- 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)
