Tascam have just unveiled their new Mixcast 4, an all-in-one podcast production station. It's capable of recording up to 14 tracks direct to SD card, and has enough microphone and headphone sockets to accommodate up to four speakers at once, in addition to one remote contributor connected to a smartphone via Bluetooth, USB or TRRS mini-jack. In addition to the mic and smartphone inputs, you can capture individual tracks for the triggered sound effects, plus a stereo return from an attached computer or mobile device, for recording backing music or Zoom participants.
The Mixcast 4's eight sound pads can be triggered in real time, and you can assign custom samples to them, or even use sounds captured using an attached microphone. The pads can also be used for spot effects, such as applying pitch shifts or reverb to a vocal mic.
More conventional processing is available too, of course, in the form of compression, EQ and de-essing. These insert-style effects can either be set in 'Easy' mode, which presents a simplified set of options, or manually, in which case you get full access to all the usual parameters like ratio, threshold and so on.
In addition to its standalone capabilities, the Mixcast 4 Podcast Station will also work as a fully-featured USB audio interface, in which mode your computer gets access to all 14 of its inputs, plus a stereo USB return.
The Mixcast 4 ships with a copy of Tascam's Podcast Editor software, and carries an RRP of £579. It's due to go on sale later this month.
