RØDE Procaster Professional Broadcast-quality Dynamic Microphone for Podcasting, Streaming, Gaming, and Voice Recording

The sound is buttery and rich; miles ahead of the $65 generic USB mic. I didn't realize how big a difference it would make! This mic needs a pre-amp of some kind. If you just use a mixer, you need to turn the gain up quite far, so you'll need a decent mixer to make sure the signal is clean at those higher levels. (I'm using Behringer gear, and above about 75%, you start to hear unwanted line hiss. Installing a Cloudlifter fixed that problem. Whatever the case, this mic requires that you spend more heavily on the rest of your gear. Definitely the next level up from cheap beginner YouTubing, and you'll pay for it. The Procaster has good sound rejection from the sides and rear. With the right adjustments and a less clacky keyboard, I find I can get rid of typing noises from the desk. The mic, as others have indicated, is much heavier than your standard budget mic, so bear that in mind when working out your mounting solution. I was about to get another two of these, (I have two condenser mics I was quite happy with in terms of sound quality, but they pick up everything from far away, from the other sides of walls, so dynamic mics are the answer.), but instead of dropping $600, I instead spent half that to get the next tier down; two Rode Podmics. Judging by YouTube comparisons, they don't sound as nice out of box as the Procaster, but I'm hoping with some compression tricks and equalization, they'll serve. I also like that they have a slightly greater effective speaking range than the Procaster. When interviewing guests who are not necessarily trained in audio work, I want people to feel comfortable not being right on top of their mic. But we'll see. If they don't work out as I hope, I'll return them and get another two of these Procasters. **********Update: The cheaper Podmics worked; they're nice little mics, and with compression and tweaking they do nearly sound as good.., but not quite. There's just something nagging at the edge. I ended up buying another Procaster and am very happy with that. An expensive experiment!

Excellent quality microphone for voiceovers, podcasts, and broadcasts

This is a superb dynamic mic that is a serious alternative to the Shure SM7b. Whilst the SM7b has some advantages like better internal shock mounting, I prefer my voice on the Procaster. As many people have pointed out, this mic needs a lot of gain and +50dB without hiss is a lot of ask of many interfaces, hence the advice to use a Fethead or CloudLifter. An interesting, albeit slightly more expensive alternative is to get a dbx286s. This is a slim 1U rackmountable unit that gives you a lot of clean gain, it also includes a de-esser, a gate you can use to hide background noise, along with a low frequency control that gives you that "radio voice" and a high frequency alternative that adds a pleasant crispness. Now you could do some of those things in post-production if you are recording, but it is a great option if you are live (or like me have a huge problem with external noise from the street). I realise I'm in danger of reviewing the dbx rather than the Rode, but they make such a perfect combination for live streaming I think it is worth mentioning. This setup really brings out the best in the Rode mic. The Procaster itself is incredibly solid. I think it benefits from the Rode shockmount and boom arm, but that's a personal choice depending on how you intend to use it. I think it needs some sort of pop filter, you can get 3rd party alternatives to the Rode foam pop filter, which is a bit expensive. A more visually attractive option is the metal grill available from Roxdon. It is expensive but custom made for the Procaster. If your mic is in shot then it looks really nice. It is great for use in untreated rooms or noisy environments, so a very forgiving choice if you are recording or streaming from a room you cannot treat for sound. To some extent this would be true of any dynamic mic, but this has a large diaphragm to capture a full rendition of your voice and rejects lots of sound from the sides and behind. Naturally the Procaster will work better with some voices than others e.g. I'm not a singer, but if I were I'd be a light tenor. I use some breathing exercises so I am speaking from my diaphragm and not my throat, which would have a more constricted sound. So while this mic is good out of the box, you can also learn to sound better on it e.g. finding the sweet spot in terms of distance. BTW if you literally just want to record straight onto your computer and avoid all XLR type stuff then there is the Rode Podcaster, which is basically the same mic but with USB and a socket for your headphones. XLR mics give you more options for the future, but I appreciate some people might want to just plug it in and record.

Super mais bien faire attention au type de micro. Il faut être bien en face et avoir la carte son adaptée. Beaucoup de paramétrage et réglage pas adapté aux débutants.

I have been making a living from online videos for at least a decade. Through this time I purchased MANY microphones. I made the mistake early on by purchasing condenser mics for my vocal recordings. I had tried dynamic mics in the past but found the impedance was too high and left me with post recording processing to remove noise. This mic comes in with very good volume and no detectable noise at all. The internal pop filter works perfectly. I am simply using the Rode WS2 windshield and find its working perfectly. Vocals sound really smooth and broadcast quality. Build quality is typical Rode high quality. If you are looking for the best value mic for podcasting vocals and don't want to have to filter out noise later this is the only choice in my honest opinion. Well done Rode!