Zoom PodTrak P4 VERSUS Rode Rodecaster Pro - Voice Recording Comparison-filmed with Canon Vixia G60

hi everyone casey here welcome back to my channel kc on location in this video i'm going to compare two different popular podcasting devices over here is the very compact hand-holdable zoom pod track p4 over there is the much larger rode road caster pro so which podcasting device makes my voice sound better let's find out for this video i am filming this with the canon vixia g60 4k camcorder it's a great 4k camcorder with its large one-inch sensor i have the g60 camcorder set for its highest 4k video quality setting and why am i doing this you might ask it's because gearheads always want to see the maximum quality a camera can shoot at i love you guys for the audio i've been using the amazing and tiny rode wireless go lavalier system which i've been using for the past couple years the rode wireless transmitter is attached to my collar right here i'm simply using the microphone built into the transmitter there is no external wired lav mic attached the rode wireless go receiver is attached to the canon g60 via the mic import on the g60 camera i have the audio manually set at 35 for the gain level on the road receiver i have the gain level set at its lowest setting for the test comparison i will be reading a couple paragraphs from a local news article i'm going to use the same microphone which is the popular rode pod mic which is always back ordered everywhere here is the rode pod mic i will use the same pod mic on both the zoom power track p4 as well as the rode road caster pro for the test recording i will also read the same paragraph using this custom fit windscreen designed for the rode pod mic so maybe you might hear a difference with and without using this windscreen attached in post processing i will need to remove the original audio from this video being recorded using the rode wireless go microphone and replace it with the audio recorded from the podrack p4 and the road road caster let's first start with the zoom potrek p4 i will have the gain dial knob set to 6 which i find is ideal most of the time for recording volume level so right here on channel 1 i have it set to 6 and i only have one microphone attached which is into channel one right now the other channels two three and four are not being used therefore i have the gain dial knobs set to zero for channels two three and four for any channels that are not being used you want to have the gain dial set to zero so that it will not introduce any unwanted background noise even though those channels have no microphone attached and even though they're not being used so again my channel one level is set for six on the gain dial and all the other unused channels are at zero my goal while recording is that i want to see the vertical decibel bars hit around 75 to 80 percent of maximum which equals approximately the same as negative six decibels to negative 12 decibels which is the ideal recording level here is an example of what i mean by hitting 75 to 80 of maximum while speaking into the rode pod mic attached to channel one so here is the road pod mic right here and i'm going to be speaking into it now hello testing one two three and let me just zoom in uh the camera here more closely on the lcd screen so you can really see okay there we go so hello mic check one two three mic check one two three so notice that as i'm speaking into the microphone i have a little pen here that shows that you want to be right about at the 75 percent to 80 percent of maximum and this is the ideal recording level right about here where these vertical borrowers are hitting at and just to show you don't you do not want to be at zero zero decibels as we're at the very top of the screen which means you're clipping otherwise known as peaking and you're blowing out the audio and it's too high so here's an example of too high hello so you'll see that those vertical bars went to the very top of the screen that's way too high and conversely you don't want to be speaking so low either so if you're speaking for example with the gain dial too low such as like set to two or three or four or maybe you're speaking too low into the microphone or maybe speaking too far away from the microphone because ideally you want to be speaking very closely into the microphone such as maybe like around three to four inches away so you'll see that these vertical decibel bars are really low i mean it's like at the 25 level which means the recording level is also too low so again you want to be right about here so now we're about 75 to 80 percent of maximum and that is the ideal recording level right here where these vertical bars are hitting right about now and the other uh thing that i want to mention as well let me just zoom in a little farther down here ideally you want your headphone in volume to be right around maybe five or six maximum and the reason i say that is because if you have your volume setting too high such as seven eight nine then you will be deceived into thinking that your audio level for recording is sufficient when in fact it really might be that your recording level is set too low and because you have your headphone volume volume too high therefore you're listening through your headphones at a very high volume thinking that is an appropriate recording level when it's not so i suggest having the volume knob here set to about no higher than six i mean unless you're hard of hearing you you know you're kind of semi-deaf i suggest not to have it any more than six but regardless the more important thing is that you want to be monitoring your decibel scale right here and by the way you'll also note that there are no numbers for decibel readings in other words there's nothing that says for example 0 or negative 6 or negative 12 or negative 18 such as what they have on the other zoom recorder such as the zoom h6 or zoom h5 or etc all of those other recorders have decibel number scales that you know you can tell where exactly your vertical bars are hitting so in this case because there's no numbers that's why i had to say hit roughly about 75 to 80 percent of maximum on the vertical bars here which is roughly about negative 6 to negative 12 on the decibel scale which is the ideal recording level and so i just wanted to point that out that's very important and if you can consistently hit right around this level while recording here for the vertical decibel borders you will be at the perfect recording level okay so the other thing i wanted to show is that on the zoom podrack before there's not really any audio effects built into it the only thing available is the low cut and limiter functions both the low cut and limiter functions are defaulted to the on position for all microphones channels one two three and four out of the box so i normally keep both of those on and i'll do the same for this test and let me show you what i mean by that so let me just zoom out here a little more so here is the menu button right here i'm going to press the menu button and then you'll see where it says mic settings right here press the record button otherwise known as the enter button to access that and then you'll see two things here where it says mic settings on top you'll see low cut and limiter so let's scroll up to where it says low cut by the way there are buttons here to the right of the menu button there's another button which is the play pause button that's also the up button and over to the right of that is a stop button otherwise known as the down scroll button and then to the right of that of course is the red record button otherwise known as the enter button so right now i already have it highlighted to low cut so i'm going to press the record slash enter button and then you'll see here where it says low cut mic one two and three and they all have this check mark on which means the low cut filter is enabled when i press the down arrow button you'll see mic 4 revealed and that it's also enabled for the low cut filter so i usually just leave all of this on while i'm recording i i find it a benefit and it's automatically set this way out of the box when you buy the pi track p4 so let me press the enter button right here to go back page and then now i have i'm going to scroll down to limiter and press the enter button and for the limiter it's the same thing mic one two three are have the check mark which is enabled for the limiter function to be on when i scroll down to mic four it's also enabled as well so let me just press the menu button again to go back so what i wanted to point out here is that there really is no audio effects uh that's built into the zoom pod track p4 other than these mic settings of having the low cut and limiter filter uh enabled okay let's get started with the testing for the first test i'm going to be speaking into the road pod mic i will not be using the custom fit windscreen for the first test and i'll be recording to the zoom pod track p4 so i'm going to do a little uh triple clap to synchronize the audio in post editing so let me just press the record button here and clap my hands i don't know two or three times for post syncing okay here's the news san francisco mayor london breed and public health director dr grant colfax did what they said multiple times this year that they didn't have to want to do which is roll back the reopening of businesses after already opening them due to spiking cases and hospitalizations around the region and what colfax says is an even sharper spike than what the city saw in late june and early july prior to a summer surge the city is ordering all indoor dining to cease okay now i'm going to add the windscreen here to the pod mic all right san francisco mayor london breed and public health director dr grant colfax did what they said multiple times this year that they didn't want to have to do which is roll back the reopening of businesses after already opening them due to a spiking cases and hospitalizations around the region and what colfax says is an even sharper spike than what the city saw in late june and early july prior to a summer surge the city is ordering all indoor dining to cease okay so that's the test for the road pod mic speaking into the pawtrak p4 with and without the windscreen filter on okay moving on to the rode road caster pro here's the road caster unit right here and you'll notice immediately that if i were to put up the zoom potrek p4 against the road caster i mean look at the size difference the zoom podtrac p4 is meant to be very compact and hand holdable and transportable so that you can pretty much uh you know travel around town anywhere with it whereas the road caster you know due to its size it's just a little bit too big to be able to carry it around town i mean it is possible i do have the usb charging cable so that i can power the road caster via an external battery pack which i also have but honestly most of the time it just sits right here on my desk because it's just too large so because of the road caster being so much larger compared to the p4 you know you would expect the road caster to have far greater audio processing and audio effects capabilities versus the podrak p4 and in fact the road caster does have a whole lot more audio effects built into it and let me show you but what i mean by that so here is the rode pod mic again it's the same mic i used for recording to the zoom pod track before it's now connected into channel one of the road caster there are no other microphones attached to it i do have this secondary pod mic as well but it's not attached to the road caster and right now on the front of the console i have this vertical fader set at the halfway mark and when i press this one button right here which corresponds to channel one which i have the pod mic connected into the lcd screen will show me various customizations and settings that are currently enabled and set for the road pod mic into channel one so let me just now zoom in on the screen here so that you can better see what i'm talking about okay so now let me press that button right here that i was referring to and then as soon as i do that you will see this menu show up so the first thing you'll notice is that where it says microphone here there are a bunch of preset uh settings for various microphones particularly for various road microphones so here i have it enabled for the rode pod mic i mean you just simply press the button if i had the rode i don't know broadcaster i would press that button instead if i had just a generic dynamic microphone uh then i would just press this button right here dynamic if i had a condenser i would press that in this case i have the rode pod mic attached and i press that so what's nice is that the road caster now knows that i'm using the rode pod mic and it already has various preset functions uh set for the rode pod mic that's ideally suited for the road pod mic and now let me just go into this uh back screen button right here and then you'll see that there are a couple other options available uh so let me first show you what levels is right here when i go into levels you'll see that i currently have it set for 35 and what uh 35 is let me just show you what i mean by that so here's the road pod mic okay and i'm going to speak right into it right now i'm speaking into the road pod mic and you'll see that the vertical level bar is hitting in between or just barely in the middle of these two horizontal green bars ideally you want it to be a little more over to the right hand side so i'm going to press this plus button here to have it go higher to let's say 45 so now as i'm speaking into the road pod mic this horizontal green bar is further extended to the right of these two horizontal green bars and that's where i preferred i think i just have better audio volume at this level the maximum is 55 which i think is too high i mean i could use a microphone activator known as a triton fet head which i do have but i'm not going to use it for this example because that'll be for another video test for another day anyways let me just go in the back button here and this right here where it says audio processing this is where the magic happens so when i press the audio processing look at this there is one two three four five different settings here let me just put down the road bottom right before i speak anymore all right so right here is the first one it says high pass filter when i by the way they're all enabled right now because we're this button right here where it says processing it's currently moved over to the far right which means they're all enabled all these various buttons and effects if i were to press it here on the left side now you'll see that it's all disabled so let me just go back to processing enabled for all of these settings which you currently are all enabled so the high pass filter when i tap on that you'll see that it's enabled i have it at this setting right here when i go to the back screen button here the next one is noise gate when i press noise gate i mean i have the threshold at this level the attack at that level the hold there the release there the range there so this noise gate is enabled let me go with the back button and the de-esser for the de-esser i had the threshold at this setting a ratio of that attack at that and release at that setting and this is also enabled for the de-esser go to the back button and the compressor these are all the compressor settings threshold ratio attack release and gain and that's kind of cool too so showing like these vertical bars right there for the compressor setting let me go back here and this is even where more magic happens so the affects button right here when i press this guy i have here there's actually two settings here when i toggle left and right the first one says oral exciter i like the name i have it the tune set at this level the harmonics set at that level and the mix set at that level so this adds to the enhancement of my voice when i press this right button here i get the big bottom oh yeah this uh shows tune drive and mix uh if i had to summarize what big bottom is it gives me more of a base effect kind of like that radio broadcast bassy kind of uh i don't know tune audio whatever sound so that's what big bottom means anyways let me just go back screen so these are all the different effects that the rode road caster has that the zoom potrek p4 does not have so this is a mix so all of these effects are being mixed into the audio uh for the into the recording for when i'm speaking into it to the microphone for mixing into my voice recording and typically you know in order to get this type of effect you would have to buy a separate mixing unit that might cost an extra couple hundred dollars more that's yet another accessory that you would have to get in order to have these types of effects and this road caster has all these effects built into it so that's what's really cool about this road road caster pro unit is that you get all of this audio effect built right into it and i can choose to either use it or not use it and for example i can also selectively choose to only have for example noise gate on de-esser on but have the other ones off so in other words it's not like all or nothing i can just you know press the processing button to turn off everything and then go into noise gate and then just selectively enable one or more of these various effects in my case i just have everything on because i just like the sound of everything on so anyways i just wanted to show you what this has on the road caster versus what a pawtrak p4 does not have so that's what i wanted to show you there okay now let's move on to the rode road caster pro for doing our next audio test and for this particular test i'm actually going to do three separate tests the first test is without having the windscreen attached to the rode pod mic the second test will be with the windscreen attached and i've decided to also include a third extra test whereby i have all the audio effects turned off on the road caster so that you'll just hear the audio without any of that oral exciter big bottom noise gate de-esser any of that that will all be turned off for the third test so you can also see what that uh difference is like the only thing i will do extra is i will leave the windscreen on for that third extra test so let me just now uh press the record button here and then i'll do a triple tap so i can sync the audio in post processing later and let me also put on my headphones so that i can hear what's going on here all right pressing the record button now okay and today's local news san francisco mayor london breed and public health director dr grant colfax did what they said multiple times this year that they didn't want to have to do which is roll back the reopening of businesses after already opening them due to spiking cases and hospitalizations across the region and what colfax says is an even sharper spike than what the city saw in late june and early july prior to a summer surge the city is ordering all indoor dining to cease okay so that test is without the windscreen attached so now for the second test putting on the windscreen okay here's the second test with the windscreen on san francisco mayor london breed and public health director dr grant colfax did what they said multiple times this year that did they that they didn't want to have to do which is roll back the reopening of businesses after already opening them due to spiking cases and hospitalizations across the region and what colfax says is an even sharper spike than what the city saw in late june and early july prior to a summer surge the city is ordering all indoor dining to cease all right so now i'm going to go into the audio of the lcd screen press button number one here and turn off the processing for everything okay so now the processing button is off uh the high pass filter is no longer on the noise gate is no longer on de-esser is no longer on compressor and the aphex which means oral exciter and the big bottom so none of those are on so let's do another test and in local news san francisco mayor london breed and public health director dr grant colfax did what they said multiple times this year that they didn't want to have to do which is roll back the reopening of businesses after already opening them due to spiking cases and hospitalizations across the region and what colfax says is an even sharper spike than what the city saw in late june and early july prior to a summer surge the city is ordering all indoor dining to cease okay press the record button off now so that was the test with the road road caster the first one again was with the windscreen off but however all the special audio effects were on enabled on the road caster and then on the second test i had the win screen on again with the all the special effects enabled on the road caster and then for this third test that we just finished i turned off all of the special effects on the road caster and but i did have the windscreen on so that was the last test for the road caster there and that concludes this video i hope you found this interesting and informative let me know in the comments if you notice any difference and which recording you like better please consider hitting the like button and subscribing to my channel and i'll see you again next time

Channel: Casey On Location

Views: 3,430

Keywords: Zoom PodTrak P4, PodTrak P4, Zoom, PodTrak, Rode, Rode Rodecaster, Rode Rodecaster Pro, Rode PodMic, PodMic, Podcasting, Podcast, recording, recorder, Canon Vixia G60 camcorder, Canon G60, Canon Vixia, Canon Camcorder, Canon, Camcorder, Rode Wireless Go lavalier microphone, Rode Wireless Go, Rode Go mic

Id: eddrSZvthxc

Length: 27min 10sec (1630 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2020