As you may have previously seen on the GonnaGeek Gear Channel, I’ve done a couple of videos for the Rodecaster Pro. I started with an unboxing video, and then I decided to document my experience with my initial setup of the Rodecaster Pro, and how intuitive it was for me to use. You may also have heard on a recent episode of Better Podcasting, that so far I’ve not been super impressed with the audio quality – BUT I was waiting to do the long-awaited firmware update to see if there were any changes.
As you may imagine, when the firmware update arrived, I decided it was time to get out the camera and document the process again. My plan was to document the process for updating the firmware and my initial experience enabling multitrack recording, but things took a weird turn very quickly and this video turned in to something totally different.
Have a look below, and if you have a chance, please read my comments below the video.
Unless there is an actual way to enable recording to the microSD card in a multitrack capability, then I’m left with the conclusion that Rode did not fullfil their promise to release multitrack recording to the Rodecaster Pro. YES, the Rodecaster Pro has a multitrack capability, but only through USB – and THAT END POINT, is where the recording is happening. The best way to think about this is to consider a multi-track Audio Interface that does not have any on-board recording features. It would be a little misleading to call that audio interface a recording device because ultimate it doesn’t record – software where it’s hooked up to does.
So unless I’m wrong and I’ve missed the setting to enable multitrack on the Rodecaster Pro (and I really hope I am), this firmware update has left me extremely disappointed. I’m also left questioning if I can recommend the Rodecaster Pro since Rode advertised that it would add multitrack recording, but then released firmware and changed the direction to be multitrack USB. While I do understand that the original press release never specifically said onboard recording OR microSD recording, the reality is that the original announcement never indicated USB either and again – I think using the term recording as a feature of the hardware itself is a little misleading (for the reasons above). In any case, I hope they add multitrack microSD recording soon.
Edit on 2019-03-02 7:20AM PT – Since posting this video I have been linked to this portion of Rode’s version 1.10 firmware walk through which shows an additional toggle that says microSD. As per their release announcement, the released version does not have a microSD toggle in the main photo, nor the video they have embedded first in their release post. It also appears that the first embedded video on their release may have been edited to hide the microSD function as there is a large black space toward the top of the menu that doesn’t appear on the final release (see the header photo in the article). This indicates to me that perhaps in the future we could be getting it. However, this would seem to confirm that Rode’s original announcement of multi-track recording was with intention to be onboard microSD recording (likely with USB functionality as well), and that for some reason they had to pull this function between the time of recording the walk through and final release. While this new information does give me hope we may see this one day, this new information actually further frustrates me that microSD recording was not addressed anywhere on the release post and that it was instead redirect to solely discuss the USB functionality.
Links in Video:
Well, it’s here – The recent Rodecaster Pro 1.2 update features multitrack recording to Micro SD card as well as live USB output. You can select one or both to be active.