The Shazam! Podcast Mic

Rode's new Podcaster mic at first seems like just another entry in the parade of USB mics from companies including Samson, MXL, and BLUE. O'Reilly podcaster Chris Adamson even tried a Logitech PlayStation mic recently.

What made me stop at the Rode booth was that company's reputation for high-quality mics. I figured it had a fresh take on the genre — and I was right.

The advantage of USB mics is that they perform the analog-to-digital conversion outside the noisy confines of your computer, resulting in a cleaner sound and less gear to carry. The disadvantage was something I didn't think about until I tried the Rode: With USB, there's always a delay, or latency, between the time you speak and the time the computer finishes processing the sound and spits it back out to your headphones. My USB headset doesn't even bother to play my mic signal through the headphones, which I find annoying. But if it did, I'd surely find the delay even more annoying.

Rode's solution is ingenious: Put an analog passthrough on the mic itself. You plug your headphones into the side of the mic, adjust a knob to set the listening level, and then hear your voice with zero latency. The arrow in the photo above shows the location of the headphone knob and jack.

The shape of the Podcaster evokes the popular EV RE20 broadcast mic, and the specs (PDF file) show a hefty bump around 10kHz, which should give it a crisp sound. On the trade-show floor, I liked the way it sounded on my voice, as well as the way the cardiod pattern reduced the noise around me. I asked Rode about getting a review unit, so I hope to share my findings in a more realistic recording environment soon.

One thing I'm curious about is the "analogue signal conditioning" mentioned in the specs; a potential downside of USB mics is that you can't run them through analog compressors, de-essers and EQ before going to disk. Rode is apparently also offering a podcast-hosting service at RodePodcaster.com.

List price is $349, with a street price around $199.

UPDATE: Here's a photo of the bottom side of the mic, showing the headphone jack and volume knob. It's from a video clip on the RodePodcaster.com site. The hands help give a sense of scale; the mic is 8-7/16 inches long.