Rodecaster Pro 2 Setup For Myriad Anywhere Pro Studio Control

Modified on Tue, 24 Sep at 12:55 PM

The Rodecaster Pro 2 is an exciting addition to the Rode range because it's highly flexible nature, professional features and keen price point (at least for the features included) make it ideal for smaller station or cloud based broadcasters.

The key features for broadcasters are:

Assignable Faders
Monitor Muting (when mics are live)
USB & Bluetooth Interfaces
Mic & Main Output Processing
Sound Effects & Voice Effects
MIDI Support

As it is possible to have 4 x Audio Sources (3 x USB + 1 x analogue stereo input) plus two additional microphone inputs and 3 x virtual sources, you can use this mixer in a traditional radio studio as a broadcast mixer.

It is also very good when used for recording podcasts or shows (as that is what it was designed for).

But as each fader can be assigned to any audio source or as a MIDI control, it is possible to setup the Rodecaster Pro 2 in a 'hybrid' configuration that combines audio inputs (for microphones and local play) with MIDI control of remote Media Players making it ideal for use with the Studio Control feature in Myriad Anywhere Pro.

Fader Allocation

Fader 1 - Microphone Input
Fader 2 - USB 2 Input (for local content) / Pads / Bluetooth / Microphone 2 (whichever is most useful)
Fader 3 - No audio assigned
Fader 4 - No audio assigned
Fader 5 - No audio assigned
Fader 6 - No audio assigned
Virtual Fader 1 - USB 1 Input (used for audio coming from Myriad Anywhere for monitoring only)
Virtual Fader 2 - Your choice
Virtual Fader 3 - Your choice

The Faders screen on your Rodecaster 2 Pro should look something like this.

Once you have setup the 'Studio' profile, we recommend taking a backup so you can revert back to it at any time (see Rode documentation).

The final step is to setup Myriad Anywhere Pro to use the MIDI control from the Rodecaster Pro 2.

Login to Anywhere Pro and load the Studio Control module.
Click on the Anywhere icon on the ribbon and select Options from the drop down list.
Go to the Studio Control section and select the Rodecaster Pro 2 from the list of supported devices.
If this is the first time you have enabled the controller, you will need to Allow Midi Control via the popup option your browser will display.
Set the MIDI Input & MIDI Output options to be MIDI Function (should be the only option unless you have multiple MIDI devices).
Set the First Fader To Use For Media Players option to 3. This tells Myriad Anywhere to ignore MIDI signals from faders 1 and 2.
Click on Save to save and close the window.
Myriad Anywhere will then reload with the new settings.

Use Secondary USB For Audio Input & Output

In our experience, the Rodecaster Pro 2 struggles with running multiple MIDI channels and audio over a single USB for some reason so we would recommend connecting the second USB channel to your PC or Mac (you will need another USB C to USB B(or C) cable which is not supplied in with the Rodecaster Pro 2.

Once connected, you will see a new USB audio channel available called Rode Secondary USB (or something similar). You should configure BR Live to use this for both audio input and output and assign that to a physical or virtual fader as required.

Using The Rodecaster Pro 2 With Myriad Anywhere

This 'hybrid' configuration allows you to drive the mixer in the same way as in the studio with the MIDI faders controlling the volume of the remote Media Players and local audio (mic's etc) being sent to Myriad Playout or Myriad Cloud via BR Live.

But it is important to consider some factors to get the most from this setup.

Remote MIDI control is not as instant as faders in the studio so plan ahead and fade things a little early and more slowly than you might in a traditional studio. The Rodecaster Pro 2 in particular seems more 'laggy' than other supported MIDI controllers so take some time to get used to the interface.
It is important that you set the USB channel you are using to monitor audio from BR Live to be a Mix Minus so that it is not added to the audio mix sent back to the studio via BR Live.
Unlike with other MIDI controllers, we recommend leaving the mic always live on BR Live and using the fader on the channel turn the mic on and off (like in a traditional studio). When using a simple USB mic input directly into Anywhere, it is necessary for BR Live to mute the mic when not in use, but when using an audio mixer, you can leave it permanently 'on' and simply use the fader to control mic levels.

In the screen shot above, we can see that the Mic is switched on and attached to the 'Live' channel but we can also see the 'Mic Live' indicator on the right is not active. This is because Anywhere knows that the fader position for Fader 1 (the default mic) is down.

When Fader 1 is pushed up, the 'Mic Live' indicator switches to red to indicate that the mic is active.

Once you have Anywhere setup to work with your Rodecaster Pro, you may wish to setup some functions to be mapped to the 'Pad' buttons via MIDI control. For details on how to do that, click on the link below.

RODECaster 2: Mapping a Smart Pad to Myriad using MIDI Commands

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