 Road announced a number of amazing new products this week, and I was really excited about all of them until I was then a little bit disappointed about one of them in particular. So I'll explain all in due course, but there is some really great stuff coming up from Road. So let's start off with their new wireless mic offering, which is the new wireless me, same format as the wireless go that you're probably familiar with, the wireless go to as well. A couple of differences with this one. First of all, they've apparently simplified some of the sort of setup procedures and then also the quality that you're gonna get of it out of the box. Another difference though is it also has, this time, a mic on the receiver as well as the transmitter. So it means if you've got it mounted on top of a camera, for example, then it will be able to pick up both parties that way. So very similar there. I personally don't use the road wireless go, so I can't sort of comment on how that is, or whether I'm looking forward to this. I tend to be sitting here in my office, don't I? Anyway, next up though is relating to the road wireless go to there have been some improvements made to that as well, which are gonna come with a firmware update. And one of those updates is now, you don't actually need the software on the Mac to basically transfer files. They're not in a proprietary format. They are now just basically WAV files that you can just connect and drag straight onto your desktop or off the device, which apparently was a much asked for feature. The other thing related to the road wireless go to, so the older model, is that they are also introducing a charging case. So there's a number of different manufacturers of wireless mics that do come with charging cases. So I think they're just sort of playing catch up a little bit here, but it does look a really nice form factor if you are using these to have them both protected, but then also the ability to charge them directly within the case, and then also having a battery to be able to charge them whilst they are in the case as well. So a nice little addition here. When it comes to the road wireless go, if you are someone who uses it with the roadcaster, so I've got some other wireless mics that I use and there's a XLR adapter that you can get from road that allows you to then plug the transmitter or the receiver rather into your roadcaster so that then you can use it that way. Well, apparently there is a little hidden feature within the roadcaster Pro 2 that is going to be unlocked in a forthcoming firmware update imminently, which is actually going to give you the ability to pair with a transmitter from just within the roadcaster. So you're just basically going to pair the wireless mic directly to your roadcaster. So this may be something that pushes me over the edge to actually go ahead and buy a wireless mic from road. There you go. That's probably their intention, isn't it? So that's just a nice little feature. I do know a lot of people who use their wireless mics with the road. So just being able to pair it directly like that I think is a great little feature. Also for roadcaster Pro 2 users, another announcement is this bag that allows you to carry it and several mics and all the accessories. If you are out and about with your roadcaster, once again, I'm pretty static where I am, but I certainly can see if you're on a mobile podcast studio going out and about and interviewing people, then this is a nice little addition to the road lineup. The next main massive announcement though is, well, I'll just show you, shall I? It's a little mini roadcaster, the roadcaster Duo. I think that this is an awesome device. And the reason is basically it's exactly the same as the roadcaster Pro 2, except as you can see it's smaller. It's only got two XLR inputs rather than four, but it has still got all of the same functionality in terms of those two USB cables going into your computer that actually gives you three USB channels, all of the same processing and things like that that you've got on it. And I'll just play that again because there's another couple of things about this. First of all, it's got the little jack that you might have noticed there on the front just underneath the sound pads. And that's basically a TRRS. So right there, just at the very front there, TRRS cable, and that allows you to plug in your headphones directly into the front if you want. You've still got the connection on the back, but it's also being the TRRS. It means that you can also use headsets with a mic. So in actual fact, although you've lost one of the mic ports on the back, you may well be able to use a headset that is then, well, you can use a headset that has then got a mic sort of integrated into it. And you can apparently apply all of the same sort of processing to that as you would with the others. So why am I so excited about this? Well, it's because the majority of people that I talk with on consultation calls and the types of people that I'm working with tend to be more people who are using the ROCASTER as a device for either their solo, basically just recording themself, in which case only one mic coming in, but then also using the ROCASTER with applications like Zoom, ECAM Live, Teams, and so on. And they're using this to do the audio routing adding the mix minus. Well, this in effect gives you all of that functionality. And certainly for the smart pads on the side there, so the ROCASTER Pro 2 has obviously got eight, whereas this has got just six, but it's not something that I actually use a lot. I certainly don't apply any of the voice effects, the robot voice and things like that. I do use it for sort of intro music for when I'm recording my podcasts and so on, but I'm not really a heavy user of those smart pads. So losing two of them doesn't really make much difference to me. I do use on the back, I've got one mic coming in. I sometimes have my wireless mic going in as well, but guess what? You can now pair a wireless mic directly without the need for that. And then I'm also doing something a little bit funky, bringing in a stereo pair into the back from my computer, but that is by far not normal and not necessary. So what this actually is then, is it is for me almost like the ideal device for somebody who is using the ROCASTER for content creation as a solo content creator, but then also using it for communication on platforms like Zoom and things like that. So I think that this is gonna be a big seller to be honest, and there is no official word on the RODE website. However, I did see on another website, which I'll link to in the description, that the price of this is gonna be $500 thereabouts, 495 or whatever it is just thereabouts. So I will link to that, but again, this is not coming directly from RODE. So I don't know if that's been formally announced, but what they have said is that it will be available this month, at least that's what this other site says. So that's the sort of timeline for it. And I've got to say, if I was right now trying to choose between the ROCASTER Pro 2 or the ROCASTER Duo, the ROCASTER Duo pretty much will be doing everything that I need it to do. So that is where my sort of choice would go on this. I will obviously be getting one to review because I'm doing it for you, I've got to do it. So, but I will definitely be testing one out. But yeah, in terms of just that functionality, having everything else that the RCP 2 has got the ROCASTER Pro 2, I just think it's awesome. And I also want to share that with some of you or at least one lucky winner because I am doing a giveaway as well. So you can find a link to that down in the description, takeonetech.io slash giveaway. And I will be running this all throughout May. And then basically at the end of May, I'll close the entries. And then I'll do a draw on my live stream first Friday, Saturday in June. So definitely enter for your chance to win that. And yeah, don't know what exactly the availability is going to be, but as soon as the entries are closed, the order will be going in and you'll get it as soon as as soon as is humanly possible. So definitely enter that. The other thing that by the way that you get by entering or the winner will get is also complete access to my ROCASTER Pro 2 Masterclass. So this is the course that I created to basically cover all of the advanced audio routing and things like that of ROCASTER. So my reason for creating the course was that I think a lot of people get the ROCASTER, they look at some of the advanced audio processing that you do have on board, such as the compressor and all of these kinds of things, the noise gate. But then you come into looking at all the settings and often it is a little bit of a mystery in terms of what all these things are doing. And so often people are kind of tweaking things without necessarily knowing what they're doing. So the ROCASTER Pro 2 Masterclass is over 100 lessons and one particular section, which as I say was really the motivation for doing it, was the advanced audio. So here it talks about gain, attack, release, targeting specific frequencies, understanding high pass filter and these sort of things. And then looking at all these different terms and terminology that you need to know to really get the most out of the ROCASTER. Now this is the ROCASTER Pro 2 Masterclass. However, I will be updating it to also include the ROCASTER Duo because totally makes sense. It's essentially the same device in a smaller form factor with just a couple of the mics missing. So I'm really, really excited about the ROCASTER Duo. I think it's going to be a great product. And I hope that one of you lucky people watching wins that prize as well. So you can find out more about the ROCASTER Masterclass. Of course, I'll leave a link to that in the description if you just want to go ahead and take a look at that straightaway. Incidentally, you can also get hold of the ROCASTER Masterclass as part of the Tate One Tech Academy. So this basically includes access to all of my courses, beginners guides, masterclasses and various other different things, monthly workshops, Q&As, coaching sessions and various other different things. So I'll leave a link to all of that in the description as well and you can check that out at your leisure if you so wish. Anyway, let's carry on with the announcements because there was another announcement, another great product that I got so excited about just because it looked so cool. And let me just show you what that is. It is this. It is another little mini road device that looks very similar obviously to the aesthetic of the ROCASTER Duo and ROCASTER Pro 2. And this essentially though has got, as you may have seen, a small little button on the front that had a picture of a camera. And that intrigued me when I saw these initial sort of teaser shots of it. And then yeah, sure enough, it is in fact an HDMI capture card as well. So you can see what you've got on the back there in terms of connect connectivity. You've got one single jack in the back for the microphone and that again is these Neutric combo jacks that basically allow you to plug in either an XLR cable or a jack from either an instrument or something like that. You can also see on the back there it's got two little headphone sockets right next to that input. And you'll notice that one of them is headphones and the other one is one of those headset jacks as well. So that means that again, you've effectively got two inputs there in terms of the microphone. You've then got two HDMI sockets on the back and that is for HDMI capture obviously. And that is going to be for either 4K at 30 frames per second or 2K at 60 frames per second. And there is also a pass through there. So that means that if you're capturing your screen, for example, you would have the inputs going into the in and then the throughput going through to your actual screen and it's basically capturing that on the way through. And that is what I was really intrigued by and what I was interested in because I do have instances where I'm basically hooking up two or three computers and I want to be able to capture the HDMI coming to one of my monitors so that then I can bring that into e-cam live for presentations and all of that kind of stuff. So that is where this really sort of piqued my interest a little bit and I was thinking that this was gonna be something that I would be adding into my setup. I'll come on to why I probably won't now but next to that though, we do have two USB channels. So I'm not entirely sure if that's effectively giving us three channels as it does with the the Rocaster Pro 2 and the Rocaster Duo or whether it is just those two channels. It may be that it's just for connecting two computers. I'm not entirely clear on that myself just at the moment. But nevertheless, it is a great little looking device. You've got phantom power button just there on the back. So what else can I say about it and why am I a little bit disappointed with it? Well, the key is that little thing there that says X. So it's this thing, this little logo on the front that says Streamer X. That is the name of this device and it's part of the Rode X sort of brand. And if you go to road.com, that's one website but they've also got a Rode X website and that is for all of their Rode X branded things. And the thing about it though which is a little bit disappointing is look, not on Mac Insight and that is because their software that you used to control this with is called, what's it called? Unify, which is somewhere on here. If I scroll up to where the place where it is on the website. Here it is somewhere here. This little app that is on the screen there that is their Unify software. And effectively what that is it's kind of like a software version of the Rocaster. So it's a, you know, you can mix things you can apply effects. You can see all the little icons here which are very similar to the buttons that you have on your Stream Deck, sorry, on your Rocaster, the smart pads. So you have the same sorts of things here in the app. And effectively, as I say, it is a software version of the Rocaster. The problem, it's PC only. And I got so excited when they announced this Unify software a few months ago and I heard the announcement and I was waiting and waiting to download it and I downloaded it and then sure enough there's no DMG Mac file for installation. It is PC only. I don't know if this is something that is going to change imminently because it looks a really nice bit of software to do, you know, basically mixing as you would want to do on the Rocaster but just having it on the desktop. It's really cool. It's just a real, real shame that it's not available on the Mac because what that means is, unfortunately this little device, what it says is you can apply all of the effects to the mic going in using the Unify software and the Unify software is just not available on the Mac. So, yes, alas, this lovely little device I'll probably not be biting the bullet on one of those because effectively you can't apply any processing directly from the device as I understand it. It probably just would just pass through into some other application but as they specified in their video unless there's something which they didn't mention then, yeah, it's not looking good for that one, I'm afraid. Nevermind, let's move on. Let's hope that they bring that out for the PC within time. But next up though is another pretty cool device and this is the PodMic USB and as the name suggests with the USB in the name it does now also have USB connectivity. And in fact, this mic that I've got here is the Shure MV7 and the reason why I bought this mic originally was it was before I had a Rocaster, it was when I was first starting out in my studio and I wanted to get something that had some sort of like upgrade ability as it were. So this Shure MV7 has both an XLR and a USB on the back. So for the first eight, 10 months, nearly a year I guess I was actually using it over USB and then when I got the Rocaster I just swapped out and put in the XLR cable and that went into the Rocaster. So effectively this is something very similar because on the back it's got the same sort of setup it's got an XLR cable, a USB cable. It's also got a little headphone socket you can see there for monitoring. So you can plug your monitors directly into your headphones directly into the back of the device there. And that means that you've got zero latency for monitoring from when you are using it over USB and there's a little volume knob on there as well. Now this one does say that you can use it with their you can apply processing sorry to it if you have got a, if you're using it over USB if it is plugged into either the UniFi software, oh dear for Mac users, but fortunately it does also say at road central as well. So I'll be really interested to see what that looks like in terms of the sort of a way that you can adjust the sound and apply that processing because given that it's not available on the Streamer X but they're saying that you can use it with road central on which is Mac and PC on the pod mic, then it'll be just interesting to see how that is implemented. But yes, apparently you can apply sort of processing to it that way. The other thing which is really interesting is when using over USB, you can actually plug it directly into one of the USB sockets on the back of the Rocaster. So some people don't realize that the USB sockets on the back, you can also plug phones and things like that into them to actually connect with the phone over specifically the second USB on the Rocaster Pro 2. So they're saying that this microphone can actually plug directly into one of those. Now that actually means that that Rocaster Duo suddenly instead of feeling like, oh well it's actually now got only two connections for microphone, technically you've still got four because you could be plugging two pod mics into the regular sockets. You could then plug a pod mic into one of the USB sockets on the back and then you still got that technically headset socket. So I know headsets are a little bit dodgy as it goes in terms of high quality audio potentially. But nevertheless, it still just adds a little bit more to the connectivity, there we go, got it out in the end. So I do think that this is a really cool mic and certainly when I was looking at buying a microphone initially and I went with this one, I did look at the pod mic at the time which was only USB, I looked at another Rode one, forget which is, they've got another USB one in about the same price range. So to have a combo one like this and like the pod mic USB, I think certainly would have been something that I would have considered back then. A great addition, the pod mic, I understand the price of that is going to be, so I believe around about 195, something like that, 199. And then the Streamer X, which we looked at, sorry, Mac fans, is 399, apparently, according to this third party site. So what I'll do is I'll leave a link to all of these different resources and things like that that I've gathered this information from for you to take a look at. And if you want to come and join the discussion about this, there'll be plenty more talk about it over in the Take One Tech Discord. So I'll leave a link to that down below as well. In the meantime, for those watching on the replay, which is all of you, because this isn't live, I'll leave a link to some of my other roadcaster videos over here. Thanks to all of my channel members and thanks to everyone being a member of the Academy. It is great to have all of your support and I'll see you all very soon.