GalacticPrez
New Member
BACKGROUND:
There are some issues that need solving, partly as a consequence of RODE's failure to properly document their RODECaster Duo product, and to make it easy to find and navigate all that documentation, in order to fully understand the underlying mechanics of the system from both a hardware and software perspective, in order to be able to adapt it to any possible installation and use case configuration requirements ... the other part of the problem I think comes from the manner in which OBS fails to clear old settings and linkages, nor to give you any means to manually force such a purge of settings ... with additional problems laid on the top of all that by Microsoft, who seem to have forgotten every single fundamental lesson about good design, and have butchered their already flawed Win10 OS into an even worse Win11, while utterly failing to fix any of the problems in Win10, some of which I know from personal experience are issues inherited all the way back to Win95.
Specifically: RODE's explanation of precisely how the input and output channels of the RODECaster Duo - BOTH from the perspective of the unit itself, and in the context of what you're actually doing, AND from the perspective and context of an attached computer, both in terms of the windows operating system and its conflicting legacy "control panel" and newer "settings", which do not seem to talk to each other properly, AND ALSO with respect to software like OBS trying to connect things in this environment ... ultimately leading the user to pay the consequences of endless hours trying to figure out the questions they have which nobody has explained in a manner that allows them to adapt it easily to their own circumstances and understand what they are doing and why it is working or not working.
If you have a look on YouTube, what you find are some tutorials explaining to excluse everything but the channel you're working with in the custom routing, while others say to exclude the one you're working with but include everything else (or some variation of the above), and the documentation provided from RODE doesn't make it quite clear precisely in what circumstances each can be done, nor do any of these tutorials adequately explain it ... so you end up with a lot of confused configuration matters potentially in both devices - meanwhile Windows makes matters worse by having two separate places where settings can be influenced, one through Control Panel > Sound and the other through Settings > Sound Mixer Options, but which you cannot reach via any kind of breadcrumb trail I have yet found, and I only knew about this area of Settings because of other people's tutorials, and I can only reach it by searching under settings for "sound" and then selecting it from the search results, but even after selecting it you still cannot see a breadcrumb path to know where to find it in the future.
Now it seems that what you set in Control Panel > Sound and what you set in Settings > Sound Mixer Options, can actually disagree with each other, which doesn't make any sense from a programming point of view, in fact good design would dictate such a thing should be impossible ... but such is life, and Microsoft rushes on to forcing people onto Win11 without first fixing the issues in Win10, nor any of the issues inherited by Win10 from WinVista/8/Metro/7/XP/98 etc etc ... and the names Windows imports for the channel1 channel1chat and channel2 of the RODE are identical, so you cannot tell which one is which without right clicking and seeing that one has a memory storage and the other doesn't, which tells you the former is channel 1 and the latter is channel 2
In the end, after a lot of struggle, you will end up with sound input and output devices in OBS that need to be redirected back to the thing they were supposed to be pointing towards, but which changed when you changed it, and then in the worst case I have seen yet, the whole thing just seems to shut down and stop working at all, forcing a reset of the RODE, and apparently (from another article, though I hope this is no longer true) OBS expects me to delete the %APPDATA%\OBS folder to delete all these dead end settings in OBS, before I try to reconnect the RODE and have another go at getting it to do what I want it to do.
SOLUTION:
I would like to see OBS giving a lot more feedback about what it is connecting to in terms of channels, and more tool tips over things explaining what they are and how they work, and the ability to save an entire workspace, backup/restore from that workspace, or restore to factory state, without having to reveal hidden files and folders in Windows Explorer, go into a hidden folder, delete everything and so on, which of course, the first time I will be nervous doing it, because I only got it as an idea from another user in a forum, not from OBS developers themselves, and so for all I know, maybe there are reasons not to do that, given that the reply with this idea to someone else's question, was very brief and vague, and didn't amount to a comprehensive answer, but more so just "this worked for me", which really says nothing with any certainty.
So, when I look in OBS Settings > Output and Settings > Audio, I don't want to see old outdated names and connections which don't exist anymore, and I don't want the names of channels and devices to be unclear as to what they actually connect to in other parts of the interface, it all needs to be better unified, and ideally with some kind of wizard interface which allows you to deal with one connection/device at a time, and set everything relating to it, and perhaps even save those settings independently of saving the entire workspace, so that you could configure various user options of the UI, save them as a workspace, then save individual device settings, such that so long as it is the same device, regardless of any name change, those settings can be re-imported and reapplied, instead of having to go through all the menus to find everything everywhere it needs to be set ... and then I could create a second save/backup of the workspace, which includes both UI and other general settings, along with the device specific settings for the devices I have configured in that workspace ...
I think something like this would be vastly more userfriendly, and while it doesn't solve the problems with Windows and RODE, it at least makes it easier to solve those other problems by reducing the flow-on complications arising out of misconfigurations in OBS.
FURTHER INFO:
One of the things I am dealing with is that much of this is new to me, and I am trying to cobble together a system on a limited budget, which will give me good audio and video, and a good workflow in a solo work environment, crammed into a space in the corner of my bedroom in a rental house, as this is the only space I have got, and I do not have enough room to maneuvre the furniture anymore than I have already done, and I have bought a whole bunch of cables and other things to try to make it work, but it is still difficult ... and while RODE explain how to plugin a RODE USB Mic to the RODECaster Duo itself, they don't explain very well what happens if you try to plugin a USB mic to a laptop, and that signal of course needs to travel down the USB cable from the laptop to the RODECaster in order to be added to one of the faders, but where it can interact of course with channel1chat or an XLR mic from a headset plugged in the back, nor do they explain precisely how to combine these two mics in various combinations with some kind of communication software like Skype or Zoom, without producing any feedback or reverb, and while maintaining the ability to mute them or change their fader levels separately, and the only information I found on this subject was from a tutorial that presumed a scenario which wasn't close enough to my own to be very helpful.
At present what I have managed to achieve, though I have to start again because it isn't good enougth ... is to get music playing from VLC to the RODECaster where it took me ages to figure out how to get the fader to result in lower recording volume in OBS, as for some reason, OBS seemed to be recording directly from VLC instead of from the audio device I had set its output to AFTER returning back again from the mixer to provide that changing volume according to the faders ... all such things are just glossed over by the RODE user guide on their website and in tutorials, such that it is not entirely clear how to avoid echo/reverb/feedback AND YET still get a signal from a USB Mic on a laptop back to the RODE and back again to be recorded AFTER being influenced by the faders and effects on the RODE ... so by the time I get around to actually testing recordings in OBS, I am mentally exhausted after another long day of trying to figure out whatever it is they failed to properly explain.
I can record the XLR mic from the headset plugged directly into the RODE via OBS along with music from VLC and video from a couple of webcam sources, but anything beyond that level of complexity, I start getting issues of one sort or another, usually when I try to set something on the laptop to return to the RODE by going to Control Panel > Sound and specifying the mic device listening to that source, to output through a specific RODE channel, which I thought should mean that the audio output has no choice but to travel down that channel to the RODE, but in some cases it does, and in other cases it only does this IF I also tick the box saying "listen to this device", but when you tick that box, it will often be the case that you start getting feedback and you have to quickly untick it again and click apply, or it will trip out the whole setup or risk damaging something ...
I have 2 USB-C cables going from the RODE to the laptop, I have one XLR mic connected to the back of the rode, this goes to a headset which also has a jack input to the back of the rode for audio out to the headset, but it is a bit confusing as to under what circumstances I should add or subtract this mic from the routing of any channel, such that it arrives at OBS, and can be heard in an app like Skype, but so that it isn't doubling up, causing any echo, or producing feedback or reverb, some of which might be unavoidable if I speak too closely to the other USB mic connected to the laptop when it is not muted ... but I need to be sure I can have both mics heard on any chat channel, but the ability to mute each independently ... I am going to have another go at it starting from scratch tomorrow
I also do not understand with the multi-track option on RODE channel1 (main) and the individual audio tracks I can see in OBS when I click the cog icon in the bottom left of the audio panel, how do these things line up, and what are the general rules for configuring multiple audio tracks? I would have thought that when I open that panel, that - provided all the tracks I want to use are also selected for recording in the output(?) tab of OBS settings - if I set something to a particular track, then that source will record onto that track, and if I can see the volume bars going up into the green/yellow, that therefore they're definitely loud enough to be recorded, and by selecting a track, all I did was to separate them onto their own track for the purpose of recording, and I presume this means that the audio tracks can be further affected by various audio editing software ... but at one point, what I did was to put both mics onto tracks 1 & 2 via the RODE channels they were assigned to (which seemed to work most of the time), but the music playing in VLC which showed up on the RODE on whichever USB channel and slider I had it set to, while showing changing volume levels, and audible in my headphones, it did not record onto track 4 (the only track it was selected for), and that track was also selected in the OBS settings ... which means either this doesn't work the way it would seem to according to the naming of various functions, or there is some other peculiarity I am missing about it ... but this is how it gets so confusing so easily when some audio sources start on the laptop and get sent to the RODE then have to come back again to be recorded, and at each point along the way, the channels and devices down which they travel, can be thought of as an input or output depending on which perspective you're viewing it from (ie: a RODE channel is an output from the perspective of the RODE when it sends that data to your laptop, but it is then an input from the perspective of the laptop) ... and since nobody ever clarifies all this ambiguity, it just makes the task way more difficult than it needs to be.
There are some issues that need solving, partly as a consequence of RODE's failure to properly document their RODECaster Duo product, and to make it easy to find and navigate all that documentation, in order to fully understand the underlying mechanics of the system from both a hardware and software perspective, in order to be able to adapt it to any possible installation and use case configuration requirements ... the other part of the problem I think comes from the manner in which OBS fails to clear old settings and linkages, nor to give you any means to manually force such a purge of settings ... with additional problems laid on the top of all that by Microsoft, who seem to have forgotten every single fundamental lesson about good design, and have butchered their already flawed Win10 OS into an even worse Win11, while utterly failing to fix any of the problems in Win10, some of which I know from personal experience are issues inherited all the way back to Win95.
Specifically: RODE's explanation of precisely how the input and output channels of the RODECaster Duo - BOTH from the perspective of the unit itself, and in the context of what you're actually doing, AND from the perspective and context of an attached computer, both in terms of the windows operating system and its conflicting legacy "control panel" and newer "settings", which do not seem to talk to each other properly, AND ALSO with respect to software like OBS trying to connect things in this environment ... ultimately leading the user to pay the consequences of endless hours trying to figure out the questions they have which nobody has explained in a manner that allows them to adapt it easily to their own circumstances and understand what they are doing and why it is working or not working.
If you have a look on YouTube, what you find are some tutorials explaining to excluse everything but the channel you're working with in the custom routing, while others say to exclude the one you're working with but include everything else (or some variation of the above), and the documentation provided from RODE doesn't make it quite clear precisely in what circumstances each can be done, nor do any of these tutorials adequately explain it ... so you end up with a lot of confused configuration matters potentially in both devices - meanwhile Windows makes matters worse by having two separate places where settings can be influenced, one through Control Panel > Sound and the other through Settings > Sound Mixer Options, but which you cannot reach via any kind of breadcrumb trail I have yet found, and I only knew about this area of Settings because of other people's tutorials, and I can only reach it by searching under settings for "sound" and then selecting it from the search results, but even after selecting it you still cannot see a breadcrumb path to know where to find it in the future.
Now it seems that what you set in Control Panel > Sound and what you set in Settings > Sound Mixer Options, can actually disagree with each other, which doesn't make any sense from a programming point of view, in fact good design would dictate such a thing should be impossible ... but such is life, and Microsoft rushes on to forcing people onto Win11 without first fixing the issues in Win10, nor any of the issues inherited by Win10 from WinVista/8/Metro/7/XP/98 etc etc ... and the names Windows imports for the channel1 channel1chat and channel2 of the RODE are identical, so you cannot tell which one is which without right clicking and seeing that one has a memory storage and the other doesn't, which tells you the former is channel 1 and the latter is channel 2
In the end, after a lot of struggle, you will end up with sound input and output devices in OBS that need to be redirected back to the thing they were supposed to be pointing towards, but which changed when you changed it, and then in the worst case I have seen yet, the whole thing just seems to shut down and stop working at all, forcing a reset of the RODE, and apparently (from another article, though I hope this is no longer true) OBS expects me to delete the %APPDATA%\OBS folder to delete all these dead end settings in OBS, before I try to reconnect the RODE and have another go at getting it to do what I want it to do.
SOLUTION:
I would like to see OBS giving a lot more feedback about what it is connecting to in terms of channels, and more tool tips over things explaining what they are and how they work, and the ability to save an entire workspace, backup/restore from that workspace, or restore to factory state, without having to reveal hidden files and folders in Windows Explorer, go into a hidden folder, delete everything and so on, which of course, the first time I will be nervous doing it, because I only got it as an idea from another user in a forum, not from OBS developers themselves, and so for all I know, maybe there are reasons not to do that, given that the reply with this idea to someone else's question, was very brief and vague, and didn't amount to a comprehensive answer, but more so just "this worked for me", which really says nothing with any certainty.
So, when I look in OBS Settings > Output and Settings > Audio, I don't want to see old outdated names and connections which don't exist anymore, and I don't want the names of channels and devices to be unclear as to what they actually connect to in other parts of the interface, it all needs to be better unified, and ideally with some kind of wizard interface which allows you to deal with one connection/device at a time, and set everything relating to it, and perhaps even save those settings independently of saving the entire workspace, so that you could configure various user options of the UI, save them as a workspace, then save individual device settings, such that so long as it is the same device, regardless of any name change, those settings can be re-imported and reapplied, instead of having to go through all the menus to find everything everywhere it needs to be set ... and then I could create a second save/backup of the workspace, which includes both UI and other general settings, along with the device specific settings for the devices I have configured in that workspace ...
I think something like this would be vastly more userfriendly, and while it doesn't solve the problems with Windows and RODE, it at least makes it easier to solve those other problems by reducing the flow-on complications arising out of misconfigurations in OBS.
FURTHER INFO:
One of the things I am dealing with is that much of this is new to me, and I am trying to cobble together a system on a limited budget, which will give me good audio and video, and a good workflow in a solo work environment, crammed into a space in the corner of my bedroom in a rental house, as this is the only space I have got, and I do not have enough room to maneuvre the furniture anymore than I have already done, and I have bought a whole bunch of cables and other things to try to make it work, but it is still difficult ... and while RODE explain how to plugin a RODE USB Mic to the RODECaster Duo itself, they don't explain very well what happens if you try to plugin a USB mic to a laptop, and that signal of course needs to travel down the USB cable from the laptop to the RODECaster in order to be added to one of the faders, but where it can interact of course with channel1chat or an XLR mic from a headset plugged in the back, nor do they explain precisely how to combine these two mics in various combinations with some kind of communication software like Skype or Zoom, without producing any feedback or reverb, and while maintaining the ability to mute them or change their fader levels separately, and the only information I found on this subject was from a tutorial that presumed a scenario which wasn't close enough to my own to be very helpful.
At present what I have managed to achieve, though I have to start again because it isn't good enougth ... is to get music playing from VLC to the RODECaster where it took me ages to figure out how to get the fader to result in lower recording volume in OBS, as for some reason, OBS seemed to be recording directly from VLC instead of from the audio device I had set its output to AFTER returning back again from the mixer to provide that changing volume according to the faders ... all such things are just glossed over by the RODE user guide on their website and in tutorials, such that it is not entirely clear how to avoid echo/reverb/feedback AND YET still get a signal from a USB Mic on a laptop back to the RODE and back again to be recorded AFTER being influenced by the faders and effects on the RODE ... so by the time I get around to actually testing recordings in OBS, I am mentally exhausted after another long day of trying to figure out whatever it is they failed to properly explain.
I can record the XLR mic from the headset plugged directly into the RODE via OBS along with music from VLC and video from a couple of webcam sources, but anything beyond that level of complexity, I start getting issues of one sort or another, usually when I try to set something on the laptop to return to the RODE by going to Control Panel > Sound and specifying the mic device listening to that source, to output through a specific RODE channel, which I thought should mean that the audio output has no choice but to travel down that channel to the RODE, but in some cases it does, and in other cases it only does this IF I also tick the box saying "listen to this device", but when you tick that box, it will often be the case that you start getting feedback and you have to quickly untick it again and click apply, or it will trip out the whole setup or risk damaging something ...
I have 2 USB-C cables going from the RODE to the laptop, I have one XLR mic connected to the back of the rode, this goes to a headset which also has a jack input to the back of the rode for audio out to the headset, but it is a bit confusing as to under what circumstances I should add or subtract this mic from the routing of any channel, such that it arrives at OBS, and can be heard in an app like Skype, but so that it isn't doubling up, causing any echo, or producing feedback or reverb, some of which might be unavoidable if I speak too closely to the other USB mic connected to the laptop when it is not muted ... but I need to be sure I can have both mics heard on any chat channel, but the ability to mute each independently ... I am going to have another go at it starting from scratch tomorrow
I also do not understand with the multi-track option on RODE channel1 (main) and the individual audio tracks I can see in OBS when I click the cog icon in the bottom left of the audio panel, how do these things line up, and what are the general rules for configuring multiple audio tracks? I would have thought that when I open that panel, that - provided all the tracks I want to use are also selected for recording in the output(?) tab of OBS settings - if I set something to a particular track, then that source will record onto that track, and if I can see the volume bars going up into the green/yellow, that therefore they're definitely loud enough to be recorded, and by selecting a track, all I did was to separate them onto their own track for the purpose of recording, and I presume this means that the audio tracks can be further affected by various audio editing software ... but at one point, what I did was to put both mics onto tracks 1 & 2 via the RODE channels they were assigned to (which seemed to work most of the time), but the music playing in VLC which showed up on the RODE on whichever USB channel and slider I had it set to, while showing changing volume levels, and audible in my headphones, it did not record onto track 4 (the only track it was selected for), and that track was also selected in the OBS settings ... which means either this doesn't work the way it would seem to according to the naming of various functions, or there is some other peculiarity I am missing about it ... but this is how it gets so confusing so easily when some audio sources start on the laptop and get sent to the RODE then have to come back again to be recorded, and at each point along the way, the channels and devices down which they travel, can be thought of as an input or output depending on which perspective you're viewing it from (ie: a RODE channel is an output from the perspective of the RODE when it sends that data to your laptop, but it is then an input from the perspective of the laptop) ... and since nobody ever clarifies all this ambiguity, it just makes the task way more difficult than it needs to be.