Device (Alt+6)

The unit's current state, its hardware status, its own settings, and the global switches.

• Tabs: This page is a tab strip of eight: Current state, Hardware, Unit settings, Announcements, Keyboard shortcuts, Level warnings, Wireless connections and Remote access. Arrow left and right along the strip, Home and End for the ends, and only the tab you are on is on the page. Opening a tab reads that part of the unit, so the values are always current, and the tab you leave off on is remembered.
• Current state: The whole desk in one summary, read from the unit each time you open this tab: what is muted or soloed, every fader level and the monitor level, anything unusual about the routing, and the pad bank. Mute, solo and routing appear only when there is something to report, so a short line means all is well. This is the place to look when something sounds wrong, instead of hunting across the other pages.
• Hardware status: Things the touchscreen would otherwise keep to itself: whether a memory card is in and how much room is left, the recorder, the firmware version, and whether a network cable is in. For wireless mics, see the Wireless connections tab, which has all the radios together. Last on this tab, under its own heading, is a technical section for troubleshooting: whether the unit is found, its hardware id and status bytes, and a low-level list of the USB interfaces seen.
• Remote access from another device: The last tab, and the one thing on this page that is about the app rather than the unit. AccessCaster serves its page to your whole network so you can control the desk from a phone in another room, which is genuinely useful and stays. The access link is what stops that being open to anyone else on the network: open it once on the phone and that device is remembered, so reloading and coming back later both work. This computer never needs the link and is unaffected by it. Treat the link like a password, because anyone who has it has full control of the desk. "Make a new link" stops the old one working everywhere you have sent it, which is what you want if you shared it at a venue. Two honest limits: the link can only be read on this computer, not from the phone itself, and it travels unencrypted, so it protects you from a stranger finding the address rather than from someone who can already read your network's traffic.
• Unit settings: The settings the unit otherwise offers only on its touchscreen: screen brightness and whether the unit sets it itself, how long before the screen dims, how brightly the buttons are lit when active and when not, the meter style, haptic feedback, whether the record button pauses or stops, the listen mode, and the monitor output's fixed level. Listen mode is worth a word: pre-fader listen hears a soloed channel at its own level whatever its fader is doing, which is what you want for checking a mic that is currently faded down; after-fader listen hears it as the fader has it set, so a fader all the way down means silence. Then the clock settings (24-hour, daylight saving, and whether the time shows on the unit's screen), and three lockouts that can lock the unit's physical buttons or silence every headphone or line output. The time itself and the timezone are not here: the unit sets its own clock over the network, and the only manual way in is its touchscreen. Daylight saving is the one it will not do for itself, so it needs changing twice a year, and until it is changed every recording is stamped an hour out. They are read from the unit each time you open the tab, and a backup holds them and puts them back. They work on both units. Last on the tab is the MIDI switch: turning it on lets an external MIDI app or controller handle mute, faders, listen and record over MIDI, without RODE Central. That one works on both units.
• Announcements: Headed "Announce Interactions on Mixer" once you are on the tab. It speaks each physical control aloud as you use it, so you know what it did without the touchscreen. Mute and solo say which channel and whether it is now on or off, and catch changes made anywhere, not just here. Bank changes are announced, as is what the encoder is set to when you press and release it, and pressing a channel button says what the encoder will then adjust; press and HOLD the encoder and the unit mutes the selected channel, which you hear as a mute rather than as a change of selection. A second switch adds levels, spoken as you move them: whatever you turn is announced by name, so the encoder set to a channel gives you that channel's gain in decibels rather than the monitor, each update interrupts the last so it keeps up with you, and the closing value is confirmed by name when you stop. A muted channel is announced as muted rather than with a level. The volume slider sets how loud announcements are, for when the announcer talks over what you are listening to while riding the faders; it affects these announcements only, never your Windows volume or the unit's audio, and it is remembered between sessions. You can also choose which installed speech VOICE reads them, and which audio OUTPUT they come out of. Both apply to these announcements only: your screen reader keeps its own voice and its own output, the Windows default output is not moved, and no other program is affected. The output choice matters because the default output here is usually the RODECaster itself, so announcements arrive on USB 1 and vanish when you solo another channel or mute USB 1, as well as landing in your recording; sending them to your computer's own speakers or headphones instead keeps them audible and out of the mix. Changing either one speaks a sample through it, so you hear what you have picked, and both are remembered. A button beside them reads both lists again, for when you have plugged headphones in or installed a new voice since the page loaded.
• Speak the desk's state when the app opens: On the same tab. When the app opens it tells you what is WRONG with the desk and only that: anything muted or soloed, a voice-effect pad left switched on, a recording already running, a drive nearly full, or an output not on its usual mix. On a desk with nothing to report it is one sentence saying so. The full picture, every fader level included, stays on the Device page under Current state.
• Play a tone for mute instead of speaking it: Also on that tab, and off unless you turn it on. A mute is usually pressed in the middle of something, and a spoken sentence finishes after the moment it was describing, so a short cue says it faster: two notes falling means muted, two notes rising means unmuted. Turning it on plays both, in that order, so you hear which is which. What you give up is the channel name, which a cue cannot carry, so leave it off if you need to know WHICH channel was muted rather than that one was.
• Keyboard shortcuts: Shortcuts that work anywhere in Windows, whatever program you are in, and even with this window closed, for as long as AccessCaster is running. The list is yours to build: Add offers a catalogue of over 100 commands, sorted into kinds (channels, levels, recording, pads, outputs, mixes, the unit and the app itself), so anything you can do on a page you can put on a key. Delete removes one. Every shortcut the app ships is on the same three keys, Ctrl, Alt and Shift held together, so there is only ever one thing to hold and the key you press decides what happens. A new install starts with five of its own: turn announcements off and on, mute every mic and open them again (the cough key), start or stop a recording, hear what the unit is doing, and bring this window to the front. The SMART pad keys are there from the start too, described below. "Add the SMART pad shortcuts" is for anyone who has cleared them, or who had a list from before they shipped: your own choices are never overwritten, so a set you have changed has to be asked for again rather than being put back for you. Pick a shortcut from the dropdown, which names it and says which keys it is on, and the settings below are for that one: which keys to hold, which key to press, whether to use it at all, and whether it says what it did. A shortcut has to include Ctrl, Alt or Windows, so it cannot take a plain key away from your screen reader; if another program already owns the combination you pick, this page says so rather than leaving you with a key that does nothing. The cough key opens again only the mics it muted, so it never puts a channel live that you had shut yourself. Levels come in pairs, up and down, because a key cannot ask how far. Nothing that cannot be undone is offered at all. Each shortcut normally speaks what it did, because when you press one you will be looking at something else, and each can be told to stay quiet instead. The announcements one is always silent when it turns announcements OFF: the reason to reach for it is usually that announcements are going into a recording, and saying so into that recording would be the very thing you were stopping. Anything that FAILS speaks whatever you have set. There is one switch at the top that releases the lot. Every kind of pad can be put on a key, sound pads included.
• Playing pads from the keyboard: The pad set is one row of keys you can find by touch, on Ctrl, Alt and Shift like everything else. The NUMBER KEYS 1 to 8 play the pads of the bank the unit is on, so eight keys reach every pad on the unit rather than only the first eight; on a RODECaster Duo it is 1 to 6, because a Duo has six pads in a bank. DASH and EQUALS, at the end of the same row, step down and up a bank and say which bank you have landed on, including when you are already at the first or last. P says what is playing, how far through it is and how long is left. You can also put ONE particular pad on a key, from the Add list, and that one stays with that pad wherever the unit is: useful for a jingle you always want under the same finger. The number keys are the opposite, and both are worth having. These keys do NOT speak what they did, unlike the rest, because the pad itself is the feedback and it is usually going out on air. You can turn speech on for any of them. A pad still fails out loud. What a SECOND press does is the pad's own setting, made on the SMART pads page or on the unit, not something this app decides: Toggle stops the sound, One Shot starts it again from the beginning, and Hold plays for as long as you leave it, until you press the key again. A voice effect or a mixer pad switches on and off instead, and stays on until you press again, exactly as it does on the unit. The first time you play a sound pad in a session the app switches the unit's MIDI control on and says so once. That is the only way to make the unit play a sound, and it is the same switch as the one on the Device page, so you can turn it off there when you are done. Restoring a backup can switch it off again, and the next pad you press turns it back on.
• Level warnings: The watch that speaks up while you work, and the Windows level it depends on. If you want to check one channel before a take, use "Check this channel's level" on the Channels page instead: this tab watches a whole stream. Pick which of the unit's audio streams to watch, set the Windows recording level for it, which is a hidden multiplier on everything measured, then turn on a background watch that stays quiet unless it has news: it can say when the stream clips, and when it goes silent or comes back, with how long a gap counts as silence. It can also speak the level on a timer, which is off by default and is meant for setting gains rather than for use during a recording. Two things to know. It reads the unit as a USB AUDIO DEVICE, through Windows, not over the control connection, so it is not the unit's own meter and will not match it exactly. And it is the only part of this app that does not work over Remote Desktop: Windows gives each session its own audio devices, so from a remote session the unit's streams are not there to read. The page says so when that happens.
• Wireless connections: Every radio link the unit can make, in one place. "Scan for networks" takes a few seconds and then offers what it found in a list, saying for each whether it needs a password and which one the unit is already set to; picking one fills in the network name below, which you can also just type. The unit reports ten networks at most and never reports hidden ones, so typing the name is sometimes the only way. Joining takes up to 45 seconds and can only be done at the computer the unit is plugged into. Bluetooth has one switch, which makes the unit discoverable so you can pair from the phone's own Bluetooth screen; the unit stops being discoverable again after a few minutes. Then the wireless mics the unit can see and their battery levels, and under those, what the unit reports: the network it is on, its address, what a scan last found, and which Bluetooth devices are paired. Two things are missing here, and both are the unit ignoring the request when it arrives over USB: searching for Bluetooth devices, and starting a pairing from this end. A fixed IP address is not offered either, and that one is the unit's own limitation: it reports its address but gives nothing to set it with. The Bluetooth CHANNEL, meaning what you hear from a paired phone, is on the Channels page, and what the phone hears back from the desk is the Bluetooth output on the Routing page.