I’m a huge fanboy of a lot of different things. Canon. Macintosh. Batman. Jesus. And, the more I’m in the wedding cinematography game, the more I’m becoming a huge fanboy of RØDE microphones.  I already own the RØDE Video Mic and the RØDE Video Mic Pro (side note – I’ll probably type RØDE as much as I can in this post because I really like that I found out how to make this symbol Ø [opt+shift+o on a mac, btw[) and their quality is very good – especially for the price. 

Last year I saw that RØDE was developing a mic for the iPhone/iPod that connects right into the ear bud jack: the RØDE iXY Stereo Microphone. The RØDE Rec App ($5.99) goes along with the iXY and has the ability to give you a lot of control over what is coming in to the iDevice. But, I decided to pass on the iXY since I already own the Video Mics. 

A couple of months ago I saw a new product from RØDE that really caught my eye… the Smart Lav! This is a small lapel microphone that uses the same RØDE Rec App to record the audio. This will make on person recording at weddings a lot easier for me, especially since the retail price of one of these mics is $60! AND, the church I work for just purchased one because of the audio problems we’ve been having with some monthly announcement videos (very echoey because of the setup/room we’ve been using). 

So, I decided I’d do a video demo of the RØDE Smart Lav. Another reason I decided to do this little demo is because Rob Adams asked if I would ‘post some audio’… and I’m not going to turn Rob down – he’s famous! Now, this demo isn’t too technical… at all. And, I’m going to have to play around with the settings, but you can tell that the audio sounds great (especially for the price – are you catching onto this theme!?)! So, here’s my demo: 

I should have scripted this thing…

I’ve very excited to pick up another one of these for myself because I have learned one thing about working in this industry: ALWAYS. HAVE. A. BACKUP. 

Well, what do you think of the Smart Lav? I’m impressed!

Enjoy! Nick