When you're looking for the perfect mic for your recording application, what's the first thing you normally do? Check out a couple of forums for conflicting opinions, go searching for reviews online, and maybe glance at a bunch of specs? Then, once you've done all the hard work, get to a music store and ask for a demo - only to realise it wasn't quite the sound that you were expecting.
With the RØDE Soundbooth, you can cut down the process and make listening to your potential mic your first move. With sound bytes of the RØDE studio and performance mics across a variety of instrument and vocal setups, recorded by Grammy nominated sound engineer John Merchant, you have the freedom of creating an incredible number of unique recording scenarios to listen to.

The RØDE Soundbooth is an innovative and user friendly application that allows you to listen to various RØDE microphones in a professionally recorded, controlled environment. This allows you to see how a particular microphone might sound on a particular instrument, or to compare how different RØDE microphones sound on the same instrument. In some cases you can even select the same microphone on the same instrument but from different distances!

Over the course of several weeks John Merchant painstakingly recorded close to 400 individual tracks that now make up the RØDE Soundbooth. The results you will hear in Soundbooth will of course be dependent on the quality of speakers or headphones you use, and it has been slightly compressed to make Soundbooth fast enough for internet usage. For the ultimate experience, John's original uncompressed 44.1kHz 24-bit Pro Tools session and source files are also available to download [1.4GB zip archive]. (Please note that you will have to have a rodemic.com account to download these files, but it only takes a minute to create one and is completely free).

How it works

When first loading up the Soundbooth, you will see a list of seven pre-loaded tracks which feature some common mic setups over some of the most popular instruments. You can play this default setup straight away via the controls at the top of the Soundbooth, and hear the mix as a whole.

Edit tracks to choose which mic you'd like to hear on the instrument displayed. You also have the choice of muting a track from the mix, or if you'd like to listen to it on its own, theres a 'Solo' option available too.

Alternatively you could click 'add track' at the bottom of the Soundbooth to add an additional track to the mix. The 'add track' window will pop up from which you can pick a new instrument (For instance, a B3 organ with Leslie cabinet), and choose which mic you'd like to hear recording it. You're even able to define the proximity of the microphone to the instrument. If you start to have more tracks than you need, simply clear them by clicking the 'X' in the corner of the track details.