 Road have just released a beta firmware update 1.3.2 for the road caster duo and also the road caster pro 2 and this adds Four key new features and I'm going to go through them all in this video Before I do though if you're not already using the beta you can find a link down in the description for how to go About joining that program and getting the beta for yourself And I should also say that although this has just been released today And I have been using the private beta for a couple of weeks now and I've had no issues with it whatsoever So certainly I feel confident in recommending it to those that like to be in the beta loop So with that said let's jump into the first key feature then and this is that we can now you use roads USB microphones with the road caster pro 2 and the duo and that in fact is exactly what I'm doing now So I've got my regular pod mic USB. However, normally I'm using it over XLR But now I've got the USB cable there and that is what is taking my audio into the road caster So let's take a little look at that shall we here? We've got the the road caster pro 2 one thing I should note is that although you've got two USB sockets on the back of the road caster pro 2 and duo Then you want to be plugging your mic into that secondary socket So we can basically take one mic in over that secondary USB socket once we do though you'll see here on my road caster We've got this only thing that's jumping up and down here on the levels Which is my microphone obviously and you can see there that the channel it is on is the USB to channel One slight difference with this versus XLR mics or indeed the headset mic or any of the other inputs that we've got is that you are basically Using the on-board processing when using it over USB So what I mean by that is if I go into the settings for my my XLR mic Which is this channel one currently set to zero But if I go into the settings here, you'll see that we've got the on-board processing And if I take it out of advance for example, in fact, let me not do that You can see there that we've got these three Dials that road added in for you know a simpler way of basically tuning in your audio So we've got that depth sparkle and punch But then you can always go into the advanced settings and change a lot of these other things such as noise gate and so on Well, it's exactly the same with the pod mic USB But if I just go into that one you can see that if I go into the the basic settings as it were We've still got that depth sparkle and punch But if I go into the advanced settings We've got a couple of them that are missing versus the the XLR mics And that's because as I say you've basically got access to everything that you've got in terms of on-board processing on this microphone So what we've got here is I'll just turn my noise gate back on for a second What we have got here is we've got the high pass filter We've got the noise gate We've got the compressor and we've got the hour elixir and the big bottom there What is missing just to save you figuring it's out if I come into this one is the equalizer The dsr and then also the panning to to left and right. So let's just go back into that That's where we've got eight here and on this one There are only five things but we still do have all of the same functionality That you would have when using this over usb So just note that for example the high pass filter is basically a toggle on and off at 60 mega hertz or 60 hertz rather as opposed to on the The regular mic if I look at the noise gate there we've got the frequency and the slope So as I say, this is just to reiterate that you've basically got access to all of the On-board processing of this microphone and that would apply with any other Road usb microphones that you're going to plug in and that is just worth reiterating as well It is the road usb mics that currently work with this as opposed to just any old usb mic So with that said there is another slight difference here that we need to be aware of and that is in terms of latency None of the mics on the road caster are zero latency, but you know to be technical about it However, when you've got an xlr mic plugged in, you know, it's such that you don't really notice it when you are monitoring your audio I'm sure there are people that do but generally I don't notice it. However, it is noticeable When using the the usb mic So now that because my headphones are plugged in to the headphone one socket there for monitoring I am noticing that there is a slight difference there Obviously the sort of purpose of this, I guess is that you know, it's to extend the functionality And so more than likely, you know adding in a usb mic is going to come at a point where you're maybe adding in, you know An extra person into your podcast Maybe you are using the road caster duo and you've got two mics plugged in already and you just want to add a third person in um, so in that case So that there is not this slight delay the way to actually do the monitoring is to plug into the microphone itself So on the pod mic usb, for example, we have the obviously the usb and the xlr input, but I can just plug my headphones Directly into the headphone socket there and then I'm going to be able to hear the audio Coming through there. So it just removes that sort of latency in that So that is just one thing to note if you are using the pod mic or any other usb mic There will be sort of a slight increase in latency that you may find find it noticeable Incidentally in terms of other use cases for this I literally had a comment on one of my other videos about the road caster duo and Road caster duo versus the road caster pro 2 and which ones I preferred And although i'm using the road caster pro 2 right now for this demo because i'm testing some other things as well The duo is sitting over there currently a lighting feature But that is actually the the the road caster for me because i'm not doing a thing with lots of lots of different people But in any case somebody asked the question on that video about if you want to bring in a stereo pair Because this is one thing that we can do with the road caster is you can actually bring in two cables from the back either Two xlr cables or two Quarter inch jacks and I actually combine them so that you've got a stereo input Well, actually this functionality now with the usb mics would mean with the road caster duo You could still bring in a stereo pair over those two connectors on the back But then also then bring in a mic separately So that literally came up in a comment just the other day. Anyway, I digress slightly This is just thinking about sort of use cases for this as well And yeah, whether or not this will open up to other microphones in the future I don't know but currently as I say it is the road series of usb mics that this works with So with that said, let's move on to the the next thing on the list And that is that we've now got independent control over audio Levels on the smart pads. So what do I mean about that? Well, let's come over here If I was to play an audio track, let me just take my self out of this setting here By the way, I should say you've got all the same audio routing capability with the the mic channel over usb as well So if you want to you know, exclude certain things from the mix You can just go into here go into outputs and then go into routing and then go into the usb 2 And you'll see that we've got this thing. So if you want to set a custom mix for that you can you can do that as well So then yeah the smart pads though after that little digression if I was to play some music This is the intro music for my podcast I can fade that in and out But what if I've got multiple different tracks here and I actually want to set different levels for each one Well, let's just stop that for a moment if I go into the settings for that particular track So I'm going to tap on there. That is the settings for this particular audio What we can do here now you'll see that we've got this extra little control here And this is where we can set the volume so you can tap on there and I can just decrease that So now this is going to actually play lower. So if I just start that playing now You'll see how basically it's just at a lower volume even though the the level is further up So this means that obviously, you know, there's some things where you may want it to be louder Some things that you may want to be quieter And so we now have that control and I can just actually do it from there. You can hear me increasing the level of that So that is a nice little feature. Let me just switch that off Also related to audio levels and we're going to talk about ducking because ducking is this thing where When you speak it is going to reduce the level of the audio So if I just bring this in and instantly this applies to the primary mic So for the time being what I'm going to do is just switch over to this other mic So now I'm speaking on This mic and this is on the primary your primary XLR input channel there So what ducking is is if I just go and play some audio for a second Where's my audio gone? There it is. So I'm just going to play an audio track And this is going to come in a little bit louder probably there we go I've got this audio track and as you can see if I'm talking it's kind of overpowering me However, if I turn on ducking then when I speak The volume goes down And when I don't the volume goes up and this is on this channel here So you can actually see in in effect as I'm speaking it's down there, but as soon as I stop The volume has just come up again and then the volume has gone back down again So let me just pause that for a second because this is not a new feature We've had ducking for since it was released. I think But in any case what we can do now is if I go into the settings for this ducking here Then what we can do is go into the edit menu and here you've got the depth This is basically how much it is going to duck by So if I turn that up to five there 3.5 decibels, that's how much it's going to reduce it by so if I just play that music again with the ducking on You can probably see that the ducking effect is not as great It's still quite loud But if I just turn this one up with the dial then you'll see how it's actually reducing that volume of that music More so it's just an increase in the amount of Ducking or how how how great an effect that is having One thing to note is that ducking applies to all the channels except the audio on the smart pad So that may welcome in a future update But for the time being if you're playing audio on the smart pads The ducking feature does not apply to that, but it's to all other channels So there I was just playing some music through my computer From Epidemic Sound and then that was coming. That's where the the audio was coming from So that is the the ducking feature So we've done that three of them so far The final feature then that I want to talk about is it now has full compatibility with the Rode Wireless Pro Incidentally the Rode Wireless Pro. I'm absolutely loving I'm just about to be heading off on a trip to the to the States and I'm going to be traveling exceptionally light But this is definitely going to be in my my kit bag So the Rode Wireless Pro released recently Is obviously an evolution of the Rode Wireless series But the Rode Caster Pro 2 and the Rode Caster Duo can now access the the functionality and have full compatibility with these So incidentally the way that you would pair these if I just come back to the shot here I'm going to tap on this one here, which is I've got it set to a Rode Wireless device But nothing is currently paired. So if you tap on pair new device Then what it says is turn on the transmitter So I'll turn on the transmitter and then it says press the pairing button once again And you can see it's immediately just jumped in there. So that is the process for pairing one of these microphones Go to here click on pair Follow the instructions turn it on and then tap on it once again I reiterate that because I did this during a live stream and Confused myself with two button presses Anyway, so now it's working So if I just come over to here, this is on this microphone here So now you can see that this is the the audio coming through from the Rode Wireless Pro transmitter So the thing that that is opened up to us is you've got this this option here for gain assist So at the moment gain assist is off. I can turn the gain assist Gain assist so it's set to auto and the gain assist is for as you can see When I turn that on it did actually increase the the volume there or the gain rather So you can see that now as I'm speaking it's coming into this area if I turn it to dynamic It's even doing something slightly different there. Um, and then if I off altogether you can see that that is probably too low So the idea of gain assist is it is supposed to to help you with getting the gain right without you having to sort of figure it out Obviously, you can always override Select as if I just select gain assist as off and then I can just come in and adjust this here manually if I want The Rode Wireless Pro is is a great mic It's got the same onboard capsule as the other in the wireless series the Rode Wireless me and the Rode Wireless go to as well However, it does have this gain assist, which it does incidentally share with the Rode Wireless me One thing about this as well though is when you buy this it comes with so many accessories And one of the things it comes with is the Rode lavalier two mics two of them in fact And those do have a sort of enhanced Capsule in them. So if you want to sort of rich a fuller sound then using that that lovely mic with it And it also helps with obviously ease of positioning and everything is going to give you better audio But anyway all in all Let me switch back to the usb mic All of these functionalities and new features just mean that it is improving on what we can do with the Rode Rodecasters and as I say for Rodecaster duo users in particular This added functionality or added connectivity is as I'm sure going to be Really welcome. So with that said if you would like to know more about Rodecasters Then I've got a whole load of content and what I'll do is I'll leave a link to my Rodecaster playlist Over here on the right hand side So go and check that out and I've got to just say a big thank you to all of my channel members channel sponsors And of course the take one take academy members as well You can find a link to all the stuff I talked about today down in the description. See you next time