Monthly Archives: June 2022

The RØDE to New Media

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Oh Internet. How you’ve changed things.

I was reminiscing with someone recently on the days of Christian talk radio. When I was a kid, I used to listen to my local Christian radio station’s evening lineup that included an episode of Adventures in Odyssey (which wasn’t exactly approved by my church, but it didn’t contain anything they considered objectionable, so they were okay with it, despite what the Doctrine of Biblical Separation might have to say about that). Patch the Pirate and Jungle Jam & Friends: The Radio Show were mainstays when I was a kid.

But over the years, as I outgrew children’s radio shows, I found my way into sermon broadcasts and—thankfully for a very short period of time—conservative talk shows.

I grew up listening to sermons by the likes of John MacArthur and Bob Jones III, and after breaking out of Fundamentalism, Andy Stanley and pre-farewell Rob Bell.

And there were always dissenting voices on the airwaves. But they never had the Hillsong-level funding to produce the kind of audio masterpieces those Evangelical media empires were producing.

Then along came Apple and the podcasting revolution. For anyone unfamiliar with the history, here’s a brief overview.

In 2004, journalist Ben Hammersley of the Guardian wrote about this new phenomenon that was creating a boom in independent amateur radio. The early aughts saw the rise of weblogs, the iPod, and Apple’s GarageBand—an extremely user-friendly digital audio workstation (DAW)—all three of which came together to create this explosive new media. “But what to call it?” Hammersley asked his readers. “Audioblogging? Podcasting? GuerillaMedia?” We all know what term held the staying power.

One of the earliest Evangelical leaders to truly grab hold of the power of podcasting was the now disgraced Mark Driscoll, and from there the medium became one of the de-facto methods for churches to distribute their sermon content around the world.

But unlike broadcast radio, the world of podcasting can’t be monopolized by any particular organization or group of organizations who share a theological or political alignment (like Moody Radio, Family Radio, K-LOVE, and the Bible Broadcasting Network). There are no frequency limitations, no tower or station costs, and no audio quality requirements; anyone can pick up a cheap microphone and record a podcast.

In recent years, there’s been a mass exodus from the Evangelical church. From the Evangelical alliance with the Trump administration to the pandemic to Evangelical responses to Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and the LGBTQ+ community, many are finding motivation for leaving the faith they grew up with. And many are finding a voice in the “Exvangelical” world when they weren’t permitted to even speak in the Evangelical world.

Still, while the content of Exvangelical podcasts might be far more interesting, the low audio quality of many of these podcasts prevented them from being taken seriously. And reaching the level of quality that the well-funded Evangelical podcasts had would prove cost prohibitive.

Enter Freedman Electronics.

Freedman Electronics was founded in 1967 by Henry and Astrid Freedman. Originally from London, Henry Freedman moved to Stockholm, where he met his wife Astrid, and where he worked as the chief engineer for a telecommunications company. On the side, he built mods for Dynacord professional audio equipment. He was eventually offered the rights to sell Dynacord equipment in Australia, so he moved to the Sydney area and opened a shop where he designed, built, and repaired pro audio equipment. The shop was called Freedman Electronics.

After Henry passed away, his son Peter took over the business. Peter admittedly wasn’t as savvy a businessman as his father, and in the midst of a massive economic downturn in Australia, Freedman Electronics was on the brink of bankruptcy in 1987. While his late father’s company was on the brink of collapse, Peter recalled a large-diaphragm condenser microphone he saw at a trade show in China, which he promptly imported 20 units of and got to work modifying. The microphone was immensely popular, sending Freedman’s sales through the roof. As Peter put it, “Sales went off like a rat up a drainpipe,” and he named the microphone RODENT-1, after that metaphorical rat. The microphone’s name was later changed to the RODE NT1, and not long after that the company rebranded itself as RØDE Microphones, in honor of the family’s Scandinavian roots.

The RØDE NT1 lineage

Over the years, RØDE has developed a reputation for producing high-quality, studio-grade audio equipment at consumer-friendly prices, providing a way for individuals without the spending power of large churches to get their much-needed words and stories out into the podcasting world while sounding just as professionally produced as podcasts from Hillsong, The Village Church, and others like them.

Of course, RØDE’s purpose in creating budget-friendly professional audio gear isn’t to cater to the Exvangelical podcasting crowd, but this group benefits from companies like RØDE, who not only make it affordable to produce broadcast-quality content, but who make it accessible and easy as well. Let’s face it, most people aren’t like me. Most Exvangelical podcasters aren’t going to nerd out on microphones, mixing boards, audio interfaces, and DAW’s. And most don’t have the engineering staff or volunteer teams who would handle that stuff for Evangelical pastors.

Here’s an example. As the podcasting boom was growing through the 2010’s, companies like Maono and Neewer were making very inexpensive microphones aimed at the burgeoning podcast market. While the audio quality from their mics was just fine, there were several points of frustration. First, they were making USB microphones and not making it clear that a USB microphone is insufficient for in-person interviews or multi-mic input. Or, if their microphone wasn’t a USB mic, it was a condenser mic, which would ordinarily be fine, but for podcasting in an untreated recording space, a condenser mic just won’t provide the audio quality needed for a clean-sounding podcast.

2019’s PodMic

Then, in 2019, RØDE released the PodMic, which gave independent podcasters the broadcast-quality dynamic microphone they needed. And with a name like “PodMic,” it was clear what the microphone was for. No confusing model-numbers-standing-in-for-product-names like Maono’s AU-A04TR.

The year before, RØDE introduced a device that brought the essentials of a broadcast studio into the podcasting world: the RØDECaster Pro.

And after decades of designing and building some of the best recording equipment out there, RØDE recently developed the NTH-100 headphones, which have released to critical acclaim and compete directly with the former powerhouse in audio editing headphones, Audio Technica’s ATH-M50x. Personally, while I find the headphones to be just as good as one would hope from a company like RØDE, I have a few gripes, which is why I still use my M50x for monitoring.

The Audio Technica ATH-M50x and the RØDE NTH-100

This year saw the refresh of the RØDECaster Pro with a complete redesign of the device in the RØDECaster Pro II, which is sort of the perfect device for me (yes, I ordered one, so I might talk about it at some point). In addition to podcasting, I stream on Twitch from time to time, so I ended up going with the GoXLR as my audio interface of choice, which is great for streaming but not so great for podcasting. By the time I started my second podcast, the RØDECaster Pro was starting to show its age, and—despite being the only device of its class when it came out, had some competition entering the market like the Zoom Podtrak P8 and the Behringer Flow 8 (neither of which were as good as the RØDECaster). The one that caught my attention was the TASCAM Mixcast 4. TASCAM was a company I remembered from my audio mixing class in college, and the Mixcast 4 was the first device on the market that presented a real competition to RØDE’s offering, and in fact, did a few things better. Looking back now, the Mixcast 4 was something of a RØDECaster Pro 1.5. The RØDECaster Pro II combines the capabilites of the Mixcast 4 with those of the GoXLR to develop a one-stop shop for streamers, podcasters, and musicians.

2022’s RØDECaster Pro II

RØDE’s rise to Apple-like dominance of the prosumer audio equipment space wasn’t something I saw coming. If you had asked me three years ago which microphone company would be synonymous with podcasting gear, I would have probably guessed Blue Microphones. Blue produces some of the best sounding (and most beautifully designed) professional studio microphones (like the Blue Bottle), but in the late aughts they had a couple big hits in the consumer microphone world with the Snowball and the Yeti, the second of which became the most recognizable microphone in the podcasting world by 2015.

The Blue Yeti was originally released in 2009.

I also would have assumed USB microphones would have continued their rise in popularity. Sure, they didn’t sound quite as good as their XLR counterparts, but the ease of use for the amateur podcaster would (in my mind at the time) be the priority. But I could never have predicted the increasing accessibility of audio interfaces, which have made XLR microphones much more of a household item.

Shure is another brand that has surprised me, and while they haven’t made any meaningful attempts at reaching consumers (the MV7 strikes me as a bit of a halfhearted effort, even though the mic is surprisingly decent for a USB/XLR hybrid mic), their ubiquity in the podcasting world is undeniable. There does seem to be a bit of hesitance on Shure’s part to dive into this world as they remain entrenched in their status as a go-to brand for professional audio equipment, despite how affordable the SM57 and SM58 are.

Now, to be fair, RØDE did release a USB dynamic microphone aimed at the burgeoning podcasting market, the RØDE Podcaster, but the dominance of the Blue Yeti kept the Podcaster from truly breaking into the USB dynamic mic space. However, RØDE did follow up with an XLR model called the Procaster, which has taken off as many podcasters are much more interested in filling their mic lockers with XLR mics that they can connect to their mixing consoles.

As someone who left the Apple ecosystem ten years ago, I’m mystified by my sudden excitement over a brand. But where Apple locks people into their ecosystem with no easy way to connect their products to products from other brands, RØDE operates in an opposite manner, providing connectivity with other brands and even creating custom presets on the RØDECaster Pro II for competing microphones like the Electro-Voice RE20 and Shure’s SM7B. Now, of course, in the world of professional and prosumer audio equipment, creating a walled-garden ecosystem is impossible, and even if it were, it would destroy your company. Still, RØDE’s methodology is admirable, and I haven’t even mentioned their vertical manufacturing process that ensures consistency and allows for the kind of dedication that produces multiple timely firmware updates to the original RØDECaster Pro.

So yeah, I’m gushing a bit. But as an Exvangelical podcaster myself and a co-founder of a podcasting network called Dauntless Media Collective, I’m grateful for companies like RØDE that allow non-funded creatives like myself to develop high-quality content.

My Podcasting Gear List

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