Beneath the Mixcast 4’s large touchscreen are eight individual sound pads.
These come pre-loaded with some default sounds such as applause,
an air horn, and a drum beat among others.
Having these sound pads can really help our podcast stand out from others.
We can add a unique flair to certain moments,
play a jingle, or even add a momentary effect to our voice.
This is a great way to increase listener engagement
and add to the overall originality of our show.
So, let’s take a look at how to use this feature
and how we can create and program our own sounds.
With the Mixcast 4’s sound pads, we can start and close our show with a
theme song – just with the push of a button.
Introducing a guest, the applause effect is a great way to welcome them.
Included with the Mixcast 4 is the TASCAM Podcast Editor software.
From this software we can edit sound effects and jingles, and assign assets to particular pads.
In the upper right-hand corner of Podcast Editor is an icon that represents the sound pads.
Click that and we’ll enter the sound pad editor.
We can select any individual pad in any of the eight banks to add a sound.
I’ll start with bank 2. The yellow pad is highlighted,
So I’ll select the ellipsis from the right of the pads to add a sound.
Navigate to my sound effects folder and select the sound I want on that pad.
Now I’ll do the same for pads 2 to 4
Alternately, we can drag and drop the file directly onto the desired pad to load the sound.
As you can see, we can change the color of the pad and change the play method.
The Mixcast 4 sound pads feature six different types of playback options:
Latch: Press the pad once to play the sound and touch again to stop it.
After stopping playback the sound will play from the beginning if touched again.
Pause: Press the pad once to play the sound and press it again to pause it.
After the sound has been paused it will resume from that spot when pressed again.
RePlay: Press once to play the file, press again to start playback from the beginning of the file.
If we don’t touch the pad again the file will play until the end.
One Shot: Press once to start playback and the file will play to its end.
To stop playback in this mode press and hold the pad.
Repeat: Press the pad once to start playback and once again to stop it.
Press again to play from the beginning but if nothing else is done the file will play repeatedly.
Touch: This option will only play the sound or the effect while the pad is being pushed.
By clicking Advanced, we can change that pad to bleep if we’re going to be using
a lot of shall we say „adult words“ or we can set the pad
to effect to utilize the reverb or pitch shift.
For either of the last two options I’d recommend changing the play method to Touch
so that the bleep or reverb effect is only active for as long as you press the corresponding pad.
Bleep and reverb only affect one channel at a time. So select
the desired channel from the Mixcast Input menu on the hardware.
From the Podcast Editor sound pad menu we can also edit our sounds.
I’d like to clip a bit off the front and end of the wave file, so I’ll select those regions.
Then click Cut. By grabbing the white boxes on the front and back of the sample
and then dragging them inward, we can create fades to make the effect less abrupt.
Click Apply Edit to save your changes.
After we’ve made changes to the sound pads in Podcast Editor, click „Sync to SD“
while the Mixcast is connected to the computer. This will save the new
sound pad settings directly to the Mixcast 4 and allow
us to use them while not connected to the software.
Additionally, we can record original content to the Mixcast
from any of its inputs directly to the sound pad.
First let’s enter the menu. Then navigate to Sound Pad settings and tab over to an empty bank.
In the middle of the screen is Pad Record. Touch that.
Now we see the option of Record Start.
I’ll be capturing audio from my phone which is connected via Bluetooth,
so I’ll raise the fader of the Bluetooth channel.
When I’m ready, I’ll hit Rec Start then play the audio from my phone.
After the file plays, touch Rec Stop.
The Mixcast will then prompt us to name the new file.
We’ll navigate back to Pad Settings where we can
assign a color to the pad and also edit its playback type.
We won’t be able to edit the new sound from here
but we can follow the previous steps and make the edits in Podcast Editor.
And now we’ve recorded a sound and we can hear that it’s working perfectly.
As we can see here in the Sound Pad menu we have up to eight banks worth of sounds.
With eight sounds per bank that gives us a total of 64 sound effects at our disposal.
But while we’re recording, we can only utilize one sound bank at a time.
There are a lot of great ways to use the Mixcast 4 sound pads
from jingles to applause, fun vocal effects and humor,
all of which make our podcast more unique and engaging.
Thanks for watching! We hope you found this video helpful.
And don’t forget to hit the subscribe button on the bottom of your screen to be notified when we post new videos [on YouTube only].
Also, be sure to check out the links on your screen for more tutorials
that will help you take your podcast to the next level with the Mixcast 4.