they asked me some questions, and now in the release version, it seems that that has been updated. So as I mentioned at the
beginning of this video, this firmware update adds a ton of really great functionality
to the RodeCaster Pro, which is already a super strong device. And if you're somebody
who's into podcasting, it's really one of the
best ways you can go. If you notice, I've been using
my old USB battery charger, portable charger, to power the Rodecaster the whole time I've been
recording this video because one of the things they did release is this USB power thingy, which is just a cable that
plugs into your portable charger and then goes right into the RodeCaster, and now it's totally portable. The whole thing right here is recording, the only cable plugged
into it is the charger, and then whatever microphone you're using. So it's kind of some
awesome added functionality into what was already an awesome device. The only thing that I have found to be an issue with this so far is there's nowhere in any of the menus to see how much time you have left. So hopefully you can see how much power is left in your
charger that you're using, because the RodeCaster,
at least right now, doesn't have a way of telling you how much batter power you have. So hopefully that gives you an idea of what you can expect
from this firmware release. If you wanna know more
about the RodeCaster Pro, I got my whole playlist right here with all these updates coming out of beta and going into full release (laughs), this thing is really un-beta-ble. (upbeat heavy metal music)
