you know it's a lot of fun reviewing the latest and greatest microphones and new stuff that come out with new features and crazy things like that but when it comes to choosing a piece of gear especially in the audio realm often you're choosing gear that came out a very long time ago and that is the case with microphones as well some of my favorite microphones that i use here in the studio for my content have released before i was born at least for the first iterations of them which is wild to think about given that everyone thinks if a piece of gear is two years old it's old and useless now the microphone we're reviewing today released all the way back at least as far as i can tell this iteration released all the way back in 2009 which was actually not that long ago for microphones but it's pretty neat this is the road broadcaster which is a little bit different from the rode pro caster which
i have reviewed off and on over the years we're gonna take a look at it super shout out to a subscriber by the name of wraith for sending this out i'm eposvox the stream professor i have reviewed countless microphones here on the channel and i am always reviewing more with the primary objective of getting you the best possible information for you to pick the best gear for your money to produce awesome content and share it with the world to make tech easier and more fun to make streaming easier for you hit the subscribe and notification button so you can stay informed this microphone which again was sent out by a subscriber i have not gotten my hands on it prior to that opportunity is pretty interesting you may actually recognize it from an episode of stream critique where
i critiqued linus's streaming setup that he built in his previous home where he had this microphone because i'd never really seen or tested it before and i thought it was a kind of weird choice but we were testing it here today because it's actually a pretty cool microphone it is a broadcast microphone it's designed for voiceover it's designed for streaming broadcast scenarios but it's a condenser microphone this comes with some specific key advantages and disadvantages the advantages being that it requires less gain so microphones like my electro voice re20 and the sure sm7b and things like that require a fair bit of gain like a lot of gain like 50 plus db of gain to really power and make it sound effective which means you either need a super high-end audio interface that can provide enough clean gain or you need a mic activator of some sort that can supplement that gain through phantom power this microphone does not it takes phantom power and only requires about 30-ish or less db of gain in my testing here which is pretty neat the disadvantage here comes in the fact that
it is going to pick up a little bit more ambient noise a little bit more background sound than your dynamic microphones just due to the physical characteristics of the microphones dynamic microphones are basically activated by the sound waves hitting the capsule which means they reject a lot more quieter ambient background sound but also produce a slightly less natural tone to your voice condenser microphones are supposed to produce a more natural tone but pick up a lot more background sound because they are activated by phantom power which keeps the capsule effectively always sensitive to sound so they're usually a lot more sensitive to sound than dynamic microphones however this one kind of tears the the line between the two because
it is designed for broadcast so it has more of that broadcast sound a little bit less natural of that typical condenser studio mic sound while still not requiring a ton of gain it does have a switch on here that can switch between the high pass filter cutting off some of the low end and a flat mode so i have it on flat now and this is with the high pass filter enabled which is cutting off some of the low end it's probably not going to change much until you get right up on the microphone because this microphone does experience proximity effect unlike the electro voice re20 which specifically does not so we have been on the high pass mode we're going to switch it back to flat now we're on the flat mode i should have a little bit more warmth going on here maybe not i'm trying also to not peak the microphone or plus of the microphone because it is very sensitive to that you do want to get some sort of end pop filter here this is an in address microphone so pop filter placement's
a little weird but it is sensitive to plosives but again unlike a microphone like the re20 which is set up with all these vents on the sides and stuff because it's a variable d microphone meaning that it's not sensitive to proximity effect meaning that for the most part whether your microphone's out here or out here other than the gain and the background noise sensitivity the actual tone of your voice will not necessarily change whereas on most microphones or at least condensers especially ones like this the closer you get to the microphone the more boomy you're gonna sound and this is especially the case with this rode broadcaster here as the frequency response curve has a nice lovely warm boost around the 100 150 hertz range and then a nice little treble boost up in the higher range as well which if you've watched any of my microphone reviews you know that
i typically do that in eq for a lot of the flatter microphones anyway so this has that boost kind of baked in but that also means that the proximity effect is going to amplify that quite a bit more and bring up that 200 250 hertz range which does introduce some of that muddy boominess that i don't like so as usual this entire recording has been made with the microphone completely unprocessed and raw here we're gonna get to some comparisons to some other similar uh xlr microphones mostly dynamic there is one other microphone that this would compare nicely with the audio technica bp40 which is another broadcast condenser microphone that i reviewed a while back if i have the right sample from my previous review
i will include it here otherwise that was lent by a subscriber by the name of pablo i don't have it in the studio to test but we're gonna get some comparisons here three rings for the elven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie now
i do want to note that this is a super wide angle lens i'm actually only like a couple inches off of the microphone here and it's at the usual 45 degree angle to prevent plosives it looks like i'm much further away than i am but again keep in mind this microphone suffers from proximity effect which you may want if you need that extra bass in your voice for those of you who don't like myself the distance is kind of required i will include a sample as well of the re20 that has me close and further away so that you can see that there's no real proximity effect three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the elven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne and the land of mordor where the shadows lie now we're getting to the talking while typing tests talking on top being that came out weird typing on box royale switches talking about clicking clicking typing clicking typing clicking typing talking while typing talking while typing on box royale switches talking about clicking clicking and clacking clicky click clack clack and white noise test talking while typing talking while typing on box royale switches talking while typing clickity click click click click click click click talking while typing tests talking while typing on box royale switches talking while typing and clicking talking while typing and clicking talking while typing talking while typing talking while typing on box royale switches talking about clipping clicking and typing talking while clicking tippity tap tip tap tap and now we've got my usual white noise test pointed directly at the microphone around the side of the microphone up top down below back behind you get the idea in front of the microphone behind the microphone below yeah white noise test in front of the microphone side top bottom back
we have our white noise test in front of the microphone going around the microphone in front we and our white noise test in front of the microphone
so i gotta be honest i don't know that i like my natural voice on this microphone i think it sounds a little thin especially unless i get right up on it i think the proximity effect is something that you need to use on this microphone whereas my electro voice re20 i never find myself needing to rely on that because it doesn't have that you know it has the variable d that makes you not need it whereas with mics like this and kind of like the road pod mic and stuff i feel like i have to eat the microphone in order to really use it and i don't like doing that especially in this scenario like this is as far as this microphone arm comes at the moment so in order for either of my camera angles for me to look natural i have to be off the microphone a little bit but in order to sound my best i have to be right up on it i don't think it's a bad microphone i think it's actually pretty good and i think for a lot of voices it's going to perform really well especially the higher pitch voices
i looked at podcastage's review and it sounded significantly better on his voice than i think it does mine which i don't always feel is the case about some of these microphones i think a lot of them are geared towards that more radio voice sound whereas this one i think is more for the upper voice range that a lot of people have which is fine that's awesome i am surprised given that it is a condenser microphone at the background noise rejection and things like that not as good as an sm7b or re20 but
i think i really believe this is an option that a lot of people should consider because it it alleviates a couple things and in fact i haven't looked at pricing yet because i try not to do that until the end of my video reviews and i was supposed to pull this up already so looking at pricing this isn't a microphone that's sold very often anymore because it is such an old mic it's one that you're gonna struggle to find new they have some on amazon for 419 that's uh a little insane don't do that buy a sm7b re20 or re320 for that price you will have heard some of the samples here in this video you can get it used for around 300 bucks honestly i'm gonna say at this point here's going to be my toss-up if you have this kind of range of budget and you're looking for the right microphone to buy my input which you can listen to samples and decide for yourself and whatever but my input will be
if you have a higher invoice if you can get this for around 300 bucks used pick up the road broadcaster because it's going to save you the pain point of needing a higher end preamp in order to actually power this cleanly which is a huge win so many people spend a ton of money on their microphones and so many microphones even the cheaper ones like the pod mic need a cloud lift or a fet head or an interface with a high end enough preamp to actually drive it and that is really frustrating to see sometimes if you have a lower invoice or like the more boomy radio sound i'm going to say for this price range that the rode pro caster which is the dynamic kind of counterpoint to this they have a usb one called the rode podcaster as well but the rode pro caster specifically
if you're looking at xlr is about 100 bucks cheaper at 228 for like newer ones you can get them for under 200 sometimes for used ones is going to be a lot better of a buy at this point but it depends on your voice it depends on what you want out of it if you specifically for whatever reason have specific hardware you want to pair with it that doesn't have a beefy preamp then this is going to be the microphone to go with the broadcaster because it doesn't need a whole lot of preamp whereas the pro caster still kind of does um but otherwise like for 400 plus dollars you can get the top end sm7b re20s of the world and for cheaper you you know more expensive than the pro caster you also have the electric voice re 320 which is going to be a lovely mic for the lower invoices as well so i i struggle to recommend this microphone in 2021 especially given that
it's a little bit harder to purchase i think if you're buying from specific gear suppliers uh and outlets like that you're going to have an easier time whereas a site like b h doesn't even carry it anymore and the amazon listings are probably just people who have remaining stock that are trying to get the most dollar out of it but but this has been an interesting microphone to look at it's certainly something different from what we usually look at like i said we usually look at the audio technica bp40 we've looked at that before the audio technica bp40 is 250 to 350 used or new depending on how you're getting it on ebay as well and so probably 350 is new on most websites that's also a better deal that's got that larger diaphragm like this but it's still a dynamic microphone i think earlier in the video i called it a condenser that was a misspeak uh that one also sounds a little bit better for the mid to lower end voices than this microphone i think this has a place
i don't think it's places with me which is why i'm glad that it's not one that i purchased and shout out to wraith for loaning me this and letting me borrow it for so long to finally get around to it but i think this microphone has a place and i think there are certain people that will use it and i do think the lower gain requirement is huge and i like the little switch that it has for the high pass filter right there a little bit easier to use than most microphones although you may accidentally press it and it has a little tally light to indicate when it's receiving phantom power so if suddenly you think your microphone's not working if your lights off then you know you're not receiving power or your cables unplugged or something else which is kind of neat product links for what
i can find will be in the description below as always hit the like button if you enjoyed playlist down below with all of my comparisons and all of my other microphones
i've reviewed go check those out make the right decision for you don't rush into something just because someone recommended it as the best microphone take your time choose your gear wisely because despite what people say gear matters it just matters to get the right gear and then you don't have to think about it anymore thank you so much for watching uh join us on discord discord.js box go check out our merch and remember be kind rewind English
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