 Hello everyone, and welcome to the stream today. We're talking about the road caster duo and the road caster pro 2 and the reason for this stream is because just yesterday I've moved the road caster pro 2 back over to my desk you may have noticed it's been a feature on my shelf just for a little while. And the road caster duo has been my sort of my primary road caster sounds of anything to say. But I absolutely loved the duo since it came out and that has been the main one that I've been using but I did add the road caster pro 2 and sort of switch them out just because I was doing some things with testing with different mics and things like that. So I just wanted to try those out on the pro. But a couple of things struck me is first of all, once you go from the duo back to the pro, this suddenly feels like a massive thing on the desk, which is one of the things I do like about the road caster duo. But then the other reason for this stream is that somebody asked the question in the take one tech discord server. So in case you weren't already a member, then you want to go and check out that you can join for free. And there you can ask any questions related to anything that I cover on the channel or off topic stuff of course as well. But anyway, the question in there was specifically about a setup involving the road caster pro 2 with for inputs and then bringing in remote guests as well and piping that into a like a local event and how that was all done. But there was and that was by by Jeremy so rainy Cajun and he just happened to mention something which was that he was considering he didn't actually have the road caster either road caster at the moment, but he was considering getting a road caster pro 2 if potentially from somebody who's looking to side grade from a road caster pro 2 to a duo and that term just I've never heard it and whether he just made up on the spot but it made perfect sense to me because the road caster pro 2 versus the road caster duo if ever you're sort of switching from one to another is not really either an upgrade or a downgrade. It is side grading. It's just a different feature set. And that's the thing about the road caster duo is don't be put off by the fact that it doesn't have the word pro in the name because for me it is every bit as much pro as the road caster pro 2. And it's just that it has slightly different sort of inputs and outputs and so on. So I thought it would be useful then to just go through and talk about these different things. Oh, and hello there. You're in the chat indeed. So, hey, obviously, hey tequila. We've just been chatting in discord. But hey there, Jeremy. Great to see you here. This one is indeed for you. So yeah, we'll just go through the different feature set then and talk about what the primary differences are and some things that you may want to consider when you are, you know, considering which one to go for. I can actually do a spoiler alert, you know, if it basically comes down to the number of mics that you want to connect in essence. That's it. So, okay, streams over guys. I'll see you next week. Let's take a look then at the size. We've already seen this sort of top down shot with the two side by side. And incidentally, if you want to see the streamer x actually need to be careful doing this actually because this is my main cameras plugged into here, but that shows you the sort of size of the streamer x so the streamer x is about the size of the the the fader panel on the the duo but that's the size of the streamer x suppose we should mention that one a little bit later as well. But just looking at the two devices side by side. As you can see, this one is, you know, about a third of the width at two thirds of the width and I don't know three quarters of the height or something like that. The screen on them is exactly the same size. The the faders are the the actual faders themselves are the same size but obviously a little bit shorter there. All the other buttons down at the bottom and the top are the same size, but the smart pads are slightly sort of squished and closer to each other and I think they're actually a little bit smaller potentially. Now the smart pads incidentally you can see here that we've got six rather than eight. But of course you can use these buttons to page left and right so if you want more more features more functions then you can sort of spread those out over multiple pages. I don't tend to use the smart pads too much to be honest. And you'll notice that I don't have a lot of sound effects in my shows, but I do use them in our Creators pod private meetings and yesterday I was in a meeting and I had not a Creators pod, a general meeting and I dropped something on my stream deck and this came out. So that was quite amusing and it will be even more amusing to Keely and Duncan folks as well. But anyway, so I don't tend to use the smart pads too much in my live streams or things like that. But I do use it for when I record my podcast, which I haven't done for a while for like intro music and things like that. But you can also use them for ducking that kind of thing. So that is one obvious difference here is we've got fewer smart pads here. The other thing obviously is you can see there are the faders aren't just slightly shorter, but there are fewer of them as well. So we've got six over here and four on the duo. And although there is on both devices, there is three virtual faders. So effectively, you've got nine things you can control here and you control the virtual faders with the dial exactly the same on both devices. So you've got the three virtual faders on both of them. The other obvious difference here is that you don't have the physical record button. So on the duo that is here. So no, no big issue. It's pretty easy to just tap on that to start recording. And then obviously the dials along the top here are for the headphones. So the duo is called the duo because you have two XLR mic inputs and therefore two headphone outputs as well. And so you've just got the two dials over here. So let's talk about the inputs and outputs then. Hey, Chris, great to see you here. Thank you for staying up. Appreciate it's late in the UK. It does look a little bit much with all of these on the desk at the same time. So usually it's only one roadcaster or the other. Yes, it does look a little bit like that at the moment. But let's talk about the inputs and outputs then because this is the primary difference then is that on the pro to you've got four of these no trick combo jacks. So this means that you can either plug in XLR microphones into either of these, but you can also plug in a quarter inch jacks if you're taking an instrument or something like that. You've then got the monitors out. So that's the same on both of them for speakers. And then you've got the two headphone ports here on the pro to you've got four headphone ports. The thing that I say makes this duo every bit as much pro as the roadcaster pro to is really the USB inputs and outputs because you've got the same two USB connections, which gives you actually three USB channels. And that for me is the thing that sets this apart and these two apart from really any other mixer because it allows us to do some really complex audio routing. And that is what I'm using these things for. I'm wanting to have my like e-cam, my zoom, my discord, maybe zoom ISO, all running on separate channels and then being able to do the audio routing from one to another so that I can be doing something in e-cam and then be bringing that recording or the audio from that into zoom and the audio from zoom back into that. So for me, that is like the killer feature of this that has just really transformed the things that I do without having to rely on software. So yeah, and then you've also got the ethernet there. So that's for software updates and things like that. So basically this whole thing on the back here, I'm not going to lift the roadcaster up, but it looks exactly the same as the roadcaster just that the roadcaster pro to has two extra ports and it has two extra of these combo jacks. However, that said, what the roadcaster duo does have something that the roadcaster pro to doesn't have and that is this little socket on the front, which is for a headset. So or at least it's labeled as a headset jack. So that means you can use something like the road and th 100. By the way, all of the things that I'm talking about, you'll find linked in the description. I'm not going to go through and put things in the chat, but you'll find them all in the description, all the things I'm talking about. So the road and th 100 is a great headset mic. I obviously you've never seen me use this on a live stream. I'm not much for the look of this on live streams and to be honest, even zoom calls, I prefer to use this. However, I do use the headphones there when I'm listening to stuff in general. And by the way, road sent me that to sort of test out with the headset feature. So I'd already got the h 100, but the h 100 m with the boom mic was for testing and the quality of that is great. And you can just plug that straight into the front. However, another use for the headset jack on the front is actually if you are using something like a lav mic. Now I've got a lovely mic plugged in right now and I'm going to show you that with with wireless in a moment. But actually, if you've got this connector here, the SC for connector, that's basically a TRS, which is the the connector that you will probably have on the end of your love mic. And then that converts that into a TRS, which is the one with the three little rings there. And so you can plug that directly into the front of the rocaster duo, and that allows you to then plug your your love mic straight into the front. So in actual fact, it's a great way to just get that additional mic into there. Of course, if you want to plug a love mic directly into the rocaster pro 2, you can also use this the VXLR pro, which is basically a 3.5 mil jack in that side, and then the XLR in the back. So that's how I was previously connecting a love mic to the rocaster pro 2 is just using this into the into the back and then plugging the love mic into that, albeit with an extension extension cord to get it to give me that extra length on it. There was one thing that I was doing with the pro 2, which I haven't been able to do with the duo. But actually, it wasn't something that I really missed in the end, which was that I mentioned that you've got these three USB channels. So I use one for ECAM one for discord one for zoom and that discord one I'll switch out for zoom ISO if I happen to be using that at the same time as well. But then I ended up using a stereo pair coming into the back of the rocaster for my system audio. So that gave me effectively four channels then into the into the into the rocaster from the computer. And what I mean by that is each of these faders here you can assign to different things. And so this one at the moment is my main mic. This one that I'm talking on right now is actually the love mic used over wireless. I'll talk about that in a moment. But then I've got my three USB channels here. And so this one here was the one that I was using for bringing system audio in because you can actually join two of the XLR inputs or Jack 3.5. Sorry, quarter inch jack inputs at the back and combine the two mono inputs into a stereo input. So I was bringing stereo audio in from my computer that way. I was doing that because kind of like I could and I thought it'd be great to have that separate control over this over the system audio. But honestly in practice over time I realized I wasn't really using that because Ecam can control the system audio anyway. So if I've got system audio coming in through the same channel is Ecam. Ecam can handle that and capture it in the recording if it needs to. If I'm not doing a screen share or whatever then it won't be captured in the recording anyway. And the mix minus would stop it feeding back into it. So all of that to say is it was a cool little geeky thing that I did once. But when I went moved over to the Rocaster Duo, I certainly didn't didn't miss it. So all of that to say that thing that was doing is not something I'm doing right now. But I certainly was taking the love mic into the back. The other thing to mention is that both of these devices now have the ability to connect with the road wireless system. So if you've got a road wireless me, a road wireless go to a road wireless pro, then you can just sort of pair those mics with the device. One thing to note is that that will be in place of one of the inputs at the back there. So where you've got the four XLR inputs or four combo jack inputs, then like right now I've got my road wireless go connected. But that is taking up one of those channels. You basically lose one of those at the moment. You lose one of those when you collect connect a wireless device. But as I say on the road custard duo, I'm not really, you know, I'm not doing multi microphone setups is generally just me. So I'm either using my primary mic. I've got the wireless connected to the duo as well. And then I can also plug a love mic into the front. So that's why I said at the time that this was released and ever since I've had it, I feel like this duo was kind of like made for me really. It's got exactly the inputs and outputs that I need. And it does the all of the advanced routing. It's kind of like the perfect device in a compact form factor. But the roadcaster pro two obviously is specifically for people who want those those extra inputs, just like Jeremy was talking about, you know, with his use case of having, you know, more than more than two or three people in the room at the same time. So let me just put the wireless mic back on. So you can kind of kind of hear this. Incidentally, this is the road wireless me going into the road love mic. And it's the love to on the on the frontier. I could probably do a little bit of better job of correcting the audio and so on. But as a as a wireless system, just going straight into the roadcaster. It works. It works pretty pretty well. Let me just come back to this. This question. So see where are we here? In your opinion, what is the number one cause for slapback using a roadcaster? Seems it would be an open audio loop. IE someone not using headphones. Either is somebody yet somebody not using headphones if you've got speakers and incidentally the whole, you know, the thing that sort of spurred this stream really was the discussion in the in the take one tech discord about this situation of bringing in 10 remote guests using e-cam live interview mode having four in person guests in an event or whatever. And then also wanting to pipe the music, the music, the audio back into the room for the audience, the live audience to hear. And so that's something that technically you can do with the roadcaster because you've got the four mic inputs. You can then bring the e-cam in over USB. And then you can have audio monitors. But the point about that that I mentioned was that the default setting of the monitors on the back of the roadcaster is that when you have got a live mic the monitors are off. So you don't want the audio from the speakers to feed back into the microphone. So that's obviously defeats the object of this particular setup that we were discussing because the whole point was that the audience can hear what's going on. So there's a couple of options there. So first of all, you can actually toggle that off. So might as well just mention that. In the settings on the roadcaster you've got outputs and you've got monitor and there's this option at the top which says auto mute monitor output. And that's that thing that basically when you've got a mic open it's going to stop the audio going out through the speakers of the back there. So you can turn that one off. But then of course you are then at risk of the potential issue that that is intended to prevent. That's why is a default setting, which is that the audio from the speakers can come back into the mics. So in the case of just being conscious of the actual settings that you've got, sorry, the physical setup that you've got in terms of where the speakers are placed, where the mics are placed for those people that are in the live there and then potentially use the noise gate to make sure that no audio is just, you haven't basically got continuously open mics. And so to do that you would go into the audio settings and you'd go to outputs again, but this time go to, oh sorry, I beg your pardon, you wouldn't go to there at all. You would go to the mic settings and then you would come into the advanced settings and go into the noise gate. And with the noise gate just I did, I've covered this in various videos on my channel before but the noise gate basically is, you know, when somebody is speaking then it's going to kind of open the gate and allow that audio to come through and when they stop speaking it will go quiet. Like right now I've got air con going in the background that if you listened you would be able to hear it but as soon as I stopped talking it goes completely quiet and that's because there is this thing called the range here which you can't really see, I've not got this setup for demonstrating but basically the range on the noise gate is something that says like, okay, when the noise drops below the threshold, how much shall I close the gate by? So oftentimes it's not completely shut which is still allowing some of that background noise through but if you want to have it closed completely you would just change the range to 100 decibels so that means basically it's going to be completely shut and that's the way that I have it set up so that when I'm on Zoom calls for example which is the majority of the thing that I use these for then when I'm not speaking it's completely shut and none of my audio is coming through so that would be one way of sort of preventing the audio from coming through and into the live and sort of feeding back into the mic so that is one obviously cause of slapback and specific to your use case the other thing which causes slapback which by the way is this thing that people call echo which is the just single repetition back of the audio from them so like on Zoom the person, person, wood, wood, here, here, them, them, self, self, back, back, that kind of thing so that is also usually down to just not having Mix Minus switched on as well and so Mix Minus is this thing where anything that's coming in from that channel does not go back down that channel I was talking to somebody just yesterday and they were saying what are some of the common issues that people have with the ROCASTER and actually it's the audio routing thing that is one of the main issues and specifically it's this fact that it can be confusing with any audio device because you've got multiple different inputs and outputs and understanding that actually some things, some channels can be both an input and an output so for example the microphone is obviously it's only an input audio is going into the ROCASTER and the ROCASTER is the hub of audio audio is going in from my mic into there and that's it my headphones on the other hand are purely an output so nothing's going into the mix from my headphones I'm just hearing what's going on and when it comes to the USB channels they are both inputs and outputs same with the Bluetooth channel as well that's potentially both a two-way audio deal going on and indeed with the headset as well so it is this thing of understanding what Mix Minus is when you are turning on Mix Minus on the USB main channel let's say that's what you've got ECAM set to what that means is the audio from ECAM is going to come into the ROCASTER this hub into this mix of all of these different audio sources and then it's going to go back to all of the different things like the headphones the zoom channel maybe and to the speakers and so on but Mix Minus just means it's going to come in and go to all of those channels but it's not going to go back the way it came back down the channel that goes into ECAM so that's one thing that would cause slapback I've got to say there is another issue that I've found on that people have had when people have booked calls with me where they've said I'm getting slapback but it's like really faint so it's kind of like it's not usually slapback would be at full volume so because the audio is coming into the hub and then it's going back again so that's you know if you haven't got Mix Minus on obviously if it's coming from external speakers then it will be at a slightly lower volume but I've had issues with I've had people call me where they've had an issue where they've been getting the return feed if you like or the slapback has been at a really low volume but it's just there and they've gone out of their mind trying to figure out what it is and in each case it's been where they've been using it happens to be over the ear headphones like this and I've said to them just go to your headphones and turn the volume down slightly on your headphones and unbelievably the slapback has been coming because with these kind of headphones I mean generally over the ear ones you're potentially more likely to have like a audio leakage if that is the word you know coming out from the side of the headphones and in every case where these folks have called me and as I say there's been like five or six now so it's happened enough for me to think like this is a thing that happens to people then yeah it's just been that the volume in their headphones has been slightly too high and then their sensitive microphone has been picking up the audio from their headphones so that is another one that potentially could cause that so there are a number of reasons why this may happen there's also other things like if somebody's got some sort of audio routing set up on their computer as well so they're using their roadcaster but then there's something else going on that may be being set up before or something like that so there are a few different issues there but there is by the way a process I know that one of the things you were mentioning yesterday is that these things seem complex and there's sometimes a bit of apprehension jumping in with something like the roadcaster and the duo but actually I've got some guides on my channel which sort of take you through step by step once you've got the thing set up there's not really that many things to put in place I always say just have your mixed minus turned on all the time for your USB channels because I can't think of a scenario where it would be harmful to have it on whereas I can think of plenty of scenarios where it would be harmful not to because you'd get that slap back but generally stuff's either one way audio that's coming into the roadcaster in any case from a system or something like that and so it doesn't matter if it goes back into the system or it is something where you don't want it to feedback in so yeah don't be daunted by it there's just a few simple steps to follow so indeed that is why the in-ear monitors are great also I kind of think that when you're on calls having a big set of cans like that or even on screen they're kind of like almost like an invisible barrier because it doesn't kind of look natural to be speaking like that so yeah so where am I up to with that little digression I do tend to go down that little rabbit holes one thing to note about the headset because I did mention the headset on the roadcaster duo that is a completely separate channel so whilst the wireless if you're using the wireless mic in either device it's in place of one of those two jacks on the back or in place of one of the four on the back of the roadcaster pro 2 with the headset that is in itself a channel now one thing to note about that is on here we've got six physical faders and three virtual faders and so that maps to all of the potential inputs because we've obviously got the three USB channels we've got the four mics we've also then got what else we got the smart pads and we've got bluetooth so that is the nine channels that there are in here for inputs and so those all map to a fader be it a virtual one or a physical fader on the roadcaster duo we've got the four physical and the three virtual so we've got seven but the inputs are the two at the back there we've also got the smart pads we've got the three other channels the USB channels and we've got bluetooth but we've also got the headset so in theory you're choosing seven out of eight potential inputs there so that's just something to note in terms of where they feature on the faders but you can I was going to say you can see you probably can't hear but this is actually what I've got mapped to my headset so there's an extra icon here which is for your headset or in this case you know if I got my lovely mic plugged into it whatever so for me that's not an issue to be honest I don't tend to use bluetooth somebody in the just to explain again why I really love these devices so someone in the take one tech academy they do this thing where they're on calls in zoom but they're also bringing in people over video as well sorry over phone call as well actually from another country and then they're also going into discord and they're able and then they've got they're running all this through e-cam their presentation so it's pretty amazing to be able to do all this routing where they've got their e-cam on one channel they've got discord on another they've got their zoom going on another channel and then they've also got the bluetooth which enables you to connect it to your phone as if it is a bluetooth headset you can also bring the phone in via USB as well but because they've been taken up for all the computer stuff just bringing in over bluetooth and then the person on the other side is hearing all of your broadcast audio and then you're obviously bringing them in to be routing it into all these other places as well so that's really where the audio routing is pretty amazing it's like quite astounding what we can actually do with it in real world cases and the net result of that is often people don't really realise what's going on like the quality that they're getting but subconsciously I mean from a you know his his participants for example people don't need to know like how it's been done but they're just suddenly conscious of the fact that oh wait a minute so we're talking with people on zoom you're bringing people on from a call we've also got these other people watching in a discord and so on it's it's quite it's quite good is there let me just see what this question is saying is whoops sorry about that is there a way to have an spdiff in and I don't know what spdiff out is to be honest I don't know what spdiff is so for the USB ports or as a jack I'm not sure what spdiff it's just tell me what spdiff is and I'll I'll see if I don't figure it out the other thing that haven't talked about which I'm going to do a completely separate video on is that road has got their road unify software which is is out on the Mac now as well and that is something that was released specifically for the road caster the road streamer X which is is like a virtual mixer on your computer to allow you to give more control over individual apps on your computer and the levels of those and so on I have already played around with this I'm going to make a full video about it but how you can actually use that in conjunction with the road caster because then you've got your your system audio can come into your road caster but actually you can route the system audio through the unify and therefore you can have like individual mixes of everything on your computer before it's feeding into the road caster and therefore before it's going back into e-camp so you can actually control or into zoom or wherever so you can actually do that as well and by the way it's Librod Auro welcome to the stream as well but yeah just let me know what that SP diff is I'm not entirely sure what that is and thank you Rainy Cajun welcome to the backstage pass for some reason my little animated pop-up hasn't popped up what you'll find is you will be able to get access to the discord so in case you're not familiar the backstage pass level of my YouTube memberships gives you access to the discord so that's where before the live stream starts I always go live into discord this is another thing I use the road caster for as well by the way so in the on-air backstage I'll just double check after we get offline Jeremy that you've got got access but yeah I have a channel in discord so we go in there and have a chat before the stream starts and then when the stream finishes we carry on the conversation afterwards so so yes but thanks for thanks for joining I appreciate the sport and I look forward to look forward to chatting you chatting to you in the backstage area as well okay Sony Phillips digital interface a type of digital audio interface used in consumer audio equipment to output audio over relative short distances that will be if it's an external device if it's got any kind of output so that's not USB so you can't plug external USB audio devices into the road caster at the moment so you just like any old device that you would plug into your computer you can't just take that into the road caster however if it's got a line out for example then you can certainly take that into the road caster and the way that you do that is if you wanted the stereo output for example you could take a line out from that device and then take that into a stereo pair into the back of the road caster and then you'd still have the full stereo audio if it's just mono that you've got then you could take it into that just looking at that if you're talking about transmitting audio if you're looking for something going the other way as in you want to take the road caster through that device for transmitting audio then you could take out from one of the either one of the headphone jacks and routed into there or from the external speaker connections on the back of the road caster but just take that into a line in to that device I'd never heard of that though so so yeah there is ways though to connect external audio devices into both the road caster pro 2 and the road caster duo that thing though about if you're taking a stereo pair from something obviously the duo only has those those two combo jacks on the back so if you're using an XLR mic with the road caster duo then you would only have like one available port but potentially with the pro 2 you could do that hey Jake great to see you here and what an exciting day the road caster pro 2 you must feel like a if you're like me a kid in a sweet shop so yeah the road caster pro 2 is just an awesome an awesome device the signal signal is transmitted this is the thing with live streaming I get to a comment I read it and then I see that there's following comments afterwards the signal is transmitted over either a coax cable or fiber optic cable so if it's over RCA connectors then yeah you can get the adapters to to connect those so that is actually let me see if I've got one here so that is actually the way that I was connecting my something like this this is actually how I was connecting my let me get the words out connecting my computer I was using a cable like this now this doesn't directly plug into the back of the road caster so these RCA cables don't plug directly into the back but then I got an adapter which takes an RCA into a quarter inch jack because basically those combo jacks on the back of the road caster are either the quarter inch jack or an XLR so if you've got something like this you can just get an adapter for these but you can also get one equally that has got like two of these on one end and two XLR on the other end or two of these on one end and two quarter inch jacks so if you want the most efficient way of doing it whatever's coming out of your device then on the other end if you've just got two quarter inch jacks then those would plug in and create a stereo pair so yeah you could certainly connect that into the if you're going to be doing stuff like that I would definitely recommend the Pro 2 just for having that extra connectivity there for other mics and things like that as well if indeed you're going to use mics if you're not and you only want this to go into that and and incidentally so again just assuming that that means coming in from that device into the road caster if you want something going the other way to be able to transmit then you would just use the out of the monitor out on the back of the road caster and have that go into that that other device I got a PC that the Soundcard has a SPDF out stereo pair now but I need to get another mic in the mix alright okay so here we go again here's me just missing the very next comment yeah if you want the stereo pair coming into the road caster and you want another mic then it's the road caster pro 2 the duo that I would definitely recommend for that Hey Tanju I was wondering whether you have had any his problems with your in-ear monitors I use the KZ ZS10 Pro RCP 2 and I got rid of it with to be honest with you actually I haven't had any his issue with these the only his issue I have is with my aircon so I can always hear that in the back of my ears when I'm talking so I guess a lot of people may not necessarily notice it but no I haven't but thanks for mentioning that I've not had that issue as such no I've not I'm just thinking if there is any issue like that I had but as long as you've got rid of it though that is the main thing SPDF is pretty dated tech I can't say it in my research recently for podcasting equipment my thing about it is though whether or not it is is dated or not if it's something that's in the mix it's nice to know that we can integrate with it so I don't know like I said it's not something I'd heard of but yeah if it's something that's already being used and in a setup it's just nice to know that we can still sort of integrate that with these so let me see the other couple of things that I just want to mention about both of these devices is that I like the fact that they can be visa mounted so you can mount them onto either an arm or onto some other stand and I often get asked about this so I thought it was worth mentioning I have both of these on this this stand here I've left a link to it in the description I can probably just drop it in here if anyone's interested and there's also a a desk mounted arm that is that was really surprised actually how sometimes I tend to look at things and think I'm not sure about that it looks a little bit too low cost to be good and then I did try it out and I got it so I've dropped in links to two things one is the desk stand here that I'm using and as you can see this is intended for monitors but you can sort of fold this flat here and then adjust the angle of it but it just helps to stand it off the desk so it's crucially not sort of hidden behind my stream decks but then there's also another arm there that I've got that actually I don't have it mounted on an arm right now but the the arms I've got three of them around mounting monitors and so on but that's a great way also to mount the Rokasta up off the desk incidentally the Rokasta Pro 2 has the four mounting holes for a visa mount but it also has a single it's not quarter twenty that's too small it has one of the largest sort of you know like you might get on the top of a mic stand for example so you can mount it from a single mounting point so it was interesting to note that on the duo they actually dropped that single mounting point at the center and went with the just the four visa mount things which to be honest with you felt like a more sturdy connection anyway rather than having the whole thing sort of balanced on one single screw I did actually have the Rokasta Pro 2 for a while mounted on my Elgato low profile arm for this mic arm so it was literally just mounted on this arm here with a single mounting point but I ended up switching to this desk mounted one and I've tried various different mounting options but I just thought I'd mention that so Tanju I'm routing whoops where's it gone just dropped it off the screen there routing my Mac output to the Rokasta Pro 2 with two Jacks could the TRS TRRS be used for this somehow that is the the one on the front of the duo for example the TR RS or the TRS is for headset it's still only mono in so it's still only a mono mic in so the whole point about using the two Jacks is that we've got that stereo pair so you're not going to get that over a single Jack going in be it TRS or TRRS the TRRS is for basically headphones and mic whereas the TRS is for either a mic coming into the back for example or a or the headphone sockets would be that kind as well so but actually thinking about side grading to the duo but like I say I was doing that thing to begin with so bringing in both of those stereo pair from the computer but it was really when I got the duo I like the compact form factor I realised that actually the audio routing that I'm doing in any case you know if I have the the system audio on the same channel as ECAM that gets around the whole issue of the mix-minus because ECAM can handle system audio when it needs to whereas it does then get routed into all the other things so you may find that although that stereo pair from system audio is great you may find that you just don't miss it with the duo I certainly haven't really missed it and as I say I'm only mentioned at the beginning I only sort of now have the duo set up just because I'm doing some other testing of some other other things so Rich there was some issue where some people were having the some of the the smartpads were triggering at some point now whether that was related to that or not that was my hypothesis that was something about to do with the mounting that may have been triggering some of the smartpads but I've not had an issue with mine since it's been mounted on the visa mount in this way so whether that was something to do with the the central thing or not I'm not sure but yeah I know that there was I had that issue when I had it mounted up with one of the pads and I think Rob had something like that as well where it was triggering one of them so you're not dreaming but Chris I have the ROCASTER PRO 2 should I buy the duo as well just because I like all the shiny lights well that is certainly an option what you may consider is side grading to the duo i.e. getting rid of the ROCASTER PRO 2 and having the ROCASTER and the ROD duo instead just because I know what you do you're not really doing sort of some things with multiple mics coming in so whilst it does look nice to have all the shiny lights this is getting a bit much on my desk if I come over to this shot yeah it's taking up quite a bit of space here but actually the duo itself just fits neatly under there the other thing about the duo as well is for what I'm doing which I think is pretty similar to you Chris is that I've just got basically here on my my phases here on the duo when it's plugged in or everything's going through the ROCASTER PRO 2 at the moment but I've got my mic then three channels for Ecam, Discord and Zoom and you can see they're colour coded so orange for Ecam, purple for Discord and blue for Zoom and this light blue one is my mic so I've got control for all of the things that I need I do have the virtual channels here as well so if it's something where if I was using a wireless mic or a lav mic for that particular setup that particular thing remembering we can save profiles then I would have the lav mic on here instead although I'd switch between them for the demo like right now so switching to the lav mic like that and switching back to this one like that generally in a sort of an actual live scenario that isn't a YouTube demo I'm only using one at a time so for me the sort of simplicity then of even though I have obviously all my faders on here colour coded but it might be that you find that the simplicity of this is you know it's got just what you need basically without having everything else on it so yeah that would be a consideration but of course I know that you're like me Tim sorry Chris so yeah you could consider having both of them as well I did wonder if you can plug one into the other and have like an extended thing alas that's not quite possible maybe in the future and as I say for some time the Rocaster Pro 2 has been on that shelf there behind me as a very nice lighting feature because the duo has been my main go-to there so yeah really what the point of this live stream was for the purpose of this was to just sort of talk about the difference between the two and how I think that there is this naming thing where there's the Rocaster Duo versus the Pro 2 but don't be fooled as I say by the fact that the Rocaster Duo doesn't have pro in its name it is every bit as much as a pro device as the Rocaster Pro 2 just that it doesn't have quite as many XLR inputs but you do have that extra I feel like I'm stumbling over my words today it does have that extra attachment at the front there to plug in either a headset or a whatever it happens to be over that so it's got a lot of versatility for the duo and for me that is right really it's going to come down to whether or not you need those extra XLR inputs or indeed instruments so there's somebody else in the academy who is a musician and so they want to have the mics but then they're plugging in other audio equipment as well because they're bringing that all in as well the other obvious thing to mention then is there's a price differential as well I'm talking about it purely on specs and if you've got the requirement then they both offer exceptional value for what they both do but obviously the pro is slightly more expensive or it is more expensive than the the duo I'm just forgetting the exact price of each now so I need to definitely just mention that so let me just pull up the duo this is the sort of thing that a professional live streamer would have had queued up and on hand isn't it there you go so the the pro 2 he says just scrambling to get them up the duo is basically $500 it's $499 and the pro 2 is $700 so it's $200 extra for the pro 2 versus the duo so again it comes down to if you've got that need for those extra inputs that is the cost associated with it but like I say the duo is every bit as much pro hey there and I was looking at the pro 2 but I'm saving a bit more for the Maki DGZ NDI is a game changer at that price point yeah the Maki I've not tested that out myself for me the thing that was lacking in that was the USB port so as I've mentioned today like one of the main things about the ROCaster for me is just those three dedicated ports for connecting with your computer software if you've got you know multiple different things that you need that makes minus on so for me that was kind of like the deal breaker because I think it's only got one or potentially two USB connections I think it's only one that might be you can correct me on that the other thing about the Maki is it's just massive and I've just mentioned about how the the thing about this is I really like the smaller form factor of this the Maki I think is around about a similar sort of width to the ROCaster pro 2 but then it's just massive and it's got a big screen so obviously the screen on that is more potentially more full featured you know you can see a lot more things things on it but frankly the screen is not something that I tend to look at too much here apart from obviously just sort of setting the levels on it so I have taken a look at that but I haven't actually tested one out I probably will get one to just to test out to for the purposes of completeness of my study of all of this stuff but yeah that's why I prefer these just for the the three audio the USB inputs I mean if I could have any feature request on the duo or the ROCaster pro 2 it would just be more USB inputs basically so we have more computers with thing with NDI you can route audio to every PC at the same time oh okay right well that's a little bit of a feature I didn't quite realise that so that's good to know maybe I do need to do need to test one out so I didn't realise it it got that functionality I'm not sure whether whether more USB channels are coming via firmware update as well no I haven't heard that however the fact is that I do know that the sort of onboard processing power that we've got with the you know with the ROCaster pro 2 and the duo and the stream X actually it does allow for you know adding in new features I mean we've already seen some comments since the start with the the advanced audio not audio routing I was going to say audio routing it is the what do they call it now it is the it is related to audio routing it's where you can create custom mixes so that was something that was added in a firmware update and I know that there are new firmware updates coming out so so yeah the where are we the Maki if you want it is bigger but if you want audio over Ethernet your next choice is the Yamaha DM3 with Dante so yeah well that's quite a step up so if it's doing that as well and that's something you need then yeah the ROCaster doesn't do audio over Ethernet so if that's doing that then that is obviously another feature maybe I need to just get one to at least test it out for comparison sake oh I see so that the NDI came with the latest firmware update too also that's perhaps why I missed it when I first looked at it I kind of did look at it when it first was announced and then yeah it was those USB channels thought it's not going to do but I hadn't noticed that there was another update coming out as well whoops I think I've already answered that one hey Eileen great to see you here thanks for stopping by one thing I should mention before we just wrap up the stream having compared these two is that I haven't really talked about the Streamer X today because obviously it's the comparison of the ROCaster Pro 2 and the ROCaster Duo however there are lots of people that the Streamer X is going to be suitable for if they're not doing a lot of the audio routing or they don't need the hardware interface with the mixer and so on the Streamer X in itself is just a great device for for Zoom calls press the wrong button on my stream deck let me try the right one where's it gone there we go whether it is for Zoom calls or live streaming whatever the Streamer X does have three mic inputs so it's got a primary mic over it's got one of those combo jacks so you can plug in XLR or whatever XLR or a quarter inch jack it's also got a headset jack in the back there as well so you can plug in a headset mic or indeed a love mic so you could have an XLR mic and a love mic plugged into that as well and then it's got the wireless built in so you've got three mics coming into here so it's pretty powerful for a small little device there but obviously the other thing that this has is a capture card so that's how my camera is coming in right now I'm using this at the moment as a capture device I did a video earlier on this week the other thing that is pretty amazing about the Streamer X is it does now work with the iPad OS 17 if you've got an app that obviously supports it because Apple opened up the option for using external cameras so I've been testing out Camo Studio on the iPad and so I've been taking my camera and mic in from the Streamer X into the iPad so that's pretty cool as well the Streamer X does do audio routing but it's all handled on the computer and it has two USB sockets on the back there that gives you potentially two USB USB channels into your computer and then you can do the routing from Ecamm to Zoom and back again that way so yeah that is I've done a whole videos on the Streamer X so I won't go into that in too much detail it was intended to just compare these two today and yep that's the right submixes was the word that I was stumbling over there, submixes is what you can do with the ROCASTER is and I just realised you probably that's a question as opposed to a statement so what submixes are just to explain about that is at the moment we've got these faders on the board and if I move my mic down there it's made my mic quieter if I move it up it makes it louder and I've got all the different channels here that I can adjust the individual levels of them so that is the mix that is the main mix that we've got and that's why when I adjust this fader here that is what you are hearing right now submixes is if you think about all the different outputs you've got so I've got an output going to my headphones which is all of the mix going to that what's going into Ecamm is going in through the USB1 main channel into Ecamm and then you're hearing that in the live stream and then we've got all these other channels like going into zoom or wherever well submixes if I go into the settings and then go into outputs and then go into routing routing routing if I wanted to change the level of my microphone just that is going into Ecamm but not into everything else then I could go into the USB1 channel here and instead of having mix minus if I go I've obviously been doing a demo of this so I've already got the custom already toggled with various different things but you can see here that on here I've effectively got a kind of duplicate of this this mixing board here what I can do is I can set individual levels in each of those different outputs so if for example I wanted my microphone in Ecamm so if I just tap on this one I wanted it to be lower so now what I'm doing is I'm lowering my volume just for Ecamm but everybody else is hearing it at the same level so it's probably gone quiet for you but I can still hear it exactly the same level in my headphones you can also have it linked to the fader so at the moment it's linked so if I move the fader down now I've adjusted that mix in Ecamm so it's now quiet for you I can still control it as I'm controlling it for everybody else as well but it's crucially set here so let me just take that back to there but what I can also do is I can detach it so it's not any longer linked to the main mix so if I click the little link icon there it's now detached and now what you'll see is if I move my fader down I'm not now hearing that in my headphones because I've turned the volume down and the mix that is going into Ecamm is set here and that is not linked then you're still hearing the volume completely the same you can also exclude things from the channel as well so I can press that again you will have heard there that my audio just went off that's because I had excluded my mic from that channel incidentally when you are setting up something like this with a custom mix if it is over one of the USB channels bear in mind now that mix minus what you would want to do is you would want to reactivate mix minus and effectively mix minus is just excluding the channel from itself so if this is USB one then we would just do this to exclude the channel like that so that means that any audio you play through Ecamm wouldn't feed back in through Ecamm so that's what submixes are there's one point that I always mention about this because there is a potential for an issue here which is if you have set a relative level let's say in Ecamm it was to set this level here to be slightly lower but it be linked to the main fader there is always the potential that you may move the fader and inadvertently set the volume in one of your outputs to zero so here you can see that you're now hearing me at a lower volume but if I move the fader down at some point before this fader gets to zero my audio for you is going to go to zero so if I move your audio went to zero before the fader got to zero so it's just something to be aware of if you are using submixes that you've got to just know where the upper and lower limits are on all of these different mixes now actually this is part of the reason if I just set this back and I'm going to go back to mix minus this is part of the reason why I don't tend to use submixes and it's partly because I'm not doing stuff where I want to have these lower levels in different places often this might be used in you know if somebody is streaming gameplay for example and they want their audio going at full volume out onto the stream from their game but they might have a discord back channel going and they want to have their gameplay volume lower in there so that they can talk and hear the audio coming back and then they might want to exclude the audio coming in from their back channel in discord from going into their stream so that would be a place where people may want different levels personally for me what I'm doing is I'm not going to include it in the mix or not included in the mix and that is the case in point like right now I've got discord running so my audio is being going piped into discord as well for folks in there but then if they are talking then that's not going to come back through into the stream and the way that I do this is you've got these two buttons on the bottom here and this is the green one is the listen button and what that means is as the host I plugged into the headphone one socket on the back and when you press the green button here it means you listen to that particular channel or indeed whichever one you've selected and it kind of cuts out all of the others so I use this listen button to effectively listen to every channel but then I use the mute button to mute the ones that I don't want to come through on the stream so right now this is my primary mic I've just put my other mic down to zero which is this one which is the love mic then I've got my e-cam discord and zoom and what I've done is I've just muted the discord here but what it means is because I'm using the listen I can still hear it but you can't because it's not feeding back into e-cam into the stream but it means that if ever I did want to bring somebody from discord into the live stream then I could always just press this one to unmute them and then it would come back in so this is the extent of what I do with submixes I'm not really doing the built-in submixes I'm just choosing what I'm listening to versus what is going out into whichever stream whatever I want so probably a longer answer than you wanted or needed but that is just a little bit about the submixes and there we go again look at this I always do this I answer the question and then it was a statement already watch your video on the firmware update so there we go well for the benefit of anyone else watching do be careful just because you hear yourself exactly so that is the thing with submixes you need to be very conscious and be very intentional about what you're doing with it and understand it so that you know those relative levels so yeah definitely right well with that all said I'm going to leave it there but what I'll do is I'll leave a link to some of my other ROCASTER content over on the right hand side and thank you for joining and I'll catch you all again next week and thanks again to my channel members and of course thanks to Rainy Cajun for just signing up to the backstage pass today I'll see you in the discord