- It's been a few years since the Rodecaster Pro was first released and recently a wild challenger has zoomed under the scene and the
form of the Zoom P8, which retails for $100 less
has two more XLR inputs and his built for portability, but does the P8 have what it takes to out master
the Rodecaster for an up and coming podcaster? Today, we have the ultimate all-in-one
podcast studio showdown, and the absolute winner is honestly, either one of them, because
they're both pretty great. I prefer the Rodecaster, but you can't go wrong either way. They're really good. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music) And I'll acknowledge right
away that I am biased towards the Rodecaster, but I'm gonna do everything that I can, to set that bias aside as we dive in to the Zoom P8. There's a few things about this that I'm a really excited about. First and foremost, though,
this video is not sponsored but Sweetwater Sound did send me over this P8 specifically so that I could do a review
and comparison video because I didn't have the
budget to get one on my own. And I really don't need one because they have the Rodecaster. So since I don't need
it, Sweetwater also said that once I was done with the video. I could just give this away. So stay tuned to the end of this video for instructions on how you can
enter to win this exact one. That's sitting right here. Sweetwater was also sweet enough to send out an SM7B for
me, and this is mine. I'm not giving it away. I've actually never
owned my own SM7B before. Anytime you've ever seen me with one, I've always been borrowing them. So it's really great to have
one of my own, especially because one of the most
common questions I get with any comparisons, or
reviews is how does it work with the SM7B? And there are a few things
specifically with the P8 that I'm really excited
to test with the SM7B. We're going to talk about
that in just a second. So right now, as you can
probably see I'm recording audio into the Rodecaster through the PodMic and I've got another PodMic set here, so we can open up the P8, and see how great the P8 might be. I can't wait. Let's see. So in the box for the P8. Let's see everything that you get. We've got our instruction manuals, got power adapter, and we've got the P8 itself. And that seems like everything. Ouch! All right and the P8 itself, here we go, significantly smaller than the rodecaster and significantly lighter as well. Over the years, I've
owned many zoom products, a lot of little recorders
like this, the H4n, through my teaching career I think I've ordered over a
hundred different Zoom products. And there's one common thread that runs through them all which is that the audio
quality is always outstanding. I've never used the zoom product where the audio quality wasn't great, but the build quality pretty much always leaves something to be desired. Certain products like the H5 and the H6 are pretty done well built, but others like this, H4n or even the H1 or of the older like Q2 and
Q3, they're really plasticky. And they're really not super durable. And I've noticed they tend to sort of just start falling apart, even with regular use. This kind of has that same plasticky feel. It's definitely not as solid feeling as the road caster, but it's not bad. The other thing right away
that you might notice, is that a lot of the buttons on here, basically everything
except for the sound pads, which are nice and soft. All of the buttons are very cliquey. And what I'm curious about
is when we're recording with this, how are those
clicks going to register? Because on the rodecaster,
everything is very soft. When you press a button
or you tap on the display it doesn't get picked up
in any of the recording. It can't be really heard in the room. Everything is very, very soft. These are much more
cliquey, just a small thing. And as I mentioned before,
we do have six XLR inputs. Each one with Phantom Power. There's a nine key sound pad. The Rodecaster Pro only has eight keys on it sound pad, although they are bigger. And the rodecaster pro does
have libraries built in. So even though there are
only eight physical keys you can switch between
multiple different libraries and load in tons of different sounds. Unlike the Rodecaster inputs and outputs are mostly all on the top. There's a few on the
back, including the power the USB-C slots and the SD card slot which it does use a
full-size SD card instead of the micro SD card
that the rodecaster uses. That's really nice. I'm happy to see a
full-size SD card in here. Up top we also have a
3.5 millimeter input, which also has this other little connector for a Bluetooth antenna. You can buy separately
and attach right here. The Rodecaster Pro of course
already has Bluetooth built in. So if you want to connect your phone via Bluetooth or another device, you can just do that directly without any additional purchases. That could be one of
the reasons why the P8 has a lower retail price than the road castor pro. You've got your left and right monitor outputs on the top. And then you've got six headphone outputs. They're all 3.5 millimeters, along with your basic recording
controls the record button, play pause, marker, and stop. The rodecaster pro has four XLR channels. So it has four quarter inch
headphone outputs on the back. And one, 3.5 millimeter
headphone output on the front. Each of the channel
sliders has a mute button and an on-air button which function essentially
the same as the mute and solo buttons on the Rodecaster Pro. Now right away, one thing I can say that I really love about this without even turning it on is the fact that all the channels
are already color coded. So channel four is green. The input is green up here. The headphone jack is green and the headphone monitor
level is green as well. So as the person who's
operating this during a podcast it's going to be really easy to remember who's using which microphone? Who you need to adjust? And it just kind of
keeps things organized. Just straight out of the box, I love that. You do have the sliders down here for all six XLR channels. Plus the smartphone 3.5 millimeter channel plus the sound pads themselves the sliders feel pretty good. Actually, they feel pretty
similar to the Rodecaster. If anything, I would say these
feel a little bit better. They've kind of like a little
smoother than the Rodecaster, neither of like the most
amazing sliders I've ever used, but the sliders on the
P8 are so tiny (chuckles) The Rodecastor has sort
of more full-size sliders. These ones are just so little. If they were any shorter they would just be on-off switches. So in terms of dialing in
a little more nuanced sound you don't have as many
options here with the P8. So those are the physical specifications. Let's turn it on, try it out and see how it actually performs. So now I've had a little
bit of time to play around with the P8 and get
to understand it a bit. And overall it is great. So let's walk through
some of the features. Let's do a few tests, and that's also point out some things that you might want to be aware of, that aren't so great. Right now I'm still going
through the Rodecaster Pro and then switch over to the P8 now, this PodMic is the Rodecaster. This one is the P8. And this audio right here is from the P8. Ain't it great? I just can't stop making that joke. So I'm running through channel one and I have to say right away
that the headphone pre-amps on the P8 are way better
than the Rodecaster. If you know me, you know that one of my gripes with the rodecaster is that the headphone pre-amps
just aren't that great. They tend to have a lot of noise, and a lot of hiss. And I know it's not just my Rodecaster that does it because I've talked to many other people that
have that same problem. That is not an issue, on the P8. It seems much more accurate in terms of what you're hearing in the
headphones is what's coming through on the actual recording. The touch screen interface
is incredibly responsive. It's just like a smartphone,
basically the same as the Rodecaster Pro,
they have great interfaces. The design of the UI on the
Zoom is a little bit clunky, but everything is pretty
easy to understand for your six XLR channels. If you tap on the microphone input you get several other options including the ability to adjust the level, the game level of the microphone. You can add in base, you can add a compressor and a de-esser if I turn those off. Now, this is a totally dry mix or I can add in some bass
lean towards the treble, lean towards the base, or
just leave things neutral, or I can add in that
compressor and that de-esser which it just says, make your
voice sound professional. (laughs)
Sure I actually do kind of
like the way that sounds, then you can add in a limiter on and off, over here, and a
low cut on and off over here. So you've got some pretty
nice built-in equalization. It's not as full featured
as the Rodecaster Pro, but it is really accessible in a nice way that just
like works on the fly. Now, one thing that's
very frustrating here. The Rodecaster, when you
change the gain of a channel, you see the actual number, on the P8 it's just sort of a min-max, and you're just sort of guessing. And that's frustrating
to me because the gain, the amount gain that's
in here is one of the, what I think is one of the biggest selling points of the unit. We're gonna talk about that in a second. Going back to the home screen, you can see right here,
I'm running on power. So if I open that up and this menu will let you set what kind of power you're
using, especially important if you're using batteries,
because you battery believe that this will let you select the type of battery you're using. And also the display brightness which can help save some battery power. The SD card option is where you can go. I can't use it right now, cause
I'm recording through here but it's where you could go and format the card, backup
the card, transfer some files, all that is done in there. When you enable USB file transfer you'll see the icons come
up on the display screen. And then on your computer the P8 will just show up
as a removable hard drive. If you open it up you will see P8 multi-track
and P8 settings along with stereo versions of your files. So up here, I have two stereo versions of the files I've recorded
so far this morning. And then down here we have multi-track which includes all six of the
XLR inputs, plus the phone plus the sound pad for
each of those recordings. So you always have the
ability to get multi-track in addition to your stereo tracks and then you can just drag the files to your computer when
you're ready to edit them. And then you've got your
date and your time settings. You can also change the language of the system right in there. The smartphone channel has
treble and bass boost and cut. And the sound pads,
the sound pads are fun. When you turn it on,
they get really colorful. They're soft, just like the Rodecaster. Oops!
(horn) I didn't mean to do that. Sound pads are pretty fun. If you tap on one, you
can then adjust the volume of that pad. You can change the play
mode, you want one shot. (horn jazz) Where just the whole thing. (horn jazz) You can have a pause mode, which I actually really liked. That means you can start it, pause it and then continue it. You've got a loop (horn jazz) where every time you press it, it will start or stop it, from the beginning. And then you've got hold, where it will only play (horn jazz) while you're holding it. And you've got that for
all nine of the pads. Once you go into a pad also,
that's when you can tap on the file that you're using. It comes preloaded with basically all the
standards you would hope for. And if you want to load in more options, you just put them on your SD card and then they will show up here, and you can load them in. A good reminder though, for either of these units, is that the
sound pads don't have to just be for like cheesy sound effects. You can use them for interviews. You can use them for longer clips. They can be really really useful and really, really dynamic. And part of what makes
both of these so useful is that if you utilize the
sound pads in a great way, you can do the all-in-one
podcast production here. I actually did a whole video all about my rodecaster pro workflow, which involves zero editing. Most of the time, the
entire show is produced. Start to finish almost in
real time, right in here and then uploaded ready to go. And you can do that with
either one of these. That's where it's like it really is a whole studio
in one little compact unit. I love that. One thing you might notice since the headphone
outputs are on the top, the headphone wires can
drape across the top of it. I've only got the one,
but you can only imagine if you have six people plugged in here it's gonna get a little messy. So cable management is
going to be important. I think I definitely prefer these being on the rear of the unit,
like with the Rodecaster. So that way, nothing is interfering with the top of the device. Now, as you might know,
on the Rodecaster Pro we've got a USB channel. So when it's connected to the computer, it's sending signals out to the computer but can also bring in
audio from the computer. The P8 does the exact same thing, but instead of having
a dedicated USB channel it's actually channel six. So channel six has a little
switch, which would go from microphone to Phantom
Power to USB input. And then when you do that, on the display you'll actually notice
channel six, switching to USB. And if you press that, it's going to give you
a few different options, not just for adjusting your USB input, but also for adding in USB mix minus. So that's very important. If you want to use this
for like a Zoom meeting or something like that,
where voices are coming in and you don't want them to go back out, making sure you have
USB mix minus turned on, very, very important. And I want to talk about what for me is the potentially
most exciting part of the P8 and that is its gain levels. So built in, to this unit on each of the XLR channels
is 70 decibels of gain, just for reference. The rodecaster pro has 55 decibels of gain on each of its channels, which is why I often do
end up using a cloud lifter and a cloud lifter adds
25 decibels of gain. And the reason you don't
want to just always max out your gain is because it's like increasing
the ISO on your camera. When you increase your camera's ISO, you start getting noise and artifacts, same thing goes with audio. When you increase the gain too much you start getting in some
of that hiss and distortion, and just ugly sounding stuff
that you can't get rid of. So the more gain you
have means the more room you have to get not only allowed enough
signal, but a clean signal. So this has 70 decibels of gain. The Rodecastor has 55, the Rodecaster plus the CloudLifter
has 80 decibels of gain. So 10 more than the P8. And of course you could
use a CloudLifter. And when I say CloudLifter,
that's just what I'm using but I'm referring to a FetHead, a Dynamite, any kind of signal booster, but here's
why I'm so interested in it. One I'm using the PodMic right now which I do normally use a CloudLifter with on the Rodecaster, although you can get by without it. However, my gain level, as you can see is only in the middle. If I turn the gain off all the way up. Oh my gosh, wow. I have the volume slider at about halfway and I am really far away from the microphone and I'm kind of maxing things out. I can turn this lighter down. If I turn this slider all the way up you can hear me barely whispering. There is a lot of gain to
be gained from this P8. Here's why that matters. Remember when I talked about the SM7B, super popular microphone but also a super quiet microphone. Typically you always need a
cloud lifter with an SM7B. If you're able to use the SM7B with the P8 and no CloudLifter, with plenty
of headroom in your volume. I think that's a huge selling point for anyone who wants
to use this microphone or a similar microphone
with their podcasting setup. So we're going to connect
the SM7B to channel two, and let's see, I'm going to switch over to the SM7B right now, here we go. This is the SM7B just on default settings. If I stopped talking you can definitely hear a
little hiss in the background But let's see if we can turn up the gain, so I can turn down the volume slider and maybe reduce some
of that noise (chuckles) I boost the gain all the way up. It's not quite as strong
as it was on the pod mic but if I turn it down
just a little bit now. Wow. Wow. Okay. Okay. So my volume slider. (Heather sneezes in the background) Bless you. My volume slider is just
under halfway on the P8. My gain setting is just
at about 75% again, I wish there were actual numbers there, and I am only a couple of inches away from the SM7B, just
where I would normally be when talking or recording with it. You can kind of see that over here how far away I am, from that microphone. And I have more than
enough gain to work with. Even if I get a little bit
further away from the microphone I start leaning back in
my chair, I can talk, so you don't need a CloudLifter, or a signal booster with the P8. I feel like this is a
bigger deal than I've heard. This is the part that's
been most exciting to me. And I know that the P4, the four track version of this, which is a little smaller and a little less expensive also has the same, you
know, 70 decibels of gain. This is huge because if you're somebody who's had
to invest in a CloudLifter you know, that it can kind of
be a hassle, it works great but you're already spending
like $400 on a microphone. And then you need to spend another 100 or $200 on a signal booster
for that microphone. Or if you have four of them
or in this case, six of them and you need to get boosters
for all those channels. That's a pretty significant
financial investment. And more importantly, to me, that's when it starts to negatively
affect the practicality of the unit because you
have all these cables and all these different things, hanging out all over the place, instead of just your compact,
all in one podcasting studio. So by having this much
gain built into the unit this means that the P8 really, really is like everything that you
need to produce a podcast. And of course that's not to say the Rodecaster,
isn't an all-in-one unit but I've definitely been
maxing out some of the levels, and needing to add a CloudLifter and things like that. So the fact that you don't
have to do that with this and even a really gain hungry mic like the SM7B is a really big deal. Let's take this one step further though. And look at one of the
other killer features, supposed, killer features of the P8. Now, as you may or may not know the P8 can run on AA batteries, which by the way can I just say them when it comes to Zoom products they've been doing this for
years and years and years but when you power them off it gives you this nice
little goodbye message. I love that. I think it's adorable. This takes four AA batteries, and you battery believe I got four of them right here, P8. And now just for reference, when it comes to battery life the P8 is rated as two hours with Phantom power off and recording with headphones. Three and a half hours
with NiMH batteries, Phantom power off
recording with headphones and six and a half hours with no Phantom power
AA, lithium batteries. I've talked about this in
some of my other videos, but rode released this USB power adapter for the Rodecaster Pro a while ago, where plugs into the power and then you can run the Rodecaster off of a USB power bank. It's great. And it works really well. Sometimes I've just taped a power bank to the bottom of the rodecaster, but the biggest downside to that is it gives you no indication of how much power is left. So you just kind of have to hope that your USB power brick has some kind of battery life indicator on
it or power left indicator because otherwise there's no way to know. Now, as soon as I put
in batteries, the screen on the P8 did dim quite a bit, but you can see instead of power in the corner, it now
has the battery sign. It's not telling me exactly
how much power I have left in terms of minutes or time or
anything, or even percentage but the battery indicator is
divided into three segments. So at least I can keep an eye on it. And I'm going to switch back over here with the SM7B specifically, because of how much gain is
being driven out of here. And I know that this is unnecessary but I'm gonna flip Phantom Power on, on like all of the channels that I'm not using right now, just to sort of see how that works. So right now I am recording with just batteries, nothing
else connected right here using an SM7B with, I wish I had the exact levels, but something like I would guess somewhere around 60 decibels, 55
to 60 decibels of gain, and plenty of headroom on my slider, and I can do that all on battery power. So that is pretty amazing. So hopefully at this point you can see why I started this video off by saying you can't go wrong either way. I don't think either one of these is inherently better
or worse than the other. Each one definitely has features that I wish the other
had the Rodecaster Pro has better build quality. It has better buttons. It has more equalization options. The Rodecaster also has the companion app which makes it easy for you to bring in sound effects, easy for you to adjust the effects and the equalization on the fly. There's no companion app with the zoom P8 but the P8, it has 70 decibels of gain, it's much easier to run on battery power. It has two extra XLR inputs. It does have one more physical sound pan. If that's something that matters to you, and it has everything
color coded straight out of the box, which is nice. And it just takes a full-size SD card. Now, a couple of downsides to the P8 to be aware of. The first is I'm personally not a fan of all of the inputs being on the top. It's nice to be able to
see everything right there but having these cables
run over everything. And this is only with two microphones, and one pair of headphones. Can you imagine with six inputs and six headphones and possibly even like a 3.5
millimeter thing happening, it just feels like it
would get very messy. unlike having all the inputs in the back of the device,
more than on the top. Just a personal preference thing though. Not necessarily objectively bad. The fact that it doesn't have built-in Bluetooth, may be a pro or con depending on how much you use that. The rodecaster pro of course comes with Bluetooth built in automatically. The short sliders on the
P8 are kind of hilarious. I mean, they get the job done but you definitely don't have the nuance and the fine tuning ability that you have on the Rodecaster Pro or
a more traditional mixer. And even though I'm no designer, so I don't mean to be
speaking out of my pay grade, but if the XLR plugs are
on the back of a unit you can move the display up and then extend the slider channels. Just a thought, just a
thought, just a thought. Something that only time will tell will be how often Zoom updates the firmware. So the Rodecaster has been
out for a few years now but it's gotten some major
firmware overhauls in that time which has totally changed
the functionality. In some cases, it's almost made it like an entirely new device just because of firmware updates. This is still running the 1.0 firmware. So it'll be interesting to see how often and how long Zoom updates their firmware and what kind of changes they make because that can breathe whole new life into a device like this. But the biggest con in my opinion is actually the build quality, while it's not bad, if this we're just gonna sit on your desk like this and stay here, it'll
last a really long time. However, this is where Zoom always makes confusing decisions. This is clearly a device
built for portability. It's got a ton of features. You don't need external
things like cloud lifters. It can run on AA batteries. I mean, I'm running it
on AA batteries right now but it's still very plasticky, and kind of not the
highest quality feeling meaning that if you were to travel with it to use it in remote
locations on a regular basis I could imagine it getting
beat up pretty quickly possibly even, you know,
getting damaged pretty easily. Of course, that can depend on how well you're taking care of it, but it just seems like
it's not gonna take much to dent it, scratch it, chip
it, mess something up on it. It just doesn't have that
super rugged, durable feel that you would expect
something like this to have. And it does have those
super clicky buttons. So when you're pressing it you might hear that in the
background of your recording even as lightly as I can press the button. (buttons clicking) It still does that. So all in all, I'm
really impressed in a way this sort of feels like when I was in college, and I was gonna
buy my first brand new car I needed something that was comfortable and reliable and affordable. And I was trying to choose between a Toyota Corolla
and a Honda Civic. And the difference between a 2009 Corolla and
Civic is almost non-existent. And I stressed myself
out for months over it. When in the end, either
one would have been fine. I went with the Corolla because it came in a cooler shade of blue. Shocking, I know. Both of these are gonna let
you create incredible work. Both of them have great features. It just depends. If there's specific things
you want from one or the other the rodecaster definitely has an edge in terms of build quality. The P8 has an edge in terms
of two more XLR inputs, plus all of that built-in gain. For me that's the biggest selling point of this is all that built-in gain, and the native ability to run on batteries without any other adapters
or anything like that. It's pretty cool too. So again, thank you to Sweetwater Sound for sending out this SM7B
for me, but more importantly thank you to Sweetwater
for sending this P8. And now that I have checked it out I think it's pretty
awesome, but I'm sticking with my rodecaster pro
because that's, I love it. I love the Rodecaster. I don't need this. So let's give this to somebody who does. All that you need to do in order to win this
giveaway is click the link in the description to this
video, it's gonna be open for 48 hours after this video goes live. So if you're watching this after that the giveaway has ended
congratulations to the winner. I can't wait to hear all
your podcasts that you make with the P8. The link in the description, we'll take you to the entry form. I am in the middle of
creating my very first course which is all about
launching your own podcast. So to enter the giveaway, you do need to sign up
for my mailing list, which I promise I don't spam people. I hardly ever even send out messages, but I want to give this to somebody who I think is
actually going to use it and get some joy out of it and use it to create podcasts and things. And so my podcast course
mailing list seems like a natural fit for that. Unfortunately, since I
am the one shipping it you're getting this exact unit
that I've used in this video. So I'm taking as good
of care of it as I can since I have to be the
one to ship it, I do need to limit entries to
the United States only. I wish I could include
everyone all around the world but for now, for the sake of practicality and shipping costs, it doesn't
need to stick with US only. And then the winner will
just be notified via email. And I am so excited to see
who wins this, who gets it and what you do with it. And of course, this is not
an official YouTube contest and Sweetwater Sound is not
involved with this contest. So please don't contact
them about it. They just sent me this and
said, I could give it away if I wanted it to, and I do. And I hope that I can give it away to you. So check that out. If you want to know more though about the Rodecaster Pro,
one of my favorite tools that I've ever purchased,
here are a couple of videos that I think would
be perfect to check out next (upbeat music)
