 The Rocaster Pro 2 beta program is now open and you can get access to some great new features in the firmware update 1.0.5, which is currently in beta. And so in this video, I'm going to tell you about those new features and also how you can get access to the beta program. In fact, let's start with that, shall we? That is simply by going to their registration page. You'll find a link to that down in the description. All you're going to do there is enter your name, your email address and your product serial number. The Rocaster Pro serial number can be found in one of two places. Either it is on the underside of the device itself printed, so you'll see where the sort of visa mount is in the center on the underside. There is a little QR code and then just above that, there's something that looks suspiciously like a serial number. That's your serial number. You can also find it from the front of the device if you don't want to turn it upside down. And from that, all you're going to do is, if I come out of here, the little settings cog wheel just up at the top there. Click on that, click on system, click on information and then view device information. And in there, you'll find your serial number and also your current firmware version that you're running as well. Now, once you've filled out the details back over on the website, you'll just put your serial number in there. Click submit and then you'll get an email from Rode welcoming you to the beta program and giving you information on how you actually access the beta software. And I'll just run through that very similar to what we've just done. In fact, you're going to click on the settings at the top, click on system, click on information, click on view device information. In fact, back to that exact same screen. I could have just stayed there kind of. But then here you'll see in this little window it's going to ask you to basically tap on here 10 times and just tap on that like a secret handshake 10 times. And then it would change from saying information at the top to beta mode. And then once you're in beta mode, you just need to come back out of that menu and click on the check for updates. And then it will check for the latest beta update and then you'll be good to go. So once you've done that, we are literally all ready to go with all of these new features to play with. So there's a few new features and I'll start with the ones that are relating to the USB inputs and outputs. So we have got two USB inputs and outputs on the back. But actually, although there's only two cables, there are actually three separate channels there. The first being Rocaster Pro 2 main, then there's Rocaster Pro 2 chat, which are both on a single cable. And then on the secondary cable, interestingly named Rocaster Pro 2 secondary is the channel that's on there. So those are the three channels. I've got them assigned to these three channels here on the Rocaster Pro 2. So these are the inputs and outputs. So the first thing that has been changed is on the Rocaster Pro 2 main, previously they were sending out a multi-track mix to that channel. And we did have a couple of options. You could either have it pre-fader and post-fader. So a couple of things to talk about here. What do I mean by multi-track? Well, obviously we've got multiple different things that are coming into the Rocaster Pro 2. You could have four microphones, a microphone and a guitar, two microphones, whatever it happens to be. And we've got the USB channels all coming in as well. And then we've got the audio pads here as well, the smart pads, and then also Bluetooth. There's lots of different tracks, lots of different channels in here. Well, previously over at USB, it was sending out all of those tracks individually. So that if you are using this with a DAW, a digital audio workstation, which is basically kind of like a virtual mixer on your computer, then it would send all of those tracks individually to the computer. You'll pick them up and then you could do some mixing or arranging or whatever you wanted to do in your computer. Now what we had, if I come into the settings and then I'll come into outputs and then multi-track, what we had before is we've got the, first of all we've got the mix for what's happening in the recording. So this is when you're recording on the device. But you've also got this USB one here as well. And previously we just had the option of pre-fader and post-fader. And what that means is when it's sending out this multi-track mix, you could either send out all of the raw signals that are coming into the RODECaster Pro and just send them out as a raw signals back out in a multi-track mix, or as multiple tracks I should say. Or that would be pre-fader, as in these are the faders. So before anything's happened with these faders. Or you could choose to have post-fader. Now with post-fader, if you have adjusted levels on here, it adjusts the levels of the audio that is going out into that mix. So if you're going to be doing some post-processing and things like that, I guess you would ideally want none of the processing that you've done on here to be translated across. But perhaps you might do it as well, so who knows. But in any case, those were the only two options we had, pre-fader or post-fader. Well now we've got this third option that's been added to basically just turn that off. And so it's rather than being a multi-track output, it is just a stereo output with all of the things that you've done in here, all of the effects, all of the levels and things that you've set here just going out. So certainly for my purposes, where I'm just sending this out into an application like Ecamm Live or Zoom or Discord or whatever. That's what I want, just a single stereo out. This by the way solves an issue that there was with some applications that didn't really like the multi-track mix. So I know that certain things that work in a browser didn't really like it. Ecamm Live had a slight issue with it, although there was a workaround for that in the settings of Ecamm. But that is what is the first new feature that was added. So then as well as that though, previously the three channels. Oh and by the way, I should also say that you'll see just down below me, we've got the channel names. So there's Rocaster Pro 2 Chat, Rocaster Pro 2 Main, Multi-Track and Rocaster Pro 2 Secondary. If you have just got that stereo output, these will change to be Rocaster Pro 2 Chat and then that second one, Rocaster Pro 2 Main Stereo. So those just down below are the, it's that middle one really that is going to change depending on the output that you've got. So you will actually be able to see in your computer whether you have got that multi-track switched on or off. But the other thing to note about that is if you've got anything that is using this device, so you've got it currently set to Rocaster Pro 2 Main Multi-Track, if you then go into the Rocaster and you change that setting, then anything that you've got using that device as an input or output, it will no longer be there, it might have gone to some other default. So if you do change anything in here, just go and check on your computer that you do have the right thing selected. For example, like in Ecamm, it was selected to Rocaster Pro 2 Main Multi-Track and then when I came and changed in here, it just defaulted to some other microphone. So that's just something to be aware of there. The next thing though that we've got is related to Mix-Minus and this is a really great feature and I know a lot of people have been excited about this. So still in the outputs and this is this routing table that has been talked about quite a lot. Previously, the main channel what did not have Mix-Minus on, the chat channel did have Mix-Minus on and the secondary channel you could choose whether or not you wanted to have Mix-Minus on or not. Maybe just I should explain what Mix-Minus is when you are using a device like this as both an input and an output from, for example, let's say Zoom. So you're using this as the mic in to Zoom so that you can play sound effects and things like that or whatever you might happen to be doing into your Zoom calls or workshops. This could be selected as the microphone, but it could also be selected as the output so it is where you're hearing everything because you've got your monitors plugged into it so you want the audio to come out from Zoom and into here so that you can hear it as well. However, what that would do would mean that the audio from Zoom was coming into the device and then going straight back out of the device into Zoom again and what that would mean is the people on the Zoom call would hear slap back so they'd hear themselves back momentarily later. And the same with Ecamm Live, if you're using it with Ecamm Live or something like that for recording videos then if you're playing any audio that is originated from Ecamm it would come into the device and back into Ecamm so there again you would get that kind of slap back, that duplication of audio. Mix-Minus basically takes anything that's coming in on a given channel minus it subtracts it from the mix that's going back so it basically means you just avoid that slap back. And it's important to note as well that you don't actually hear it in your ears as you are monitoring it. It's only the person on the other end that hears it and they'll be telling you I'm hearing slap back and you're thinking I'm not hearing it. Well that's what Mix-Minus is. So with this though now, with those three channels we've basically got the option to turn Mix-Minus on for every channel and so we just come into the channels here so let me just show you how I got into this just in case you are missing it. Click in the settings, click in outputs and then on the routing here and then at the top there you can see we've got the USB1 but I can click the arrow USB1 main that was this is the chat. Next is the secondary and this also applies to Bluetooth I should say as well so if you are connected to Bluetooth and you can see here we've got main or Mix-Minus so we have the option to turn that on and off for any channel but actually it's this routing table they've gone one step further with this and really opened up some great options because we can go into this custom and then this is basically simulating what Mix-Minus is right now as it's set up because this is the USB1 main coming in and you can see these are all the channels that are going out to USB1 so here we've got all of the other channels basically except USB1 that's got a little red cross next to it all of these have got a tick next to it but what if we wanted, we didn't want all of these channels going to USB1 well I could just toggle these off so maybe I'm using my USB secondary as like a chat channel or something like that or I've got a back channel going in Discord or whatever and I just simply don't want that to go out to that I could just easily toggle this one off here maybe I don't want the Bluetooth maybe I've got a call going on or something like that that's another way of having a back channel and I don't want it to go in through that way so that is the way that you do that by the way if it's something where you are actually going to at some point maybe want to bring someone in so if you are using this as like a back channel chat where you're going to want to be listening to people but at some point you might also want to be able to bring them into the show or the live stream or whatever it is you happen to be doing and this would not be the way to do it because you'd want to then be able to toggle it on and off so I've got another way to go about that if you are doing something where it's a back channel that you want to include them in the show at some point and you just want to basically mute them at times and bring them in there's another way to do that which I'll cover in a separate video and link down below but this just gives us really full control over what is being rooted to where now at the moment this is only for the USB channels I understand it's the plan to also introduce this similar sort of rooting for the headphones and the outputs there as well but currently it is just applied to these but as it is, this is a great feature and I'm really excited about this now the next thing that we've got though is if I come back out of here with the virtual faders here so we've got six faders here that are on the device itself and those are represented by these six channels here you can see I'm just talking into the microphone this is the only one that's going up and down here as I move this fader just out of shot you can't even see it but there you go that is what is going on there but we've also got these virtual faders so at the moment I've got one virtual channel and by the way it will only show up the virtual faders that you've got something assigned to so there's only one there at the moment because I've only got one thing assigned to it which is Bluetooth however if I did go into my fader setup so let me just come into faders you can see I've got two spare ones here as well so let's just say for the sake of argument that I was going to add in maybe another input there and I'll click on that come back there you can see now it's added this extra one in as well so you can have up to three virtual faders so one thing that they've done here is if you have got a fader selected then this was as it has always been this one then controls that fader so you can see as I'm turning the dial here it is moving the virtual fader up and down that's nothing new what is new however is if I push and hold this then that actually activates mute so if you have got a channel that you've got selected then you can push and hold this to toggle the mute on and off you can also just do it from here though so this is where you toggle on the mute command and then this is where you toggle on the listen command the listen by the way is that's where you are when I press that all I'm hearing now in my ears I'm not hearing anything else in the mix except what is coming through on this channel so if I'd got somebody talking to me in a back channel and I wanted to maybe there was other people on other microphones they were all talking and I wanted to just listen what was going on in this one channel that is how you would do that maybe queuing up music, maybe doing whatever I'm not sure but that is how you toggle that one on and this one then is the mute button you do have to have that channel selected in order for that to work so you click on here first and then this now is the fader level and then press and hold for the mute so you do still always have that on there anyway it's not a huge shortcut really but it's still nevertheless some extra little functionality the other thing that they've done is with all of these faders when you move a fader down to the bottom so as I move this fader you can see that it's moving down there when it is completely off it does actually change instead of being white you can see that it sort of goes it's actually just a very a white outline with a grey centre so that just shows you that it is completely off if it was slightly up it might still look white and you might think that it was down at the bottom and it was off but actually it's still on a little bit so that just means that when it is right down at the bottom then it will be completely off another thing that they've added is just coming back to these virtual faders is actually when you toggle one of these things so if I toggle the mute you can see it shows a little mute light just down at the bottom a little mute symbol and if I toggle the listen then you can see that now we've got the little listen icon down there as well so it just makes it clear that you've got either one or both of those on because previously it worked in the same way as the main faders you just toggle that one off with the main faders this to be honest I think they should just duplicate whatever they've got going on with the virtual ones because if I just move this up here slightly there this is simulating these two buttons that we've got next to each channel and we've there got the listen button I know I can press that one and I'm just listening to that you can see how it sort of come on with a brighter light and then this one here is the mute button and that is basically muting the audio from there so it's not going down into the mix so what happens though is when I press mute on here we do also get a visual representation up here but you can see it turns the whole of that base there red as I toggle it on and off so just up at the top for that corresponding channel if I toggle the listen you can see it toggles on this little green light however if I toggle both of them on then it actually defaults to just showing the mute so you can't see from up here whether the listen is also toggled on I think that would be better if they kind of replicated something that showed you if one or both of them are on maybe sort of half and half, half green and half red but that is the problem they've solved with this new update here because previously it did the same on those as well it did the same on there as well if you had the listen and mute then it would only show it as red and so it wasn't at all clear because there's no other visible way of showing that by the way these down here if I toggle that on you can see that it actually becomes slightly brighter you perhaps can't see it too well here but you can change the relative brightness of these as well so this is nothing new but it might be something that is useful to you so if you come into the settings into display and then into brightness you've got the brightness of the screen here so just click on that one and then we can turn the knob and this is where we're going to change the brightness of the screen but this one here if I click on buttons there's basically two brightness levels there's either the inactive level and the active level and it's displayed just on one dial like this and basically the end up here is where the maximum brightness is and then where the line starts from is the brightness of it when it's inactive hopefully this should make a bit more sense when I actually do this so I've got the inactive brightness setting and if I turn that down you can see it's turning down the brightness of all of the buttons they're coming up but that is when they are inactive and then the active setting is the brightness of any buttons that happen to be active so that would be like this you can see now that that is standing out a lot more but I can turn the brightness of that one down as well and that is where you adjust those I think it might be useful if the brightness of these bottom ones down here could be turned down just so that you do get that clear sort of distinction between the on and off whilst still not affecting these ones because I don't know if you're like me but I do like all of the pretty lights but when I have the brightness of these turned up then it just means that there's not so much of a differentiation between these whether they are on or off but maybe that's me just being nitpicking but there you go that is another thing that has been added in to just make it a little bit clearer in the virtual faders when things are on or off just like that so that is some of the new features that have been added into the ROKuster Pro 2 beta but there's some other videos all about the ROKuster Pro 2 that are coming up right now so I'll see you in there