Best Wireless Mic for YouTube Videos | Rode Wireless Pro Review
If you’re an independent content creator then I need you to see this video. Welcome Back everyone I’m Caleb Denison and today we’re going to do something a little different on the channel this video is going to be part rant part review and part behind the scenes and it’s all going to tie together behind one very important product something that we’ve recently started using here in our studios that I think everybody needs to know about I am of course talking about the Rode Wireless Pro microphone set now full disclosure Rode did send me this mic set
as well as a couple of others I’m going to show you later uh for free for the purposes of reviewing and using these products however this is not a sponsored video everything that you’re about to hear is 100% my personal opinion and my experience along with Zeke and Chris who are going to join me in this video here shortly so here’s the rant part I am shocked at how many creators I see on Tik Tok Instagram YouTube who have these like really nice setups right like they’ve got a boom with a blue microphone or Audio
Technica or Sennheiser or something coming in from out of frame clearly they’ve got that high-end gear flex going on and yet they sound like absolute garbage actually
it’s a special kind of torture for your ear drums which is why I want to tell you about the Rode Wireless Pro they have solved a very specific problem for us and they can solve a very specific problem for a lot of folks let’s take a look at what comes in the package and then we’ll start talking about what they do and why what they do is so incredible all right so this is what comes in the Rode Wireless Pro package once you unbox everything and what I love about it is that it’s got just
about everything you could possibly need already built in Rode doesn’t force you to buy a bunch of accessories so that you can get what you really want so you’ve got two cases here we’ll start with the one that houses the wireless transmitters and the wireless receiver this is a charging case think like wireless earbuds there’s a battery built into the case you charge that up and then anytime you put the wireless receiver or transmitters in this case it charges them up this case is also a sort of dock for the transmit and receivers so that
you can access them using your PC or Mac in this other case are all of your accessories like I said Rode includes just about everything that you need uh you’re going to find two lavalier microphones sorry it’s a little bit messy in here two lavalier microphones you’re going to get a selection of wind screens these will connect directly to the lav microphone or to the transmitters themselves if that’s how you want to go uh there are clips for the transmitter so you can hook it onto your belt or your pants or whatever but there are
also magnetic clips so that you can hide these uh behind your shirt or something like that and all you’ll see is just like a little magnet um and then the cables that you need to connect this to the device that you’re shooting with whether that’s a DSLR iPhone or Android everything that you need is right here in this accessories case so over the years we have gone through a ton of different microphones both Wireless and wired ultimately and I would say for like the last year or so so we had to resort to a wired
lav microphone because for whatever reason every wireless product that we use ended up having some kind of buzz or suffering from some kind of interference we could use old school wireless uh devices except for they used a wireless bandwidth that is technically not legal when I showed up to the Super Bowl to cover the Super Bowl we were banned from using a specific wireless mic setup because it didn’t fit within the parameters of what was legal and there was concern that we could like cause some kind of interference so we were already on the hunt
for a new wireless microphone setup that would serve our needs so when the Wireless Pro was announced and we saw the specs for this getup we just knew we had to have it 32-bit float audio basically gives you a huge range of flexibility it eliminates the need for you to obsess over the input gain for your microphone so yeah you can still connect the receiver to your your camera or phone and dial the input gain in so that it sounds good to you but you don’t have to the idea behind 32-bit float audio is that
you have this massive dynamic range to work with so whether you speak very softly or you’re screaming into the microphone it doesn’t really matter it’s going to catch that entire dynamic range without distorting and it’s going to give you full control once you go to put your audio and video together and mix everything down 32-bit is also extremely high resolution and that it’s got a lot of audio information to it so you’re enabled to get great sound from something like 32-bit audio and I got to tell you the first time that we heard the audio
from one of our recordings that we shot here in the studio we were blown away and this was hearing the audio out of laptop speakers right we hadn’t put in headphones or anything yet we just played it back through laptop speakers and the difference was inred incredible like we all sat here just kind of shocked by what we were hearing now that 32-bit audio float is clutch and I think it’s one of the best things about this mic setup however there is a little bit of a catch with that so the 32-bit float audio is
not captured wirelessly that is to say whatever you’re recording with your iPhone Android your DSLR camera that’s not what’s going to catch the 32-bit audio, the 32-bit audio is actually captured by the transmitter itself and both both of the wireless transmitters in this pack have this on board you can always have backup audio as a matter of fact you can get away with not recording audio on your camera itself if you want to but for redundancy you can record directly to the transmitter it’s got plenty of storage space uh or you can record directly to
your transmitter and to your camera so that you have options but again it’s important to note that the 32-bit float audio is captured by the transmit itself so if you want that feature you’ve got to use that audio uh now some of you might be thinking well isn’t it going to be kind of a pain to sync that audio with my video since they’re not tied together uh no it’s not because there is time coding on the audio that makes it a snap to line it up exactly with your video so even though we do
the clap thing so you know we can make it easier to sync up the video in the audio you don’t have to because there’s a time code for the audio built into what you’re capturing by these transmitters now if you’re a videographer or producer I’m sure you’ve had scenarios in which you stopped recording on your camera and then your talent said something amazing or something hilarious happened and you didn’t capture that audio again if you’re recording directly to the transmitter you don’t lose anything it’ll always be on and you don’t have to worry about your
talent turning the transmitter recording on or off you can actually map a button on the receiver to trigger that onboard recording so that you are in control and you don’t have to rely on your talent now like I said before you don’t have to use the wired lav mic in conjunction with the receiver there’s a mic built into the receiver uh itself this has been a feature of Rode’s wireless microphones in the past and this mic sounds very good but if you connect the wired lav to this thing the fidelity is absolutely phenomenal it’s significant
better than the wireless goto that we were using before another thing I like about this wired lav is that the wind screen that you put over it snaps into place and it’s not likely to just fall off we had that problem with the Wireless Go 2 before this um there is however one thing about this wire L of which I am not a fan and that would be this little gold screw security terminal this gold screw type security deal is not fixed right I can screw it right off off as I’ve just done here um
which causes a problem in that um if you try to connect the jack to the receiver here uh if this thing is not screwed all the way back uh you’re not going to get a secured connection what ends up happening is you have to hold this into place and then kind of move the transmitter around to get a secure connection if this gold piece here um is not flush against the back of the jack you’re not going to get a secure connection um I’d rather this just have been fixed or just skip the whole screw
terminal thing entirely but you know what that one little annoyance I’m able to overlook it because by and large I absolutely love this rig but what’s it like for the folks on the other side of the camera the producers the editors that’s why I brought in Zeke and Chris who work with me every day and put up with me thank you fellas for doing that uh to tell us a little bit about about what it’s like for you guys and actually we’re going to pass this thing around so I’m going to move uh why don’t
you scooch in Chris it’s all good yeah man so basically uh you know Caleb touched a lot on the 32-bit float feature which everybody loves and I love it myself man I think uh the Rode Wireless Pro is is a significant upgrade from what we’ve used in the past and uh something that not everybody talks about you know aside from the 32-bit float is the safety track feature so it records in a stereo track but on one track you get the standard volume that you record at on the right channel it actually reduces the volume
by quite a bit so you have a nice little backup track too I think it’s it’s pretty solid to work with honestly yeah this absolutely came in clutch when I was shooting a wedding and I think in terms of usability and ease of use that’s where it really shines because there was a situation where the bride and groom start giving their thank you speech to the crowd and I’m still trying to get hooked up into a wired board with another recorder and in order to make sure that I nailed it and got the bride and
Grom speech I just go over to this Rode case and I pull it out and it starts recording automatically because I have my personal set set up to record as soon as you pull them out of the case um I’ve also found that that is the best way to make sure your talent doesn’t intentionally or accidentally start or stop a recording because when they’re recording automatically there is no stopping it once you pull it out of the case if you do press the record button on the transmitter it’ll simply make a cut and start a
new audio track this setup just has you covered it’s got It’s got your back um it’s really difficult to make a mistake or have an oops moment um which I think is just absolutely huge but let me ask you guys this question cuz I proposed at the beginning of this video you know that creators of all sorts might want to use this instead of their more expensive microphone on the boom with the the Focusrite Scarlett or whatever um but tell me what you think about that is this a reasonable substitute for something like that given
that a lot of people aren’t setting that whole thing up and this is basically plug and play brainless you’re not going to screw it up so I think the biggest takeaway for me is the convenience of it in comparison to a setup like that you got a ton of cables you got a ton of different wires and inputs to kind of you know dial in and get everything in in one one place when it comes to like a wireless system like this man it really is plug andplay like you say you just plug a mic
in you I mean that’s optional too you don’t even have to plug live in you plug a mic in you press record and it takes a lot of the the guest work out of it and you know just smooth selling from there for real yeah you know part of the reason I wanted to bring you guys in was because uh I feel like if I just sit here and talk about how wonderful this has made our lives on my own it sounds a little bit more like a sales pitch than a review but would you
guys agree this has basically completely changed our production oh yeah this is a it’s no-brainer man I’ve been I’ve been waiting for Rode to upgrade the the wireless go for a long time and I think think they really knocked it out of the park on this one bro yeah if you’ve been disappointed with the audio that you’ve been getting from your productions whether you’re a solo creator whether you’re out in the field I can’t recommend the Wireless Pro enough like this this setup is worth every penny uh don’t tell Rode but they could probably charge
more for it um I think the operation time is supposed to be about 7 hours but practically speaking have you ever run out of battery while using these I can’t even think of how often I’ve charged them to be honest dude that’s totally true, charging case right yeah I haven’t ever opened the case and looked at the receiver and seen less than like an 80% full bar they just kind of go in the dock and they take care of themselves and then yeah uh we occasionally connect them to my laptop so I can shoot you
the audio files after production and they’re they’re just always charging you don’t have to think about it that’s probably the best part of this thank you fellas I appreciate you stepping in and adding to the narrative that was really super valuable yeah so that’s the Rode Wireless Pro review if that’s what you came here for uh you’re welcome to take off if you want this next section of the video is for fans of the channel because I have some exciting news to share that also has to do with Rode these are the Rode NT5 microphones
and uh you know I’m familiar with this microphone from professional uh music recording I’ve got audio engineer friends of mine who like to use these as overhead mics on drum sets uh and they have lots of different practical uses as well however for us these are going to help transform the way we do television reviews Soundbar reviews and Hi-Fi audio reviews up until now we haven’t really had a good way of capturing audio here in our new studio uh this is going to change that so from here on out I’m not just going to talk
about how a TV sounds I’m going to try to show you I’m not just going to talk about how the Soundbar sounds I’m going to try and let you hear that uh same with hi-fi audio equipment will it be possible for me to share with you the same experience that I’m having here no it will not but this is going to give us a baseline right this is going to allow me to record all the audio equipment exactly the same way in a binaural setup with like an XY pattern uh so that we can duplicate
as best as we can the sound that we’re getting in this room and what that will allow us to do is give you sort of a reference point so you can actually hear the difference between one soundbar and another between one television and another and between one set of speakers and another I’m really excited to do this because I’m kind of tired of having to describe audio I’d really like to let you hear it that just hasn’t been realistic until now so that’s kind of a little bit of an announcement for the channel the Rode
NT5 um I’m going to put them on this particular mount and I’m going to lock in the angle we’re going to actually mark off the floor so that the microphone stand always goes in the same place the microphones are always oriented in the same place everything is going to be normalized we’re going to have a standard for all of that so that the only thing that’s different uh is the audio source signal itself so you only hear the difference in the audio I’m really excited about that and uh I just want to say thanks to
Rode for sending these along uh along with the Wireless Pro setup when we requested that think it’s going to do great things for the channel anyway that’s the little behind the scenes here at Digital Trends thank you for hanging out with us today like I said little bit different kind of a video but I I thought it was super fun I hope you enjoyed it and if you did do me a favor don’t forget to click like And subscribe I’ll see you on the next one and until then here’s two other videos I think you
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