Stop the presses— RØDE has released something sure to change the podcasting game. Already lauded for its industry-standard microphones, RØDE is now offering the RØDECaster Pro, a powerful podcast-dedicated production console. This is an all-in-one recorder, mixer, sound-effects player, phone-tap, and more.
This unit is jam-packed with pod-friendly features, such as built-in safety measures to keep you from mangling your podcast as soon as you hit Record. No more losing episodes to technical difficulties. Other goodies include eight pads to launch jingles/pre-recorded audio; if your podcast makes use of segment music, you no longer must edit your bumpers in with a DAW. You can even play whole segments from the pads and change their colors.
Bluetooth connection for your phone is on hand—but not just for listening. Now you can route phone calls straight into the mixer, so you can record your phone calls without a phone tap or dedicated, Tape-A-Call style app.
When you take a phone call over Bluetooth, your guest won’t hear their voice echoing throughout the recording, which heretofore took loads of money to make happen. Don’t have Bluetooth? Cable-in your phone or laptop through a TRRS input, all without introducing echo on your guest’s line.
Now, most USB interfaces let you record audio to the computer. But few of them let you record audio from your computer back into your computer over the same USB connection. This unit lets you do exactly that, putting all USB-generated audio on its own channel strip. You can overlay your iTunes library under your guests, all while setting the levels perfectly.
Let’s talk analog connections, shall we?
Four dedicated, Class A, servo-biased preamps let you capture broadcast-quality audio with manual or automatic setup of input gain. This means it’s useful for panel pods as well as two-handers. Four headphone outs with dedicated volume pots are provided for all your guests, plus a front-panel headphone jack for the host. Channel 1, intended for the host, offers switchable ducking to automatically attenuate non-host channels when the host speaks. Speaker outputs are also on hand to make this a live-podcasting power house.
For those who don’t want to get too technical, selectable input profiles apply automatic DSP to match all kinds of voices or microphones. For the more technically inclined, well, this thing includes the Aural Exciter and Big Bottom made famous by Aphex, as well as selectable compression, noise gating, high-pass filtering, and de-essing—and that’s a deep cut on the emulated gear circuit.
The unit records to a microSD card, or to your computer, and clear readouts display how long you’ve been recording, how much time you’ve got left (on microSD cards), and how loud your guests are at any time. Setup and customization of the RØDE Caster Pro are a breeze, thanks to the touchscreen and intuitive menu design.
Everything described above is just a smattering of what the RØDE Caster Pro offers. If you want to investigate further, please peruse our SuperStore or check out the B&H website.
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