(phone ringing) (upbeat music) - [male Voice] Hello - Hi, my name is Tom. This is the enthusiasm project and today we're going
to talk all about how to take phone calls on the Rodecaster Pro. - [Male Voice] Never call me again. - Let's talk all about
how to take phone calls with the Rodecaster Pro. Because as you may or may not know, that's one of the coolest
features about this unit. And I've gotten so many
questions from people about how that works, how to get the best audio quality, and how to effectively
incorporate phone calls into your podcast or your live stream. Now there are two ways
to bring in phone calls to the Rodecaster Pro. You can use either the wired TRS channel. Or you can connect your phone or your computer via Bluetooth and bring in a phone call that way. We'll compare both of those today. So you can see the
difference in audio quality. And we'll also run through some options to give you better than phone
call quality in your show. So how do you connect
your phone via Bluetooth? It's a pretty simple process. Actually. There's this giant
blue button right here. If I press that it will
say the Rodecaster Pro is now discoverable. Tap Rodecaster Pro in your
device Bluetooth settings. So then all I need to do
on my phone is hop over into Bluetooth settings and the Rodecaster Pro shows up. If I tap on it it will
connect automatically there are no passwords or anything. For some reason it's Thomas's iPhone, even though my phone is just Tom's iPhone, but whatever. Now my phone is connected via Bluetooth to the Rodecaster Pro. So that's connected the
Rodecaster Pro will basically just play any audio that's
coming from the phone through the Bluetooth channel. So I'm gonna switch over
to the Rodecaster Pro's audio right now. So that's what you're listening to me on and we will blast some of my
favorite royalty free jams right now. (upbeat music) There we go. (music playing) What you'll notice (music playing) is this audio quality
is actually really good. It sounds the same as
if it were plugged in. Sounds as if I added
this in post production, but I didn't. I can just turn it down right there. So the Bluetooth channel
can work really, really well for music and other audio. But what about phone calls? Obviously. So if I call myself. (phone ringing) Hello? Okay, so, okay. Hello, how are you? What's happening here? Hello? Hello? Hello? Actually, actually, this is
way too hard to do by myself. Let me actually Okay, so we're gonna
wait for a phone call. So I asked Heather now to call me. (phone ringing) There's my beautiful ringtone. I'm going to accept it. Audio to the road caster. Hello. - [Heather] Hi, can I
speak to my husband please? - That's me. I am speaking. May I speak to my lovely wife please? - [Heather] Hello, that's me. - How does this sound on your end? - [Heather] Clear. - Does it sound like you're listening to a podcast right now? - [Heather] No, it sounds
like you're on the phone. - Oh, it just sounds
like a normal phone call? - [Heather] Yeah, but it's
a clear phone call, right? Well, I'm talking to the Podcast mic, if I play a sound effect,
can you hear that? (sound effect) - [Heather] Yes. - Okay, was it annoying
or loud or anything? - [Heather] No - Just as annoying as usual. Okay, so this for you just sounds like a
normal phone call, right? - [Heather] Yeah. - Okay, cool. And then for me, there's like a slight slight delay of like half a second. Cause I can hear you on the
other side of this wall talking. And then I hear it come through the phone. - [Heather] I had a cover
my other ear because I was getting confused with the way... - Right, but if we
weren't in the same place, like if you were just
calling in your show, this would work right? Like we could talk. - [Heather] Yeah. - Okay, cool. Well, thanks so much. I'll see you at home in about a minute. - [Heather] Okay, bye. - So that worked pretty well. For our end. It was like we were just having
a normal phone conversation. There was that slight delay, which you would never really notice if you're not actually able to
hear the person on the phone. What I will say though, is that as soon as Heather
called the phone here, it automatically went
to the iPhone speaker. And so I did have to tap on audio and select the Rodecaster Pro before the signal was sent
to the Rodecaster Pro. But that's actually kind of a good thing. Because if you wanna screen calls before incorporating them into your show. Like imagine you're doing a live show and you have a couple
of hosts talking here on these channels. And you're over here as like the producer, and somebody calls in and you don't want them to
just as soon as they call in now they're part of the show. You can just talk to them on the phone, explain what's happening. And then when they're ready, you can tap broadcaster and now they will be ready to
go on this channel right here. So there is no real easy mix minus feature that's gonna let you talk to them on here without being part of the show over here. At least that I could find
out that's not super clunky. But that's an easy way to do it. Just talk on the phone like normal switch over to Rodecaster
when you're ready to go and it basically just solves that problem. But now, let's try it the other way. Let's flip over. Can I call you again. So instead of using Bluetooth, I'm gonna take Bluetooth off. I'm actually gonna even unpair my phone. So it's very clear that we are not using Bluetooth at all. And we're gonna go into the TRS channel just so you know, I am using the official Rode TRS cable. Which has three rings. And the reason for that, is if you have a phone that's
not giving you enough gain, this cable should boost
the signal a little bit and let you equalize it and mix it in with the rest
of your show more easily. So I'm just gonna
connect this to my phone. Just like before I have this
plugged into the TRS channel If I play music, (music playing) it's the music's still there. Just like normal. But we will make a phone call. (phone ringing) - [Heather] Hello, - Hello, can I speak to my lovely wife? - [Heather] Yes. Does she ever help you? - Hi, how are you? How does this sound? - [Heather] It sounds great. - Does it? I've noticed it's actually
a little low on my end. Can you believe that? Oh, oh. So your your volume was
a little too low here and I actually need to on my phone, boost the volume and now I think
you're gonna sound clearer. - [Heather] Got it? - Yes. Oh, that's nice. Yes, it actually does sound a lot clearer. So that was something when
you're plugged in with the cable, you got to make sure to adjust the volume right here. So how's your day going? Can you give us a nice
sample of audio quality so we can compare these things? - [Heather] Sure. Right now I'm playing Animal Crossing. - Nice - [Heather] Covers on our island, - Of cause - [Heather] So I am looking
for communicator parts. - Terrific. - [Heather] And yes, it's
almost gonna rain in our island. - Great. Well, I don't wanna stop you
from that important work. So I will let you get back to it. (Heather laughing) Thank you for being a part of this show. As always. I don't there's no ending. It's just a phone call. Thank you. I love you. - [Heather] Love you bye bye - Bye. So both of these channels
almost sound the same. I would say that the Bluetooth channel is not quite as good with the phone calls as the TRS channel is. It just sort of like kind of sounded a little muddier and more compressed, whereas the direct channel
was just more clear sounding like a regular phone call. That makes sense. It's being plugged in,
there's no Bluetooth staff. Both were totally usable. But on the TRS channel, you do need to make sure to monitor the volume of the phone
call on your actual device. Because you could be cranking
this all the way to the top. But if your phone is set really low, you're still not gonna get a great signal. On the Bluetooth channel, it's important to make
sure you select the right audio source. Now what you might notice
with both of these channels is when I played music through them, it sounded terrific. It sounded great. It sounded CD quality. But as soon as we
switched to a phone call, it was easy to see a
decline in the audio quality and it just sounded like
a normal phone call. That may or may not be an issue if you're just doing like a radio show where people call into the radio show. Everybody's very used
to that phone call sound that phone call interview sound. But if you're doing a podcast an hour long podcast and
you wanna have a guest, it can really be tiresome
for your listeners to hear that sound for the whole hour. And it always sounds better if you can find ways to make
it sound like both people are in the same room at the same time. And with so many of us
working from home lately, I think we've all gotten
used to using Zoom and those kind of apps, you could set up a Zoom cam and just use an auxiliary
cable or this TRS cable. Connect it to your computer and just bring in the
audio from your Zoom call. But if you've been on Zoom calls, you know that that audio
isn't always reliable or the best quality. If you have the budget. You could sign up. For a Voip. VOIP Voice over internet protocol service Which is basically designed
to deliver high quality audio over the internet, and that could help you do that as well. But I recently discovered
that Anchor has an option for free. That really helps of
course is not sponsored but I did put together an entire video on why I use Anchor to host my podcast. I really liked it. And this is just one more thing
I literally discovered today that makes that easier. So, same thing you could set up either via Bluetooth or TRS. I'm using TRS because it did
deliver a little bit better audio quality. So let's switch over to
the Rodecaster right now . All you need to do is open
up Anchor on your phone and go into tools and
there's going to be a button that says invite friends to join. If you tap on that, it's
gonna say record with friends. We should hear (hold music) there it is. We got some hold music happening. And basically, it's kind of like a Zoom meeting . This is this is the waiting room. I really recommend though
having your phone connected the way that you want it. Before inviting people to join your call. I have found that if I just
have my phone like normal and like I call someone
and then they call in and then I try to plug it in or switch. We have trouble hearing each other. So I have this plugged in and ready to go. You can hear the whole music (music playing) and then all I need to do
is tap on invite friends, and it gives you a bunch of
ways you can just send a link you can message someone. You can go directly with Anchor friends. I'm just gonna bother Heather again and send her a message. And it's basically a thing that just says come join my Podcast and they
don't need to have the app. They don't need to have anything special. They can just tap on that
link and they should pop up into your recording pretty quickly. (music playing) Let's wait and see. Hello. - [ Heather] Hello. - Oh, you sound so nice. Is this my lovely wife Heather again? - [Heather] It is .Is
this my lovely husband? - It is. How are things going over there on our Animal Crossing Island. - [Heather] They're great. I am shopping for new clothes for my character at the moment. - Your voice sounds so clear right now and it doesn't seem like
there's as much of a delay as there was with the phone. Cause I can still Heather is
just basically on the other side of this blue wall by me. - [Heather] I know same here. it kind of sounded fuzzy
but I just figured not not on this thing. But on the previous one and
I figured that was just the That the cordless phone. But it's like super crystal clear on here. - Yeah and you're just
on your iPhone, right? - [Heather] Yeah, of course
cause I sent it to you. I'm gonna try a sound effect again. Hey Heather, do you know how you prepare for a party in space? - [Heather] How? - You plan it? (sound effect) Did you hear my sound effect? - [Heather] I did hear your sound effect. - Yay. And while we're on it, Anchor is also just
recording automatically. So it's saving a clip
directly to Anchor of this. But I'm recording it into the Rodecaster so I could do my own thing with it later. So your voice sounds really clear. There's like slightly digital, like guggliness around it a little bit, but it sounds like 100 times better than a regular phone call. So this is a great option to
bring in people as guests. We could listen to this conversation. At this quality easily for
the length of an episode. I think. - [Heather] There you go. - There you go. So thanks so much. Again, I'm sorry to keep bothering you with like 10 phone calls, - [Heather] Its okay babe. - I love you and I'll see you in a minute. - [Heather] Love you, bye bye - Bye. And then on here, now that she's done, I just hit finish recording. And that's it. I don't use the recording
directly in Anchor. So I actually don't even need that. I have everything recorded here. So that was super quick and easy. The Anchor desktop app
has a similar version, but it's hard to argue with the simplicity of that right there. Heather didn't need to
have anything special. She just needed her phone. I just sent her the link
and it was good to go. Now there are two final things that I would like to
point out when doing this. The first is there are these two channels, right Bluetooth or TRS. You don't necessarily
have to make a choice, you could use both at the same time. So you can have your computer or device plugged into the TRS channel. And you could have your
computer or another device connected via Bluetooth. And you can use the two together. Maybe one is playing music and one is doing an interview . Or you have more than one guest. Now with the Anchor record
with friends feature that I just used. You can have up to five people in the call with you It might get a little chaotic, but you could bring in five guests there and then another guest on Bluetooth and that six other people in
addition to the four people that are already potentially
on your show here, so that's 10 people on the show. That is insane. I don't think I'd ever want to do that. But it's great to have that
flexibility in that versatility. And of course, you have
the USB channel too. So I guess that even opens up more options cause you could connect your computer. There's a lot of options
with the Rodecaster Pro. The other thing is, how do you set up phone calls safely to bring in guests to your show. So using Anchor was super easy, cause I can just text
them or email them a link, they tap on the link and we're done. But if we are doing the old
school phone call route, you probably don't wanna
just give out your personal number to everyone. So I really recommend you use something like Google Voice. Where you can set up a phone number that will just forward
everything directly to your phone so that way, there's nothing at risk if
you put that number public or people get that number. But you don't have to give
out your private phone number to everyone just to have
them be a guest on your show. Little things things like
that are very important to think about because that's
gonna help keep you safe, keep things sustainable
and keep things practical. So being able to bring in phone calls and phone guests is just
one of those many problems that the Rodecaster Pro, does solve. As I'm sure you know by this point, I have a boatload of videos
about the Rodecaster Pro. If you wanna learn more about it or basic Podcasting stuff from me, check those out and I will see you over in one of those videos. (upbeat music)
