Rodecaster Pro vs the Zoom PodTrak P4

when the road caster pro released at the end of 2018 it set the podcasting stage of fire with excitement it brought in a core set of features and functions that many podcasters had been hoping to find in a single device for years it streamlined them gave a certain intuitiveness to it and it became a beloved device very quickly now recently when zoom announced the podrack p4 it too looked to be a device that would combine an essential core group of functions for podcasters and many podcasters immediately got excited in fact it seemed like the two devices shared a lot of things in common so that's what we're going to do today we're going to take a look at the podrack p4 the road caster pro we're going to look at the features that both of them do in a great way and equally well we're going to look at which features and functions are done better on the podrack p4 which functions and features are done better on the road caster pro and then we're going to talk about which one is better for you we're going to paint a few different scenarios where the podrack p4 is better and a few different scenarios where the road caster pro is better this is not a video where i will claim one to be superior to the other because the truth is both of these are fantastic devices that podcasters are going to love and be able to count on for delivering great sounding audio for their podcasts but your podcast is unique and one of them may work better for you so let's get to it and figure out which one is best for you now when you first take a look at the road caster pro and the pod track p4 you may take a look at their size and their price and think these two can't possibly have very much in common i mean if you're going to compare the two clearly the road caster pro has to be the big winner well they actually do share a lot in common and have a lot of the same core features let's take a look at those both the podrak p4 and the roadcaster pro have four xlr inputs to support dynamic and condenser microphones supplying 48 volts for those condenser microphones they both have four individual headphone jacks with their own volume control the podrack p4 has four 1 8 or 3.5 millimeter jacks while the road caster pro has four quarter inch jacks and the road caster pro also has one additional output jack on the front of the unit it's a 3.5 or 1 8 inch jack and that is controlled by the volume of the first headphone jack they both have excellent preamps with the zoom pod track p4 supplying 70 db of gain and the road caster pro providing 55 db of gain they're both going to be able to handle any microphone that you throw at it and if you're curious about the podrak p4 preamps i did a microphone shootout and you can click on the card right above to check that out both devices allow you to connect to your computer via usb this means you can bring in audio from your computer and record it to the device maybe a caller on skype squad cast zencaster or zoom and it also means that you can send your mix back to your computer for live streaming or even if you want to record it simultaneously to your favorite software and yes that means that both devices can simultaneously record to the memory card in the device and send that signal to your computer so you can record at the same time to your favorite software both devices also allow you to connect to your smartphone or tablet via a trrs cable or via bluetooth and both devices have sound pads that you can use to store sounds like sound effects or maybe intro and outro files ads or even feedback from callers store those into those sound pads and play them back live during your podcast recording both devices have mute buttons for each input and you can use those mute buttons even when you're in the middle of a recording both devices have simple touch on or off mix minus both devices also support full multi-track recording that means that each input is recorded to its own separate track and they also simultaneously record a stereo mix and both of these devices are class compliant which means that you can hook them up to your windows computer your mac your ios device or your android device and they are plug and play no need to download any other software or drivers so as you can see both of these devices pack in a whole lot of features there's a lot of crossover between the two of them and a lot of podcasters are going to be completely satisfied with either device now let's start looking at the separation between these two devices let's start with what i believe the p4 does better well let's start off by talking about the memory storage of these devices the podrack p4 despite it being much smaller than the road caster pro well it uses a regular size sd card whereas the road caster pro uses a micro sd card and i just don't like micro sd cards i think really my issue is that i don't like using a micro sd card adapter i want to just be able to take the card out and pop it in wherever i need it to go not take the card out then put it into something else and then put it into wherever i need it to go it's a small nuisance but it's a nuisance at least for me it is it may not be for you and so this won't be a big deal for you but the podrak p4 uses a regular size sd card where the road caster uses a micro sd card i also love how the podrack p4 instantly shows you how much capacity you have left on your sd card when you start up the pod track p4 you see nice big numbers right at the top of your screen and that tells you how much recording time you have available before the sd card fills up now the road caster does have this feature too but for it you have to go through a couple of menus before you get to that i like that the podrack p4 tells you first thing every time you fire it up or when you stop a recording you know while you're recording it tells you how long your recording session has been going on both devices do that but as soon as you stop now that readout on the p4 switches back to how much space you have left on your card now i mentioned earlier that both of these devices are multi-track recorders recording each input to their own separate channel however the p4 handles this in a little bit different way than the road caster pro and it's significant enough for me to give the nod here to the p4 so both of them are recording all channels at all times that means if you're a solo podcaster and you're only using one microphone plugged into channel 1 the road caster pro is still going to record all 14 channels and likewise the pod track p4 is going to record all seven channels the difference is how these are being recorded the road caster pro is saving these as a polywave file which means to your computer it's going to look like one file and that means that this file is going to be extremely large and to bring it over to your computer it can take quite a while because the file is going to be very large now the road caster pro does come with software that will allow you to export and break up the polywave into individual wave files but even still that is going to take more effort than what the p4 does yes the p4 is still recording all tracks at all times but it's recording those to individual wave files so when you're talking about offloading the files that you need into your computer that's going to be a much faster process on the p4 versus the road caster pro or we have a lot of our clients that use the road caster pro and many of them have been annoyed because they need to send us the audio file so that we can start editing it and the road caster is making their files unnecessarily large if they have the technical savvy they can go in and break those apart and then send us just the individual files that we need but some of our clients find that a little bit difficult or frustrating and so they just want to make it simple and send us the polywave and that takes more bandwidth and more time for them to send us their files and one of the reasons they've hired us in the first place is to make their post production smooth fast and easy so making these poly way files unnecessarily large has been a point of frustration whereas with the p4 you are recording all tracks but again you just go in there drag and drop which files you need they're easily identifiable and you can move on down the road more quickly i love the versatility that the p4 has with how to power the device you can power it via the battery port on the back of the device two double a batteries you can also power in a number of ways via usb you can purchase separately a usb adapter that plugs into the usb port on the side and then the other plugs into a wall outlet or you can use a usbc cable the c part of that goes into the device and then the regular side of that cable can go into any wall wart type of device that you already have that came with your tablet or your smartphone or something like that or you can plug that other end into your computer and power it via your computer's bus power from that usb port and then finally if you have one of these power banks or power bricks whatever you want to call it sitting around your house you can power the p4 from one of those as well on the other hand the road caster it does come with an ac adapter so you can plug it into your wall and right now that's the only way you can power the road caster pro however at the time of shooting this video rode is getting ready to release a usb power adapter and that will allow you to plug the road caster into a battery bank similar to this and power it just be aware that it requires more power than the p4 and it needs to have 2.4 milliamps in order to be able to supply enough power to the road caster pro a few other things that the podrack p4 does better in my opinion this may seem silly but for me i mean it was kind of annoying was i'm learning how to use each of these devices i found it much more easy to study and read up on the p4 than i did the road caster pro the podrak p4 has a very easy to find user manual that you can download from zoom's website read through it and learn all about how to use the device now the road caster pro does come with some big cards that kind of show you the basics of how to use it but in terms of getting some of the detail for example i wanted to know what the sd card capacity limit was for each device zoom provides that information i know that i can use an sdhc up to 512 gigabytes with the road caster i still have not been able to find that information i assume that they can take the largest sized memory cards but i don't know for sure and with other recorders that i've used in the past or i've gotten for my clients they've gone out and bought an sd card and it turned out it was larger in capacity than that device was rated for and so they had kind of thrown their money away in getting an sd card that was incompatible with the device and so little things like that matter in some cases and i would love to be able to get all the technical details and capacities for each device and i felt like zoom does a really good job of that with their user manual and the road caster has some specifications and a nice core set of specifications on their website but it didn't have all that i was looking for now in zoom's defense they have added a lot of features over the last two years basically that this device has been out and so if you read through all those blog posts from when each of the firmware updates have been released you do get a better sense of all that the unit can do but again it would be nice to have all that in one convenient user manual that you can download and i couldn't find that with road caster but i could find that with zoom and then finally we need to look at some of the really tangible practical differences between these two devices the size the weight and the cost the pod track p4 comes in at four and a half inches by six inches by two inches high whereas the road caster pro comes in at 13 inches by 14 inches by five inches high so you can see there's a large difference in the size and that's not to say that the road caster pro is a large device but it is much larger than the road caster pro and if you're looking for a portable device the podrak p4 is your clear winner here and that goes with weight as well the podrack p4 comes in at just over half a pound whereas the road caster pro comes in at almost four and a half pounds and lastly we have to look at the price the podrak p4 comes in at 199 us where the road caster pro comes in at 599 us now of course there is a reason for the difference in price and we'll talk more about that in just a moment so now that we've talked about what the podrak p4 does better let's now move into what the road caster pro does better and let's start there at the top with what we mentioned earlier and that is they both have four xlr inputs however the roadcaster pro not only gives you four xlr inputs those are dedicated xlr inputs so you can always have four microphones plugged in if you need to in addition to those four you have a smartphone jack and in addition to that you have a usb jack so you can bring in audio from your phone or your smart tablet or you can bring in audio from your computer whereas the p4 has a total of four inputs so if you want to bring in audio from your computer via usb you're going to give up one of your xlr ports to do that likewise if you want to bring in audio from your phone you're going to give up one of your xlr ports to do that as well similar to that the road caster pro has bluetooth built in yes they both allow you to connect to your smartphone via bluetooth but the podrack p4 has a bluetooth adapter sold separately and that device runs fifty dollars now that's important to note because you could still get the pod track p4 get the bluetooth adapter and still be considerably less than the road caster pro if that's important to you but if you want the bluetooth to be built in and not have to think about getting a separate device the road caster pro is something that is going to be advantageous for you i mentioned earlier that both the p4 and the road caster pro have sound pads that allow you to play sound effects or listener feedback or maybe your intro and outro or ads during your live recording however the p4 limits that to a total of four sound pads and therefore four sound effects or sound files at one time the road caster pro gives you eight sound pads but in additional to that you can store multiple files per pad you can have multiple sound banks is what they call it so multiple sound banks and up to 64 sound effects programmed that you can use at any time and this is especially great if you have multiple podcasts that you do you can program one sound bank for one podcast and another sound bank for another podcast it also gives you as i said eight at one time in addition to that the road caster pro has 512 megabytes of internal memory for you to save sound files and sound effects too so you don't have to worry about storing those all on the sd card with the p4 your sound effects are saved to your sd card so you always have to be mindful of what you have saved to that particular card if you swap out your card and you need your sound effects you've got to add them to the new card before you you know plug it back into the podrack p4 otherwise your sound files are going to be missing unless they're the built-in sound effects that came with the p4 but if they're your own files you're going to make sure you're managing those on your sd card properly there is no internal storage on the podrack p4 one other thing that i mentioned earlier was that both devices have the ability to send audio back to your computer either for streaming purposes or if you want to record to your favorite software of choice in addition to recording to the internal sd card well the road caster pro not only sends the audio back to your computer but it sends it in multi-track form so we talked earlier about how there's 14 audio tracks on the road caster pro and each of those are available as individual tracks as long as your software recording program can handle that like adobe audition can handle in fact most good audio editing or audio recording software can handle that many tracks and so you can assign each individual track coming from the road caster to a track in your recording software the p4 is only sending two audio tracks back to your computer so if you're wanting multi-track back to your computer the p4 will not be able to handle that i'm hoping they'll update that in the firmware down the road but there's no guarantee that will happen and the next item is something that's been a bit of a sticking point for those who have been studying the podrak p4 and that is the p4 limits to 44.1 sample rate at 16 bit depth for its recording it is recording an uncompressed wave but some folks prefer to have a higher quality than that and the road caster pro excels here it will do up to 48 kilohertz sample rate at 24 bit depth now i still stand by what i said in one of my earlier videos that for spoken voice podcasting 44.116 is completely fine but i know some of you out there are doing video especially high-end video and you like to record things at 48 and 24-bit depth and i totally get that and so maybe the p4 isn't the best solution for you we'll talk about that in just a moment but the road caster pro does support up to 48 kilohertz sample rate at 24 bit depth another area where i feel like the road caster pro excels over the p4 is their interface the road caster pro has a beautiful full color touch screen that allows you to go through the menus and really interact with it in a very easy way the podrak p4 i don't find it difficult to go through the menus and interact with it but it is a small monochrome display and between the two there's really no comparison here now some of you like to have outputs from the device in addition to headphones we're talking about a line level output and the p4 doesn't have anything here there's no line level output or speaker outputs or anything like that there's only those headphone outputs whereas the rode caster pro does have a left and right speaker output and there are some different settings and adjustments you can make to that depending on how you're using those ports so it gives you a little bit more versatility if you need that type of output now one of the biggest differences between the podrack p4 and the road caster pro is that the road caster pro comes pre-packed with a bunch of effects we're talking about a compressor a de-esser a noise gate and a high pass filter now the p4 does have a high pass filter and it has a limiter and you either toggle those on or off there are no settings that you can use to tweak those to your preference however the road caster allows you to go in and really customize each of these for each specific channel not only that but the road caster comes with afex technology built in which gives you access to their processing their big bottom plug-in and their oral exciter plug-in and all these together the the big bottom the oral exciter the de-esser the noise gate the compressor the high-pass filter all those allow you to really fine-tune what your voice sounds like and in addition to that it comes with some presets for many of rhodes microphones in addition to that there's a preset for the very popular electro voice re20 and then there's a generic setting for a dynamic microphone or a condenser microphone so all these together allow you to go in and really fine tune the quality and the sound of your voice and this is a big reason for the price difference between these two devices lastly i'll point out that the road caster pro allows you to save your settings to your computer i mentioned earlier that you might have more than one podcast and let's say you have co-host a for one podcast and co-host b for another podcast and they sound different and they have different settings that you've just set up we talked about all those effects and so you've got different settings for each co-host and you want to make sure you save those so that when they sit down in the chair for their podcast you don't have to reset all of that up well the road caster allows you to save those settings to your computer even and so when you have a new show you can simply pull those settings in and you're automatically ready to go you can also take those settings with you so that if you're visiting somewhere and they've got a road caster pro you can load your settings into that other road caster pro and now it's set up for your secret sauce if you will so now we've taken a look at how these two devices are similar and we've taken a look at how the p4 excels over the road caster and how the road caster excels over the podrack p4 let's now paint some scenarios that i see where each one of them would be better over the other obviously if you're on a budget the podrack p4 is definitely the way to go and in doing that you're not going to give up a whole lot of features likewise if you have a smaller smaller podcast and what i mean by that is you don't need all of the input ports i've talked about one of the advantages of the road caster pro being that it has four dedicated xlr inputs in addition to a dedicated usb input and a dedicated smartphone input but if you're a single host or a dual host podcast as most podcasts are those two additional xlr inputs are not going to be used by you and so that's just throwing your money away and the p4 would be better so that's what i mean by a smaller podcast if you don't have this large group of people getting together four people at once plus those other things then the p4 is going to be the better for you likewise if you travel you need something that's ultra portable there is no comparison here yes there are hard shell cases available for the road caster pro and mics and they're great but the size comparison is notable you can easily tuck the p4 into a bag and be on down the road much lighter much more portable than the road caster pro is and then lastly i would say that if you're someone who looks at all of those effects that the road caster pro offers the compressor the ds or the noise gate and the big bottom and all that stuff if you looked at that and went i don't need all that i don't want all that or i don't understand all that then the road caster pro is really not for you you don't need all those features if you're not going to use all those features and the podrack p4 is the better device for you and i would just caution i've seen it with my clients a few times i used to recommend a noise gate for example a hardware physical noise gate with knobs now put it in a rack and all that stuff and there are times when a noise gate is handy but what i found happening over and over again was their cat would come in or their kid would come in or maybe their cleaning person would come in and accidentally or maybe they got curious or whatever turn a knob or push a button and then something's not right and then they go in there and try to fix it and they just mess up the whole thing and i start getting audio from them literally with pieces of words cut off and i can't even use it because it's missing pieces of words because the gate specifically has been tweaked where it's coming in at the wrong time now that's going to be much harder to do on a device where it's all digital and you're touching a screen but those are the types of things that can happen if you get curious and you start messing around with things that you don't understand so that's why i say if you don't need those effects if you don't want those effects or you don't understand those effects then there's no need to get those and the p4 is definitely the better for you in that case now for those of you who do like those effects and you want to have those turned on either so that your live stream sounds as clean and polished and bassy voice and all that stuff as possible or you want to have those effects in place so that you don't have to do any post production well then the road caster pro is definitely the device for you or maybe you are doing live streams but you still like to do your own post production and you know i mentioned you could send your audio into the daw and record everything to a separate track but you can also choose to have the effects record pre-fader or post fader and i have a feeling that you'll know what that means if these effects are something that you're interested in so you could still have uh your live stream with all the effects you know blended in so that you're sounding as rich and vibrant as you want to on that but then recording to the sd card dry and you can handle all those effects and stuff in post-production so you can handle that separately it gives you that versatility if you want to get that diverse with your recording now i mentioned having the ability to record all 14 tracks separately into your software and if you want to do that clearly the road caster pro is for you if you're not a smaller again smaller podcast but a larger podcast it's going to have more than four hosts at the same time in addition to needing usb and or smartphone then the p4 won't work for you and clearly the road caster pro is the right device for you and then lastly we talked about it already it's worth reiterating if you do want to record in very high sample rates 48 bit sample rate 24 bit depth then the road caster pro is the device for you the p4 the only way it will record is 44.1 sample rate 16 bit depth so there you have it both of these are fantastic devices that i think podcasters are going to love clearly they already love the road caster pro and i think they're going to love the zoom pod track p4 as well and hopefully i've answered the questions you have that can help you make a decision on which one's better for you if i have it if you have any other questions about these devices hit me up in the comments below if you've liked this video please give us a thumbs up if you didn't i guess that thumbs down button works too i'd love for you to subscribe if there's anything that i can do to help you with your podcast check us out over at propodcastsolutions.com and we'll see you in the next one

Channel: Pro Podcast Solutions

Views: 19,638

Keywords: Zoom PodTrack P4, PodTrak P4, PodTrack P4, Pod Trak P4, Pod Track P4, Zoom Recorder, Podcasting, Podcast Gear, Podcast Recording, Podcast Recorder, Rodecaster, Rodecaster Pro, Rode Caster, Rode Caster Pro, Roadcaster, Roadcaster Pro, Road Caster, Rode

Id: 7XYA82Rrnko

Length: 27min 46sec (1666 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020