Rode NT USB Mini Review and Sound test

In today’s livestream, I’m testing and reviewing the RODE NT USB microphone. Hello and welcome! Whether you are joining me live now or if you are joining us later on the replay, I’m glad that you’re here.

Full livestream using the Rode NT USB mini (Squarespace Pricing explained): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtB7VQ0fTDA

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Rode NT USB Mini Review and Sound test – Video Transcript

My name is Sara Nguyen, and I help awesome entrepreneurs like yourself grow their businesses using tech and social media with ease. I create courses and content to help you build your business and I take out the tech overwhelm to make it all easier for you.

If you’re new here, consider subscribing for all of the latest, all of the latest product reviews, social media marketing tips and tutorials. And at any time during this video, check out the description.

I’ll put links to all of the resources as well as additional goodies for you in the description box below. Really excited. I’m always excited whenever there’s a live stream.

But I’m super excited. The wonderful people at RODE sent me their RODE NT-USB mini and you’re currently hearing the audio from the RODE NT-USB, which is a microphone that I use, have been using for the last few years.

And I absolutely love it. The RODE NT-USB. Fantastic. I was stoked to get the RODE NT-USB mini and I’m going to be reviewing it and doing a bit of a sound test as well on this live stream.

Have to bear with me a little bit because I’ve got a new computer and I’ve got a new microphone and I’ve got a new camera and there’s a tiny bit of a lag. Before you all leave me shouty comments in caps, I’m aware and I’m kind of working on fixing it, but I still wanted to do this live stream anyway so that you could get the information on this new microphone and decide whether or not it’s the right microphone for you.

Let’s get started with the review. Inside the box of the RODE NT-USB mini, you get the microphone and it comes with this little stand that you see here, which is detachable and it’s magnetic.

It’s quite easy to add or detach and put back together and it’s quite sturdy as well. I really like the feel of this microphone. It feels really, really solid.

The microphone itself, unlike the RODE NT-USB, the pop filter is actually inside the microphone. The other thing I noticed is that it really is a mini microphone. It’s like two of my RODE-NT USB has had a baby.

And this is like the, the, the, you know, the spawn of the microphone. If you look at the size of the mini compared to the RODE NT-USB there’s definitely a significant size difference there.

And does size matter? You’ll soon find out. We’ll look at the sound of the microphone in a little bit. You also inside the box you get this thread mount adapter, so that allows you to take the RODE NT-USB mini, there is this little rubber stopper, I dunno what it’s called and you can attach the thread mount and then you can attach the microphone then to a boom arm like the RODE PSA1, which I use with my– in which I’m using right now.

I’m not going to do that because it’s really clunky and not fun to watch. But that’s something that you can do with it. If you have a look at the microphone itself, you’ll see that there’s a dial here and it has a little icon of, come on focus, and it has a dial and it has like a headphone jack setting and at the back of it you’ll see here that there’s a, on this side is a little headphone jack there.

You can put your headphone into hear the playback of the microphone. The other thing that you’ll see is that focus, focus camera. There is a USB C-port as well. That’s how you connect your microphone to a computer or a device.

It’s via the USB port as well. I did– you also get the cable. The USB C to USB cable. My criticism of this cable is that it’s really short.

I find it a little bit difficult to actually use directly into my computer because of the length of the cable is so short and size matters because with the RODE NT-USB, we got a 6-metre cable and then with the RODE NT-USB mini like it’s, that’s all you get.

Luckily you are able to get USB C cords quite cheaply, so that will help address that problem. But yes, that’s, that’s my little criticism of the microphone.

When I saw it I was like, “That’s all? That’s all the cable that you get?” but anyway, that’s not to take away from the actual microphone. Now that we’ve gone through that, what else, what else is there?

We talked about the headphone jack so you can listen to the playback or the microphone. At the front of the microphone there’s the sound settings, so if you press it, it will turn on and off.

This isn’t for the gain of the microphone. This is for the playback-only and the dial there lets you turn it up and down, which is pretty helpful. I think with all of that said,

I was watching another review of the microphone and the presenter also said, “Well, that’s kind of all that you get.” it’s a really compact microphone and it’s a really solid build and I definitely think it’s a beautiful build.

It’s quite, I think there’s a bit of a weight to it and I, I think it’s definitely solid microphone. It’s not a flimsy plastic and it’s a little bit heavy. And I think if you throw it at someone, you’d probably do a little bit of damage, but don’t throw it at people because it’s a good microphone.

You shouldn’t be violent and throwing things at people. Anyway, so I’m going to set up now and I’m going to do a sound review of the microphone. Just bear with me now as I plug everything in and okay, let’s do this.

Sorry, I’m gonna put the microphone here. Move this RODE NT-USB. Just plugging in the RODE NT-USB mini.
Okay, so do that again. Wasn’t the best, it’s kind of tangled.

I’ll put a link in the description to a live stream I did that I use the RODE NT-USB mini for the whole thing. There’s no switching back and forth between these two microphones. Okay.

Now just the setup that I’ve got is I have the RODE NT-USB mini-plug directly into my computer. There isn’t any sound correction, so it is what it is and let’s listen to what it sounds like. I’m just going to go ahead. Yes.

Okay. Testing, testing one, two, testing one, two. This is what it sounds like on the RODE NT-USB mini. I switched from using the RODE NT-USB and this is the sound purely coming from the RODE NT-USB mini.

As you can see, I’m about, I don’t know, 20 centimetres away from the microphone. If I get a little bit closer, you can hear the quality of the sound come through a little bit better as all microphones are.

I feel like, I don’t know why I’m whispering. I think it’s because I’m live and I’m doing a sound test and, and I, I don’t want to be shouting into your ears. I’m looking at the sound levels.

I’m monitoring from my computer and it doesn’t look like I’m actually clipping. I was using this microphone yesterday attached to the boom arm and I was really impressed by the quality of the sound and also I was like this is a really powerful little microphone and I think it’s really, really amazing.

I’m going to be quiet now so you can listen to the ambient noise. I don’t know if you can hear it and I’ll, I guess I’ll find out when I listened to the replay, but my iMac had a little bit of a humming noise, so see if you can notice it.

I don’t have the airconditioner on. I don’t have any other sounds really happening in the house right now. Here’s the ambient noise once again.

That’s it, so this is what the RODE NT-USB mini sounds like. And to be honest, when I first used it, I’ve been using it a lot over the last week. I was really impressed.

I use it for recording my tutorials and when I record tutorials, I actually attach it to my boom arm and it’s probably about here. I have it here. I have it on the side. Yes, I do it on the side.

I have it on the sides so that I can see my keyboard. If I have it up this way, I find that it blocks my face and I can’t actually see anything. But I actually have been really impressed by this microphone and I’m a little bit torn because like I love the RODE NT-USB.

I also love the RODE NT-USB mini. I think the sound is beautiful. I didn’t need to install any drivers. It was literally plug and play. I did have to change the cable though, RODE because this was a little bit small and size matters, size matters when it comes to cables.

That’s the only criticism that I really have with it. But I love this microphone. I think it’s also great for travelling as well. This microphone, the RODE NT-USB I must admit is a little bit painful to travel with because of the pop filter.

It’s a little bit of an awkward size and it’s a little bit bigger, whereas I’m looking at the RODE NT-USB mini and I’m like, wow, this is really compact. And I think the quality of sound is really impressive. I really love this microphone.

I definitely think that for the price point, I believe it’s 99 US dollars or 149 Australian dollars. That’s a pretty impressive price point and I think you get a lot of leverage out of it and I think it produces really quality sound.

That’s my review of the RODE NT-USB mini. I hope that you found it useful and if you, if you are a small business owner and you’re looking to grow your business using video, I’m going to put a link in the description to my Facebook Live Cheat Sheets.

I step you through all of the things that you need to do to get up and running on Facebook live. Even if you’ve never hit record before, I’ll walk you through all the equipment that you need, the microphone, the lights, the, all of the equipment and everything that you need to do and say to get up and running on Facebook live so that you can start leveraging it to make more sales with, to make more sales with ease.

If you found this video useful, give me a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel. I hope you enjoyed this review. Definitely enjoyed being here with you. I hope you enjoy the sound of the microphone.

I’m going to do a comparison with the RODE NT-USB mini and the RODE NT-USB. I know you’ve got to hear both for them in this video, but I think I’m going to do a video later, which compares, compares the pair.

Watch out for that video and I’ll see you on the next live stream. Bye for now.