 The processing that we've got on really quite a wide range of road devices now with the Rocaster Pro 2 and then also the upcoming Rocaster Duo, which is available for pre-order now as well. And then the Streamer X that have been trying out and also the Podmite USB to some extent has also got a lot of this onboard processing. And I think that when it comes to these devices, I mean, they're all so accessible as consumer devices, but really there is an immense amount of power underneath the hood in all of these devices that I think a lot of people maybe don't understand quite how to sort of tap into. So the point of this stream then is to go into some of these advanced audio processing, advanced audio processors that they have on board, such as the compressor, the noise gate and so on. And just look at all of the different settings because I think that sometimes the terms even involved in setting them up are a little bit of a mystery to a lot of people. So and certainly they were with me when I started using these devices. So that's the point of today's stream. I'll also be announcing the winner of the Rocaster Duo giveaway, which I've been running for the past month. And so I'll announce that a little bit later on, keep you all in suspense. The hi to everyone in the chat, Rich and Paul, and also Kalonji as well. Great to see you here. And obviously, Jeff, the timekeeper of Take One Tech, who always reminds me to start the stream in the backstage area in the Discord. OK, so let's get going. First of all, let me just talk about what exactly it is I'm talking about. If we just come over to the Rocaster Pro 2, then if you tap on any one of these microphone inputs, then you have all of this advanced audio processing. By the way, they also have a lot simpler version of this with those three different levels that's just going to make it a lot easier to sort of dial in some initial settings. I'm specifically talking about the advanced settings here, though, which is all of these things here. So the high pass filter, the de-esser, the noise gate, the compressor, equalizer and so on, or elixir and the panning left and right. And there's also a global one, which I'll talk about a little bit later as well. So in terms of how this all looks, we think of this in terms of a signal chain. And if we just sort of plot this all out now, the very first thing, obviously, is we've got a microphone that's going into the device, be it the Rocaster Duo, the Rocaster Pro 2, or the Streamer X, as I've mentioned. And then the first thing that we do is we set the microphone gain. So that is basically how much it is, if indeed needed, to be boosted up to a level that gives you a reasonable level of audio coming in. And then we've got this whole chain of these different things. The first one being the high pass filter, that's going to knock out some low end noise. And I will go into all these in more detail, obviously, but I just sort of run through them first of all, the high pass filter is knocking out some of the low end tones that you maybe don't want. So background noise from air conditioning, the road noise or things like that. Then we have the de-esser, which is intended to remove those s sounds out of your your voice. And I'll talk about how that all works as well. The noise gate is something that is going to basically open and close when you are talking. And if I stop talking, then everything goes completely quiet, whereas when I am talking, you can hear that there is a slight hiss in the background from the from the air con, although we've reduced that slightly with the high pass filter. But there is that sort of noise in the background. But when I stop talking, the noise gate shuts and everything goes completely silent. And there is a variant degrees of how how much you want the gates to close. And I'll talk about all of that in due course as well. And these are all subtractive processes. So they're all taking away something from the signal that's coming in. So the high pass filter, as I've said, removing that lower end noises and then the de-esser removing some of the particular frequencies where the s sounds are coming in and the noise gate, obviously, you know, completely shutting or removing some of the audio, you know, at a certain threshold, which we'll talk about. Next, we've got the compressor and the compressor. The point of that is to try and level everything out. So from a point of view of the volume, so it's going to make potentially be boosting up the, you know, the quieter sounds when you're talking more quietly. But then if you talk loudly, then there would be this sort of big potential range. And so it's kind of squashing that all down or compressing it to make everything a little bit more even. And I'll show you how that is all working a little bit later as well. Next, you've got the equalizer, which is how you are adjusting specific frequencies. So whether you want to sort of boost up your lower end tones or the higher end, you've got control over all of that. And then the next one would be another these two things, which are really, I would say they're a bit of a mystery. They're not really, but there is obviously science to them. But it's not quite as obvious from the from the settings exactly what these are doing, but the Aural Exciter and the Big Bottom. So these are affecting the the higher end and the lower lower tones specifically, and the Aural Exciter intended to give you more sort of a clarity at the higher end and the Big Bottom, amusingly named, is intended to add some richness to those lower tones. And these are all additive processes. So the equalizer potentially, although could be subtractive as well, but they are adding something to the to the audio. And this is important to note that this is a chain, i.e. these things happen in this particular sequence. And so it's important to realize that so that you don't go and adjust something at the, you know, the top end or the sorry, the the the far end of the signal chain and then go and adjust something further back because that will have an impact on that thing that you've already adjusted. So it's always better to go through and do these things in this specific order when you are setting them up. And then finally, we've also got the left and right panning. So on the Rocaster Pro 2 and the Streamer X, you may want to pan things over to one side or the other. And why you might want to do that, by the way, is if you've got two mics coming in, you might want one thing on the left track and one thing on the right, for example, potentially, although, you know, with the Rocaster, you do have those isolated tracks in any case. And then finally, you've got the actual fader. So once all of this stuff has been set up, then you've obviously got the fader on the Rocaster, which is or indeed, you know, the control here, the little dial here, which is then effectively either boosting this or reducing it. So that's the that's the sort of way that this signal chain all looks. Now, incidentally, the Podmite USB, when you have that plugged in over USB into the computer, that will be controlled in just the same way as we're going to look at for the Rocaster Pro 2 using Rode Central. And you do have a lot of these things as well, just built into this microphone. I think I mean, I'm going to do a full review on it. I've been a little bit poorly last week. So I haven't had time yet. But I've compared it to the the short MV7. And they're very similar in terms of they've got the same functionality of XLR and USB as well. So they're very similar in that respect. But actually, the Podmite USB has a lot greater control over the audio when you are using it over USB. And in fact, it does have most of these things that we've got in this signal chain. The only ones that are missing there are the the de-esser, the equalizer and the the panning isn't in there as well. But having the built in noise gate and compressor, I think is just really, really great in particular. And the high pass filter, it all means that when you are using this over USB, you can, you know, really do a lot to address room noise, which is something that the short MV7 never did. I used to have to use when I was using that over USB, I would use audio hijack to knock out the background noise and, you know, do a few of these other things. But yeah, having it all built into the into the the actual device itself is is really, really handy. So anyway, so we're going to go through these in a little bit more detail and look at some of these settings because as I say, when you do come into the settings for any of these things, in fact, if I just come over to my road central for a moment, here we are looking at my Rocaster Pro 2. And if I go into the mic settings here, you've got the initial gain. So if we go back to that signal chain for a second, that is what I was talking about the very first thing you've got the microphone input, and then you go down to the mic gain. And so this is where we would be setting that is just this initial gain coming in. Now, when it comes to the the Rocaster Pro 2, you do actually have the screen on it, which gives you a little bit more visibility of this. If you are doing this all through road central, then you don't quite have the same sort of visual in terms of, you know, what this this input gain is, whereas if I come over to the Rocaster Pro 2, you will see that as I'm talking here, we've got exactly the same figure that 57 decibels. It's just a case of looking to see that your audio is coming in within this sort of green strip here. So there is the bar that's bouncing up and down when I'm talking. But then just underneath that, you'll see that this kind of green band and then a red band. So you want it to be that when you're talking, it's coming in there. So that's kind of like the first thing that you're going to set in the signal chain is making sure your gain is set here. I have been on coaching calls with a number of people where they haven't set this. And so they've found that they've been trying to increase the level of their microphone purely by using this fader here. And although obviously you can do that, as you can hear, that's not technically the correct way to do it. You would ideally want to have it so that when this is at unity, which is the unity just basically means it's not either adding anything or subtracting anything to it. And so this level here that you see where the sort of big solid line or the thicker line, I should say here, that means that basically the fader is not adding anything or subtracting anything to the signal. So ideally you want to get your gain set here first on the mic with the fader in this position just here. So then the next thing down, if I just come back over to here a second, and I'm actually having said that you need to do these in order, I'm actually going to cover them in a slightly different order because it will make more sense coming back to some of the settings in the middle bit later. So I'm going to start with the noise gate and then do the compressor, and then we'll circle back to the others just because it will make more sense that way. At least I think so maybe to my maybe just to my mind. But in any case, here you can see that we've got the gain there as well. So this is back in road central. So as I say, there's the the high pass filter here, the DSA and the noise gate. And it's these things here that I'm talking about, you know, what do these terms in particular mean the threshold, the attack hold release range. And what you'll notice is as you go through, there are some similarities between these. So, you know, this one has a threshold, this one has a threshold. And actually threshold is basically the point at which these things start acting on your on your audio. And again, some similar similar things here. Attack and release, you'll see these here as well attack release, this one's got hold. So what are all those terms? So hopefully, by the end of this video, I will have explained what you what, you know, what all of these different things mean. So that's the point of this. So if we come back to here for a second, and we will go into exactly what we are talking about here, and what these things are acting on, I'm not going to do a full tutorial on this, I did actually cover the, you know, the sort of very audio basics in a previous live stream, and also my roadcast to pro to masterclass. But for the time being, I'm just going to try and simplify this a little bit. And what all of these dynamic processes are acting on is one of a number of things. Now, if you think about the volume of your audio, and we think about an audio wave, the amplitude. So how big the wave is, and in actual fact, it's not a wave like this. It is just a series of, you know, if you think about a speaker, sort of pulsing in and out, what it's doing is it's, it's compressing, adding compression into the, let's not get confused with dynamic compression, but it's compressing the, the air effectively. And that's how the sound is being transmitted by a series of compressions and rare refaction. So where there's increased pressure and decreased pressure. And that is actually what this wave represents. And so the, the sort of peaks at the top there are where the air is most compressed. And then the ones down at the bottom is where it's kind of most uncompressed or the where the rare refaction is happening. And so that is why we have that this representation of audio as a wave. And in fact, the amount of that sort of compression there is, is effectively the volume. So if you have a, you know, a bigger wave, then that is in terms of a taller wave, that means that it is going to be louder. And if it's shorter, it's going to be quieter. So that is, that is amplitude. And that's measured in decibels. And I won't get into the different decibel scales. There are a number of them. We're talking about dbfs, which is decibel full scale here. But as I say, I won't get into that too much. And also, obviously that wave is something that's really simplified in any case. Because in actual fact, what we've got is a whole range of amplitudes as I'm talking, there are various different things coming in. So, you know, if you've looked at the bar down at the bottom of your video editor of choice, and you look at the audio line, you're going to see something that looks more like this, because it is just a sort of complex mass of different amplitudes and different wavelengths as well, which is the pitch. So going back to that wave, you know, the actual time it takes for one wave is the, is the, with a wavelength, which is the pitch. So if it's tighter together, it's going to be higher pitch. And if it's, you know, a longer wavelength, then it is going to be a lower pitch. So you've probably seen something like this, but this, again, doesn't really give the full picture. Because in actual fact, if you were to sort of take a sort of slice through this at any point, there again, there are not just, you know, there is a certain amplitude there overall. But in actual fact, what you've got is a whole range of different frequencies. And the way that you measure this is using something called a spectrum analyzer. We're going to too much depth about how these work. But you basically have the amplitude. And so imagine this as a split, you know, a particular slice in time. You've got the amplitude. But then this is across a whole range of frequencies. So you may have the sort of lower frequencies, there might be a certain peak from, as I say, something like the air con coming in at that low frequency. And then just even my voice has got a whole range of different frequencies that are coming in. And this particular thing here would be, you know, changing over time with everything that is going on. So when we talk about dynamic processing, and think about these two charts here, basically what we're doing with any of these dynamic processes is we're either affecting the amplitude, or we're affecting the frequency, or we're maybe affecting the amplitude with respect to frequency. So it might be that, you know, in this particular chart here, we're actually pulling down, you know, this specific frequency up here to sort of reduce that air con noise. Or it may be that, you know, we're too loud in these peaks. And so we want to just reduce those peaks. So this is what dynamic processes are doing. They're affecting some aspect of these. Now, when you think about these charts, when you see these charts, then some of the graphical representations that we have in the ROCASTER software, or the StreamX software, or indeed for the PodMic, some of these charts will then begin to make a little bit more sense. So what I'll do as I go through, I'll kind of reference them to these. The other thing we have is another chart, which you'll see in the ROCASTER as well, which is basically the input versus the output. Because as we know, with the signal chain, you've got, you know, the mic coming in. But then you've basically, from each one of these different points along the signal chain, there is something coming in and then there is something coming out on the other side. And so we often look at the input versus the output. And this will all become clear, hopefully, as we go through as well. So I'm going to start with a noise gate. And although technically, you know, this isn't the first one in the chain after, you know, we've set the mic gain as we went through that list. And it is a kind of very relatively simple one, hopefully. So we'll start with this one, because then some of the other things that we'll look at later are going to be working in a kind of similar way. So if we have the amplitude or the volume over on the left hand side, and we've got time running along the bottom, imagine if you will, that we've just got a constant tone going into the microphone. And it's just basically an input volume and then the input volume increases, and then the input volume decreases again, and then it stays flat at that volume. So this effectively would just represent a single, you know, constant sound, very unrealistic. But nevertheless, it will serve our purposes for this. And perhaps I should just go to the noise gate to show you what we're going to be actually looking at here in terms of the different settings. So if I just quickly pop over to the noise gate settings here, you can see that what we've got is we've got the threshold, we've got attack, we've got the hold, release, the range and the hysteresis. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go through basically what all of these different things mean. So if we go back to our little chart here, so we've got our input level coming in. And what we have is then we've going to have an output level. So it's going into the noise gate at this input, but then it's coming out on the other side there as well. So the first thing we have is a threshold. And that is the point at which the noise gate is going to act. And by the way, the noise gate is intended to either let through audio or close it off to some extent. So as I mentioned before, you know, the noise gate on this microphone is set to basically completely shut when I stopped talking. That's why it goes completely silent when I stopped talking. And that's kind of the point of this. Now, it doesn't have to close completely. But if you just think about it as a, you know, literally a gate that is opening up to let the audio through and then it's closing again to close that off and it may close partly or it may close all the way. But there's some point that we're going to say, right, well, if the volume is higher than a certain level, we want to let that audio through. And that is the threshold. So anytime the volume of the input goes above that threshold, then this is going to open up this gate. So if we look at the input versus the output then here, we've got the output volume at the moment, you know, you would say when I stop talking is right down at the bottom, it's zero. But then when we open, when we go past the threshold, that's going to trigger this gate to open. And so there is going to be a time that it takes imaginatively to swing open. And this thing here this time, that's what we call the attack. So that's how long it's going to take to actually activate. And with this very simple example, you know, you might think, well, why doesn't just do it immediately. But when we look at a more realistic sort of waveform, then it will hopefully make a little bit more sense. So then the gate is going to stay open. And then we're going to go back down below that threshold. And so then there is going to be a period where it says, right, well, okay, we've dropped down below that particular level. But like if I take a breath, for example, do we want the gate to shut then or do we want it to, you know, stay open for a little bit more have I actually really stopped talking, think of it like that. So that period there where you want to just kind of hold the gate open, just in case, you know, there's going to be more to come as it were, then that is the hold. And then after that time has elapsed, if there is, you know, if we haven't gone back above the threshold, then the gate is going to shut. And that is the release time. So that's how long it takes to stay shut. So those three things there, the attack, the hold, the release and obviously the threshold, that's all to do with like how quickly this thing is opening and closing. And so if we come back to those different things we've got here, we've basically just then looked at this, the threshold. So that is the level at which the gate is acting and when it's going to decide to open. We've then got the attack. That's how long it takes to physically open the hold, how long it should stay open. If we drop down below that threshold. And then the release is how long it's going to take to close. So that's what those three are there. So those four I should say. So then we've got the range and the hysteresis. And let's have a look at what those are. If I come back to the right scene for a second. There we go. That one. So obviously this waveform is just not realistic. It doesn't represent what, you know, an audio waveform would typically look like. So if we take something a little bit more realistic here. Oh, and by the way, I should say, first of all, he says acting like he meant to do this, the amount that the gate closes by I talked about before how, you know, mine closes completely. Hence it goes completely silent when I stopped talking. However, you may want it to be that the gate doesn't close completely. And this amount that it's going to close by there is called the range. So if we actually wanted it to be that okay, when the gate shuts, it doesn't shut completely, but it still allows some of that audio through. Then then that is the that is the range. And if I go back to my noise gate here, then this is what this figure is here. Now the range, as I say, mine is set to set to 100, which means it is shutting the gate completely. But if I was to turn this one up to zero, you can probably hear that when I that basically means it's not closing the gate at all. You can probably hear there's some background noise if I stopped talking. And as I wind that down, then it's basically closing the gate more and more when I when I stop. Personally, I do like to have it so that it's just completely shut so that when I'm not talking, there is nothing coming through. So if that is what you're looking for, that is the particular setting that you'll want to change is the range. So if I come back to this, there's one other term then the hysteresis, which is a bit of a weird name. And this is going to do something slightly different. So as I said, that sort of box shaped waveform is not realistic. This also is not realistic. However, if we just think of this as the volume, you know, the volume of my voice is going up and down all of the time. So just assume that it's, this is a crude representation of somebody talking their voice going higher and lower in terms of volume, not tone here we're talking about just purely the amplitude. So here we've got the threshold. Now let's just say that we set the threshold at this particular level. What you would have then is if we go back to that output, you know, every time we went above that threshold, given those settings that we've got, and barring the sort of attack and release at the moment, then every time we go above the threshold, the gate's going to try to open. Every time we go below it, it's going to try to shut again. So as you can see here, just sort of hovering around that particular threshold, it would mean it'd be constantly trying to open and close, bear in mind the time it takes to open and to close and all of that. Then it would give you some, you know, very poor audio if you didn't have this set to the right level, but just naturally, you know, your voice might drop down below this in any case. So they have what is called the hysteresis, which is basically a different level set at a certain level, which is where the actual closing is going to take place from. So if we've got the threshold there, and that is the point at which the gate opens, hysteresis is going to set a close level, which is actually lower than that. And what that means is, you know, when I go above the threshold, then the gate opens, but then it doesn't actually even try to close again, until we go back below that lower level. So in this case, what would happen is the gate would be open for those parts that you can see there from point A to point B, and then it would close, and then it would be open again from C to D. So it's going to be doing a lot less of this sort of opening and closing, and you can fine tune where this difference between the open and closes, as I say, with the hysteresis. And that is basically when you see the number of 0.25. If you think about the total, you know, the volume, I should say, of the of the open point, then if you've got hysteresis of 0.25, it's going to have point, you know, 25 percent of that 25 percent lower, I should say, than that open point. And in fact, when you sort of see this chart, and then you look how this looks on the on the roadcaster itself. So if I just come down to my top down shot here and show you the roadcaster, and if we look at the noise gate, now what you can see here is this is effectively that chart happening live. So you can see that anytime I'm above this dotted line here, the first the top dotted line, the noise gate is opening, but then the hysteresis here is set to 0.5 or 50 percent. So that bottom line there is at that lower level. And if I was to change this up and down, you can see how it's actually moving this line up and down. So that is effectively the sort of closing point. So if I was to put this at 25, that now is looking similar to that chart that we've just had a look at. So when you are looking at the charts on the the roadcaster versus in the in the road central, if I go back to road central for a second, we've got the exact same thing here, I can change these and these are actually matching exactly what's on the the roadcaster and you can see how that's having the same effect there moving that up and down. But you just don't get that live view of of what's happening to be able to see. So it is it is actually for me, I always prefer to do these adjustments on the roadcaster itself because you actually see the live wave form on there. So just as you're seeing here, everything's moving up and down on there. And you can see the points at which it drops down below the the threshold there for the open and the close. So that is that is the noise gate and hopefully that explains what all of these these terms mean. And just one second, let me switch this over. Sorry, my my discord. So that is the the noise gate. So let's have a look then at the the next one, which I'm going to talk about, which is compression because this is one again that has these terms. It's got threshold, which is similar to, you know, we've we've just looked at. But it does also have some other ones here, ratio and the gain as well. So let's talk about exactly what all of these are. And there we go. The rest of my little animation there of hysteresis and how you can change that. So with a compressor, what we're trying to do here is, as I mentioned before, we're trying to kind of even out all of the audio. So potentially boosting up the lower town tones if you're whispering. But then if you start talking loudly, then bringing that down so that everything is a lot more even. So when you look at the the waveform once again, if you wanted to reduce those peaks, then you could just sort of squash the whole thing. But in actual fact, all that's doing is what you've just seen there of the whole thing being squashed. That's exactly what the gain control is doing. So the initial step that we did of the game either squashing it down or increasing the level that would be that would be the game. So that's not what we're trying to do. What we actually want to do is we want to just affect those higher volumes. And so we're going to once again set this threshold. And so that is the level at which the compressor is going to start acting. And then what we want to do is we want to reduce those those higher volumes. And this is going to basically squash down those those those peaks and the amount that it squashes it down by is known as the ratio. So this is the amount above the threshold that it is being squashed by. So if here you've got you know, you can see there that that amount from the top that it's been squashed down by is effectively, you know, it's half as much as it was before. That means that the ratio is two to one. So that's where we get the ratio from. And if we come back to the compressor then the compressor settings, the threshold then is the level at which it's going to start acting. And the ratio is the point is the amount that it's going to be compressed by. I'll come back to this chart in a minute in terms of what that's representing. It will make a lot more sense. And then what you then have is if you've got a plot then of what is the input volume versus the output? If we're changing basically the you know, the output based on that input volume and what we're doing is we're adjusting the volume. Then you've effectively got an input level here on the bottom. And then on the side you've got the output. And then we have the the line going straight through it. If there was no compression at all, effectively you can see here that you know, what is going in is what is going out. It's just a straight line right the way through the middle. So whatever your input volume is, the output is going to be exactly the same. So then what we've done, though, is we've now set a threshold that we want this compressor to act on. And what we're going to do is if we've got this ratio of two to one arbitrarily that we've just talked about. What that means is anything above that input level there we are now compressing that by 50 percent in this case with a ratio of two to one. And so there we've got we could literally read off here if we've got an input level of minus 20 dB by the way, I won't go into the dBFS scale but you can see it goes from zero being the loudest that can be registered by the device down to minus 60 which is technically zero. So it's a bit confusing that that's back to front but that's the way that the scale works. I won't go into the details of that but just know that basically this is getting louder and this is getting louder on the input as well. But you could read off here what is the input. So if it was minus 20 dB FS coming in then it would be minus also minus 25 going out there. So we've compressed it and hopefully the graph just sort of represents this. You can kind of see what's going on. It is basically reducing the output volume relative to the input. So that is what the ratio is and now actually if we come and look at the device itself so I'll come back to the Rocaster what you can see here is that is what this line is representing. So we've got the input down at the bottom and we've got the output on that side. What you've also got on here is you have actually got these meters that are bouncing up and down and the one on the right hand side sorry the left hand side is the input level and the one on the right hand side is the output level. And you can see hopefully that especially if I talk a little bit more loudly that the one on the left side is if I can get my left to right correct your way around the one on the left side is higher than this one and there's also this little red bar at the top which is showing how much compression is being applied. So as I'm talking the input level is being compressed to a lower level and that is how much compression is being added. So that just sort of explains what's going on in that chart but I'll explain in a little bit more detail of exactly what's going on here. So if this is the input anything before the threshold at say point A is not being compressed at all but as soon as we get to point B and point C then some compression is being added. Incidentally this point here which the compressor is operating that there is known as the knee and it can be either a hard or soft knee and so you'll notice on the roadcaster that there is a slight sort of curve to it which is what they call a soft knee. Not specifically relevant but it's just there nevertheless so that you understand some of these terms. And if I come back to the little chart again then what we can do here is if we apply a higher ratio it's gonna have more compression and so it's gonna bring those higher volumes down even further whereas if we had a ratio like this of infinity you can get compressors that have this ratio of infinity which basically means they never go over a certain level. There is a limit on this one though it doesn't go to infinity in fact just what does it go to? It goes to 4.5. So that's the maximum that we can do with the roadcaster or the Streamer X and so that's what we've got on here. The other thing about this though is I mentioned about it sort of leveling things out and bringing up those lower volumes so it may be that yes you wanna compress those higher volumes at the high end but you may also want to actually boost up the lower volumes and so this is called the gain. So this is where up as well as applying that compression we're then bringing up the overall level so that when somebody's whispering that is also being boosted up to a certain extent as well. So that's called the gain. So if I come back to here and we look at the road central again what we've looked at so far then is the threshold, the ratio and then the gain. Now the attack and release are similar to what we've already talked about with the noise gates in terms of how quickly this thing actually takes effect. So if we were to look at this compressor again this waveform we've got this threshold at which we're applying this ratio and that we want to basically squash down those higher volumes and maybe boost up the lower end as well. Then if we think about the compressor then it is basically off until we reach that threshold at point A where we go above that volume and then it is gonna open up or apply the compression I should say and that is called the attack. That is the amount of time much like the amount of time it takes for the noise gate to swing open. The attack is how long it takes for the compressor to actually sort of activate. And then we've got point C which is where we drop down below that threshold again and then we've got the release which is how long it takes for the compressor to sort of deactivate and then the compressor would be off below that threshold. So the compressor is effectively acting between these points C and D and what it is doing is as I say it is sort of squashing down but I should mention that although we talk about it in terms of dropping down those sort of high end or higher volume things above the threshold whilst it's acting it is actually not it's squashing the whole thing. So even those points where we drop down below the threshold if the compressor hasn't deactivated it is actually compressing all of those but this is hopefully a bit of a crude representation but hopefully it gives you an idea of what is happening there. So far we've talked about the mic gain we've also talked about the noise gate and the compressor. So you can see that I kind of jumped forward a little bit there but if we go back and start looking at some of these other ones there's some very similar concepts in here. So they're doing very similar things but just maybe in a slightly, slightly different way. So they're all acting as I've mentioned at some point in some way on either the amplitude or on the frequency. And so these are then represented in these different charts and the first one I'll talk about then in that signal chain after the gain is the high pass filter. So if we look at this chart here on the right hand side this is the one that I talked about with the different frequencies so that at any given moment there are a whole range of frequencies and sometimes we might wanna knock out some of those ones and specifically, you know I've mentioned my aircon several times I'm living right out in more or less the jungle so here in the North of Thailand so we don't have lots of passing traffic as such but there is the same thing would happen with aircon as for example, you know the rumble of a road nearby it's gonna have this sort of low end noise to it low tone to it and so you may want to remove that. So if I come over to the high pass filter what that's doing is this chart that you're seeing here is kind of representing a cross section of this chart here on the right hand side so what you can see is that we are setting a specific frequency which is this frequency below which we are gonna reduce the audio coming in at those particular tones so the human voice is obviously everyone's voice tone is gonna be different but anything above 90 is gonna be into the vocal tone but then as I say you may have a deeper voice but this one is set to 80 so anything below that what I'm doing is I'm removing those tones so it's removing stuff that isn't gonna be in your voice but is maybe it's gonna be something in the background like I say that road noise or aircon noise so the frequency here what we're doing is we're setting the point at which that is gonna take effect and as you can see if I move it up to 200 you will have heard a distinct change in the sound of my voice because I'm basically knocking out those lower frequencies whereas if I move it back this way then it's allowing all of those frequencies to come through but here if I had it right down at 20 it wouldn't be really knocking out anything in the background so hence I've got mine set to about 80 which is below the tones in my voice but captures some of that background noise you can also change how aggressive this is as well so you may want to just have it having a slightly lower effect where you're changing the slope that is basically as you can see it's how much of an effect it's having at those lower frequencies and so by increasing the slope you're basically knocking out even more of those lower frequencies or having a greater effect on reducing the amplitude again coming back to this chart here we're reducing the amplitude of these lower tones around here so that is where we're at with the high pass filter that's what that is intended for to knock out those low frequencies the next one then is the de-esser and this once again is working on this chart here as well and what that is is it's the S sound that you have in your voice when you say S's and the point of this is that is all happening at a specific frequency so it will be at a certain frequency here is where those S sounds are and so the de-esser is intended to remove those and so what we're doing then in this chart here is we're identifying this particular frequency at which the S sounds happen and then we're reducing the amplitude reducing the volume of those sounds and so it means that it reduces that S sound now we've got some very similar and familiar terms here then that should make a lot more sense the threshold once again is the volume of this particular frequency that we're going to start to act on the audio we're basically using compression again but just a really targeted compression at a certain frequency so once again just as we saw with the compressor the ratio is going to be how much it's going to reduce these sounds by we've then got just as we had in the compressor the attack and release so how aggressive we're going to be at sort of applying this effect and reducing the effect afterwards and then we've got the gain which again just as with the compression is how much it is boosting everything else so when we reduce those frequencies how much everything else is boosted by and then this is the one that is unique to the DSR which is the frequency and this is because we are targeting a specific frequency so if I was to increase this you can see how we're changing the point at which this is having an effect or we can move it all the way down this way so once again if we have a look on here we are trying to now target a specific frequency where the pronounced S sounds are coming in so if I go back to here one thing that's tricky to do on here is you have to basically do it by ear so as you move this backwards and forwards you'll find, especially if you say a sentence that has a lot of S's in it you'll see where it's having more of an effect if you actually look on the ROCASTER Pro 2 or the ROCASTER Duo indeed itself then what you'll see is once again we've got this kind of live view of it so this is now the DSR if I come over to here whoops it is, wrong one back this way so there we go we're on the DSR now what you can see is again just as we had on the compressor before we've got the input level here and we've got the output level there so when I say words with S in then you'll see that we have this compression being applied here and you'll notice when it's having more of an effect so if I turn the frequency down like that you can actually see when it is having the most effect on your voice and so when it's picking up these S sounds so if I move it all the way here you might find that even when I say things that I've got S's in there is no compression going on of that there is no adjustment being made whereas when I move it back this way if I just move it back this way there will be a point I think around 3500 hertz for me which is where this is then starting to have an effect maybe a little bit lower and you'll see that's actually happening here so you can actually physically see when it is applying this effect so what you want to be looking for then is when that compression to your voice is happening just in there so that is the DSR and we've then covered what all of those different things are so if we go and have a look at the next thing in the signal chain which is oh, wrong one let me just come back to here so the DSR, the noise gate we've already looked at the compressor we've already looked at so then you've got the equaliser and once again this is affecting here if we look at this chart on the left hand side the right hand side even I can't get my left to the right it's the right way round today for some reason so if we look at this on the right hand side here the equaliser is intended to just as we did with the high pass filter to knock out some of those low tones here we've got a lot more sort of fine-tuned adjustment that we can make on all of those different frequencies across that whole spectrum there and that's what this is we've got these three different points the high bell, the mid bell and the low bell bell because I guess a bell curve and this is where we can adjust these so we can adjust the specific frequency that we want to target at these three different levels so if I move this you can see that we're adjusting the high bell we're adjusting the point at which this is taking effect and then we're also adjusting the gain so if I click into this one here I can actually just sort of knock out a lot of those high tones like that so here you can hear that it's knocked out a lot of the high end in my voice whereas if I put it all the way up there then it's actually boosting all of that so this is where you can adjust these we can also do the same for the mids and the low end as well and once again you could knock out all of that low end or you could boost it all up as well so this is what we're doing here we're basically just adjusting what is going on in this audio audible spectrum now there is actually a little sort of almost like a little hidden thing that you can do here not in this one or in fact you can do it on here actually by double clicking I know you can do it on the ROCASTER PRO 2 but yes you can actually do it in the road at central as well I've just learnt something if you double click on here so you can see that you've got the gain here this is how much it is boosting it by but if you double click you can actually change how targeted it is so if you did have some specific frequency that you wanted to either boost or you wanted to reduce you could technically target it with this as well so here you can see we're being very targeted in that particular level double click again and I could knock out that specific frequency so you can do that so it's double clicking it's going to allow you to do that to either basically open up the area that is targeting and you can do that with all of those so with either the high the mid or the low so if I was in the low tone if there was a really sort of persistent noise that I wanted to knock out then potentially I could do it with that you may end up affecting your overall audio that way but technically I could sort of get a really targeted point at the low end to knock out some specific low end hum then I could potentially do that by just knocking out that particular frequency like that so let me just put this back to more or less where it was somewhere around there I'll sort that out all out later so that is the equalizer so that's what all of those things are doing and by the way you can turn off any one or all of these as well so that it's just having whatever effect on just one of them you don't have to have them all on and with all of these things there is a button to sort of deactivate it as well so you can deactivate each of these individually and you'll see that it says deactivated if indeed it is so that is the the equalizer now the next two in the signal chain then are the the big bottom and the aural exciter and what these are doing is basically adding something to the lower tones in the case of the big bottom or the higher tones in case of the aural exciter and if I come back to the Rokasta Pro 2 because you'll see the sort of way that this is working a little bit clearer well maybe not but you've got a slightly different chart here so if I was to deactivate these they're not doing anything but I'll turn them back on now so if I adjust the the tune of the big bottom it's basically adjusting the frequency that that's applying to so I can make that to be a wider frequency down at the bottom or I can scroll here to make it a lower frequency so hopefully you can see that I'm doing this on road central but it's having the same effect I can turn this one up or I can turn this one down and that is affecting the sort of frequency range that it is applying to and then the drive is how much is being applied so if I turn that all the way down to zero it's doing nothing and if I turn it all the way up to 100 it's doing more and it's adding you know richness to that that lower tone so and this is kind of something that when people talk about radio sound it's usually a combination of this and the compression so if you've got like something really heavily compressed and this turned all the way up it gives you that sort of booming sound at the bottom but I would say use it with use it wisely sometimes I think people go a bit overboard with it but then the arrow exciter if that's the lower end then this one here is at the higher end and you can see the frequencies just bouncing up and down there and now it's right up at the top end of the chart and if I turn it down it's applying to a much greater range and this is intended to give sort of more clarity at the higher end so more clarity to your voice and then if you go to the harmonics and the percentage here zero is it's obviously doing nothing not applying anything and if you turn it all the way up then it is having even more of an effect so that's what those two things are so that's part of the there's two technical technically two things there one happening at the lower end and one at the higher end but that is the the exciter and next is panning obviously just left and right so a microphone going in is by default mono it's, you know, not stereo generally so therefore coming into the single XLR cable at the back is just one single mono channel but you can choose whether you want that to be all on the the left or the right like that and you can pan left and right so that is basically the advanced audio settings so if I just go to the next one with background to the high pass filter so what we've seen then is that these are all acting in some way on the amplitude or the frequency or some combination of those two and if we go back to our signal chain then here what we've looked at is one single signal chain for the microphone but in actual fact if you think about this in terms of the Rokaster Pro 2 for example I'm on mic one input but we do have all of these for all of the other different channels so you can see we've got four mic inputs we've also got the three USB channels and also the bluetooth and it's interesting to note or it's notable that you can apply these effects to all of those other channels now that can catch you out actually if you've inadvertently turned on some of these effects for your USB channels and you've got audio potentially coming in from video or something like that and you've inadvertently got the noise gate turned on on your you know maybe USB main stereo for example then and you want to pass through audio from you know a video into the Rokaster but you've got a noise gate on or you've got some of these other effects it can actually have a negative effect so you do need to be aware of that that it is possible to apply these to these channels but just make sure that you are aware that that is happening however it can work in your favour if for example you have got your zoom participants for example coming in on you know the secondary channel or the chat channel and you do want to apply those effects to them same with the bluetooth if you are you know having a caller dial in for example then you may want to apply some of these effects to to their signal to improve that just bear in mind that you know everybody's voice is different and you know everything is different so that is something to be aware of there is no one size fits all for all of this and especially when it comes to things like the bluetooth channel and the USB you do need to be aware of that and make sure that you know you have got these sort of set up appropriately the other one I guess would be the the sound pads down there at the bottom so that's basically just going to be straight through although there are a whole series of processing that I've not really talked about which is the effects like the you know the robot voice the the pitch shift and all of that that you can do with the smart pads basically those are all going to be happening you know after all of those first processes in the signal chain so for clarity so we don't end up with an overly complex chart here I haven't included things like as I say the pitch shift the the robot voice and all of these different ones that you can do with the roadcaster but if you've got all of these different signals coming in then there is one sort of final step which is the master compiler so if I go back to the roadcaster in fact I'll go to this on road central and here in the here we've just got to the same thing we just looked at but if I come back out of here now we've got all of our different inputs I'll go back to here and if we go to whoops the the device configuration then the outputs we've now got the processing down at the bottom there is these final two steps here the master compiler and the output delay now the master compiler is actually very much like almost like an overall compressor for all of the different things so here you've got the threshold the attack the release and the gain not quite the same but that is applying to everything so just note that if you are going to be playing around with this it's going to be affecting the final output of everything else that is in that signal chain so just coming back to the signal chain then here the master compiler is acting at this point so after everything else so once again it's kind of like fine tuning the overall sound that you've got from everything and then there is that output delay in there as well so if you want to add in a delay to the output you can do that in there as well so that is here you can add a specific delay to your to your output going from the ROCASTER so for example if you want it to match up with you know you've got your using capture cards and you want to add that delay in incidentally on the live stream that I did all about the RODE Streamer X and the pod mic the question came up about if you're using the Streamer X do you need to have any delay with your audio because this is both the capture device and the audio device and I did check on this and the answer is whatever is coming into the Streamer X will be going out in sync so the audio from your microphone that's plugged in and the video coming in will be going out at the same point there's no sort of inherent delay that's been added here in the device itself or that you need to correct for I should say however there is always going to be an inherent delay with you know the camera and what it is sending out over the HDMI so you may still need to do some adjustment but yeah that was just a question that came up in the previous live stream so just wanted to address that one so where are we now let me just check where I'm up to in my process so I think we've covered off all of those different steps I do just want to come back to the chat though and just check if I've missed any questions off here and hi to everyone popping in let me have a look where we are I'm just looking for relevant questions here oh I think I've just answered that Jesse look at my comments are all out of out of place on my screen yeah so I think we we just covered that one hello hello Rode great to see you here thanks for stopping by and so any questions in here that I've missed great to see so many familiar faces in here do you happen to know how to grab just the mic when you're using unify let me get that one up there oops Daisy sorry hey great to see you here Bubba great to see you the in terms of unify I don't actually know about that yet because I don't have unify on the Mac although unify is coming to the Mac when I first covered all of the new devices I got worried when they mentioned unify because I knew that at the time it wasn't a Mac application and so I had this moment of concern that the Streamer X wouldn't work on the Mac however it does work fully on the Mac with Rode Central in any case however unify is coming to the Mac as well I just don't have the version of that just yet so it's coming so I will be doing a whole series of videos on setup of the Streamer X with Rode Central but then also with Unify as well so to answer your question I'm not too sure when anything about using unify I haven't got some examples with it I should say as well the difference there between using the Streamer X with Rode Central versus unify Rode Central gives really good access to some basic audio routing so they've got different setups in there whether you are streaming whether you're using it for presentations on calls or things like that as well then it has got ability to adjust relative levels on all of those things but unify is going to give a higher level of adjustability to that audio routing so I do know that much so far that yeah for most people I guess Rode Central is going to do the job in terms of just the Rode Streamer X being a sort of plug and play device but unify is going to give a lot more ability to do a lot more of that audio routing a bit like we can do on the Rocaster Rocaster Pro 2 and the Rocaster Duo where you can have specific mixes for specific channels so I understand that that will be unify will do more of that I realise I'm still not answering your question but just to clarify why there are those two different applications and what the difference is you know do you need to unify if you're already using Rode Central so I will do a full comparison though as soon as I do have that software Hi Kalonji yes I do stream into Discord so I'm streaming right now into my backstage area for my channel members and also for my Take One Tech Academy members as well so I start the stream in there have a little chat Jeff tells me that I'm running late I don't need to start usually so then I'll start and then after we finish the live stream then we're still just backstage in the Discord where we chat after so check out channel memberships if you're interested in that or indeed the Take One Tech Academy I should probably drop a little link into that but the Take One Tech Academy will give you full access to that backstage area as well as all of my courses and things like that as well and speaking of courses what we've just covered here in terms of this advanced audio was one of the main reasons and having just sort of delivered all of this one of the main reasons that I created my Rocaster Pro 2 Masterclass so you can find that out in the I'll leave a link in the chat and also in the description for the video as well and it really goes into full detail on how to use all aspects of the Rocaster Pro 2 I will be updating probably the name of this even to call it the Rocaster Masterclass but technically it will cover the Streamer X as well so I'll have to figure out how to name this but it covers all of these different things in terms of how to set up these devices and specifically the advanced audio section as well and in that I go into more detail on how to exactly sort of dial in and fine tune every aspect of all of these settings so again you know all of this stuff that I've talked about today but then going into a bit more depth on you know the actual process of setting this and what to listen for and all of that kind of thing so that's in the Rocaster Pro 2 Masterclass now I should say that I have been running a giveaway for a Rocaster Duo because the Rocaster Duo to me which is available for pre-order right now but for me it's kind of like the perfect device because what I love about the Rocaster Pro 2 is the specifically the three USB channels which gives us the ability to have you know multiple channels that we're working with on our computer so I have my mic is going in here on this channel this is the mic you know the main mic coming in at the back then I've got Ecamm Live which is what I'm using for live streaming but it's also what I use on all of my Zoom calls as well so it really allows you to really level up your kind of Zoom appearance and presence by using software like Ecamm Live link in the description for that right now I've also got my Discord here on this channel so it means that if the folks in Discord were to say something I'd be able to hear them but I'm rooting it so that you're not hearing it then I have another channel here for Zoom so these three channels allow me to have much finer control over the audio that is on my computer coming into the Rocaster and in fact in actual fact I've got another fourth channel which is effectively a stereo pair coming into the back so that I've got my system audio on that so I've effectively got four channels then which are for my computer audio and then we've got the sound pads here but when it comes to the microphone inputs on the back I'm only really using this one microphone input and then I've also got one for a wireless mic that I use it's not a Rode wireless mic but now that Rode have integrated the Rode wireless GOs and the new Rode wireless MEs into the Rocaster so that you can pair them directly I will just be swapping out my existing wireless mic for one of those so then I've got some sort of spare ports on the back because these four microphone ports that we've got on the back are largely redundant to me now and the RodeCaster Duo is effectively I would say the perfect RodeCaster for me because it's a smaller form factor it's around about that big as I've worked out where are we about that size and everything's just kind of more compact but it just doesn't have those those additional two ports on the back for the microphones but it's got all of the same power built into it so for me as I say it's going to be the perfect device and save a little bit of a desk space although I'll probably keep them both round in some way or other in any case because of that though because I'm thinking about all of the sort of members of my academy and people who I coach with it's going to be ideal for them people who are using these devices as largely business professionals or wanting to integrate them into their presentations into their Zoom calls into their content creation for their business so typically the people that I work with generally more either coaches or solopreneurs and yeah the four mic inputs are redundant for a lot of people and so because of that I was running a Robocaster Duo giveaway I should have prepared a drum roll sound effect really shouldn't I the giveaway is now closed whoops my camera's not attached there the Robocaster Duo giveaway is now closed but I have drawn the winner and so where is the drum roll don't even have any explosions or anything like that but I can announce that the winner is Astrid Hudson from the US I will be getting in touch with that's enough of that applause now we'll be getting in touch with everybody actually who entered because I've got something a little special offer for all of the people who entered as well but thanks so much for everyone who entered I will be running more giveaways throughout the year as well because yeah I like to like to share the love but congratulations to the winner Astrid and yeah I will be certainly getting in touch with that you very shortly and thanks Rich yes no expense spared on the the sound effects there fortunately the Robocaster has the applause built in so let's have a look at the last question then from Keely I say last question if anyone has got any other questions do feel free to to drop them in I wish the same audio routing capability was in the Streamer X is this a potential firmware update or is it hardware limitation so the the thing about that is Keely that's what I was mentioning about the the difference between road central and the Unify software so Unify up until now has been PC only but it is coming to the Mac so as soon as I've got that beta software in my hands I'll be doing a full review of it but that will give you more of that audio routing capability and in fact I should say there is another difference which is on the Streamer X I should really have this plugged-in Shuntai I've been playing around with it so much and I've just unwired everything for this demo today however if you have got this Streamer X plugged in then you have got this this mic input here and you'll see that just up above the top of the dial there is this indicator which is for either the microphone the headset or the the wireless mic because as well as the the XLR in the back or the Neutric combo jack so you can plug an instrument in there as well you do also have this headset input and as I've mentioned you've also got the ability to have a wireless mic now if you're using road central you're basically making a choice you only have one of those and you actually cycle between them by pressing the button you can see how the little indicator light changes however as I understand it with UniFi you do actually have the ability to have all of those connected so whilst you might be adjusting the level of one here specifically with that that selector there you will have access to all three of those mic inputs which means that it's even more versatile then rather than just a single mic and a capture card it would then give you access if you wanted to use a wireless mic as well but you will have a lot more control over that advanced audio routing so to answer your question that is definitely coming with the UniFi software let's see where we're up to yeah if there's any other questions about audio routing or about these devices I've got more videos to come on specific use cases of these yeah I kind of lost my voice after speaking to Rode when was it week before last Friday week before yesterday and so yeah I haven't made the content yet but I've got a whole series of videos coming out about the Streamer X different use cases using it with Rode Central for these different applications like using it with Zoom using it with Ecamm and all of that kind of stuff as well but any other questions do feel free to drop them in the chat or of course in the comments if you're watching after the fact definitely also check out the Discord as well so you can ask any questions you want in the Discord that's always going to be the best place to ask these questions because you then get not just my humble opinions but there's also a whole load of other really wise people in there that can help out as well so yeah really looking forward to seeing a few more of you in there I think we're up to about 350 or something like that members in the Discord community so yeah definitely get over there as well thanks so much for tuning in and a big thank you I should say also to Rode once again for sending me the Streamer X and the PodMic and yeah more content to come on that any idea when the Rocaster Duo will be available last question it is available now for pre-order so if you go to Rode's website I got the email just yesterday I think but yeah if you go to Rode's website it is now available for pre-order on there and I'll just drop the link into that oh I see you've pre-ordered it just no idea I don't have any further information Julian on on when it will be actually ready I don't have any further information on that I will try to find out though yeah but for me somebody else mentioned it as well the Duo is the perfect device for me personally but the Streamer X I'm also highly recommended for a whole number of my people that I work with in fact I would say it's almost kind of like 50-50 one is going to be the perfect device over the other but yeah really great to see these these new developments and these new devices and I'll say once again I'm really excited that Rode is getting into video it's going to be really interesting to see because yeah because I love the you know the Rocaster and the other devices so much yeah pleased to see that they're getting into more aspects of live streaming and video production oh we got an answer there we go the Rocaster Duo straight from Rode thank you very much the Rocaster Duo is being loaded onto our trucks at our factory right now so should be in stores very soon fantastic great to great to hear sorry Margaret I'm afraid it was Astrid Hudson in the US who won so hokey dokey thank you so much to everybody for for tuning in I will be back with no doubt some more Rode content very shortly over the next week and I'll as soon as I've got a Rocaster Duo in my hands I will of course be doing a full live stream and rundown of that once again okay okay have a great day everyone I'll leave a link to some other Rode content over on the right hand side look at that my camera is missing from my scene never mind and thanks to all of my channel members as well and thanks also to all of my academy members and all the members of discord too have a great day everyone I will see you very soon