RØDE, since the release of the original RØDECaster Pro, has been at the forefront of the new generation of audio mixing. Since then, other companies have made their offerings, but RØDE continued to listen to their user base to understand what they needed moving forward. Among the solutions included the RØDECaster Pro II, arguably the best mixer in the industry. More recently, they took a big thing and put it into a smaller package, releasing the RØDECaster Duo.
The RØDECaster Duo is, in almost every way, just a miniature version of the RØDECaster Pro II. It has all the same features. It has the same Revolution Preamps, the same sized touch screen, the same connectivity to RØDE’s wireless microphones (including the new RØDE Wireless Pro) and the same processing.
So what’s different? There is just a little bit less of it. Where the RØDECaster Pro II has four mic inputs, the RØDECaster Duo has two. The duo has seven channels and four physical faders compared to the Pro II’s nine channels and six faders (only leaving out the two additional mics). The Duo offers six touchpads, whereas the Pro II offers eight, but both have multiple pages, allowing you to expand that number to considerably more.
The RØDECaster Duo has two mic inputs, as I mentioned, but the inputs are Neutrik combo inputs, allowing for a microphone or instrument, so you can have two people on the mic or one person with a guitar in hand. It really is the perfect tool for a smaller production. The four-mic setup is great to have, but not needed by that many people.
You can connect to a device via an auxiliary cable, via Bluetooth or via USB, where you can connect to a two-PC setup, allowing you to pull the chat/gaming audio from one PC and the system/browser audio from the other and send it all out to your streaming/audio software as one single media source. You can also record directly to the device on a microSD card in either stereo or multichannel formats.
“The RØDECaster Duo is, in almost every way, just a miniature version of the RØDECaster Pro II.”
The RØDECaster series has special presets for microphones, be it a microphone type, a specific RØDE microphone like the Podmic or NT1 or even some third-party mics like the Shure SM7B.
Audio routing remains one of the greatest features that continues on in the RØDECaster Duo. The submixes allow you to send a completely different combination of audio to your headphones, your stream, your chat and even your internal recording. Also available is the ability to mute and listen to specified faders, meaning that you can check the levels of a source before you put that source to air.
When podcasting, my co-host and I listen to a source that we don’t want to hear on the final mix, so we send it only to our headphones. RØDE was at the forefront of adding a proper sub-mix for mixers designed for creators, and while there are companies following suit, their model is still my favourite.
“The RØDECaster Duo is $499.99 USD, $200 less than the RØDECaster Pro II and a much more realistic price point for creators wanting a studio experience at their desk.”
If I have any complaints, I would say it sits with their advanced processing. The Aphex processing was made to simplify making your vocals sound great (and it does), but there hasn’t been a lot of advancement there. Other mixing solutions have gone a lot further with their processing, giving you upwards of a 10-band EQ to truly customize your audio.
Also, it’s time to embrace better noise reduction over just using a noise gate. If this can’t be accomplished at a hardware level, include this as part of the UNIFY software and make the RØDECaster Duo compatible with it to take advantage. The short gap in release dates between the Pro II and the Duo left for little functional evolution, so hopefully, we will see some of these changes in the future.
So, if the RØDECaster Duo is just a smaller RØDECaster Pro II, why does it exist? Well, as someone who has used both in their setup, real estate is the big difference. I attempted to leave the RØDECaster Pro II in my setup, but it just took up too much space. I put it away, only to take it out when I was recording a podcast. The Duo is 2.75” less in length, nearly 2” more narrow and over a half-inch shorter than the Pro II, which doesn’t sound like a lot on paper or screen, but it tucks away so nicely.
It is now a part of my permanent setup, so my podcast is ready to go whenever we record, but I am also using it as my mixer for streaming. I have set up different shows in the RØDECaster Duo’s settings, allowing me to create different configurations for my podcast and video content.
The RØDECaster Duo is $499.99 USD, $200 less than the RØDECaster Pro II and a much more realistic price point for creators wanting a studio experience at their desk. RØDE’s name in audio has long set a high bar, both for content creators and professionals in a pre-content creator world, and the RØDECaster Duo is just another step in their stellar tradition.
