macOS · RØDECaster Duo & Pro II

Your desk, on the Stream Deck.

Faders, mutes, cue, pads, record and monitor, driven directly over the RØDECaster's own control protocol. Two way, live, and built for shows rather than demos.

See what it does

RØDECaster Duo and Pro II · Any Stream Deck · Signed and notarised

What it does
⇆
Two way, and live
Move a fader on the desk and the key follows, usually inside a quarter of a second
▦
Eighteen actions
Strip, monitor, pads, record, markers, voice FX and the desk itself
☵
It shares your desk
RØDE Central and the RØDECaster app keep working normally alongside it
Tested on both desks, on real hardware
The gap

What RØDE gives you for these two desks.

  • RØDE's own Stream Deck integration covers the RØDECaster Video. The Duo and Pro II get nothing at all
  • Both desks advertise MIDI, which looks like the obvious route until you try it
  • On current firmware the desk ignores every MIDI message, in both directions
  • Two minutes of capture across pad presses and bank changes produced nothing inbound, and every message sent was discarded
  • Which leaves an app on screen as the only way to reach your own mixer, in the middle of a show

"My old MIDI plugin worked. Then the MIDI stopped."

I built a RØDECaster MIDI plugin years ago and people used it happily. That route is simply gone now, and no amount of tidying up the old code brings it back. So Mix Companion does not use MIDI at all.

It speaks the desk's real control protocol instead.

Directly over USB, which is why it can reach parts of the mixer nothing else can. That was a much larger job than a macro layer, and it is the reason the list of controls reads the way it does.

What changed

Everything the old plugin could not do.

The first one was a thin MIDI bridge. This is a different kind of thing entirely.

The old MIDI plugin
  • One way. You pressed a key and hoped it landed
  • Keys showed what you last pressed, not what the desk did
  • A handful of commands, whatever MIDI happened to expose
  • No fader control
  • No idea which strips, pads or effects your desk actually had
  • Dead on current firmware
Mix Companion
  • Two way. The desk leads and the keys follow it
  • Keys show what is actually true on the mixer, whoever changed it
  • Eighteen actions across strip, monitor, pads, record and FX
  • Real fader control on a dial, opt in, with a hand on the fader always winning
  • Reads your strips, pads and effect slots live, every session
  • No MIDI anywhere in it
The controls

Eighteen actions.

Every one is a real key or dial you drag onto your Stream Deck. Mix and match across as many pages and profiles as you like.

Channel strip

Channel Volume
Rotate for level, push to mute, hold to hand the strip back.
SD+ dial
Channel Mute
Mute or unmute any strip. The mute LED on the desk follows.
Key
Volume Up
Turn a channel up. Hold to ramp.
Key
Volume Down
Turn a channel down. Hold to ramp.
Key
Cue
Cue a channel into your headphones.
Key
Restore Faders
Hold one second to hand every fader back to the desk.
Key

Monitoring

Monitor
Speaker level on a dial, push to mute.
SD+ dial
Monitor Up
Turn the monitor speakers up. Hold to ramp.
Key
Monitor Down
Turn the monitor speakers down. Hold to ramp.
Key
Monitor Mute
Mute or unmute the room speakers from a plain key.
Key
Headphones Off
Silence every headphone output at once. Tap again to restore.
Key
Panic Mute
Everything down, instantly.
Key

Recording, pads and the desk

Record
Record, pause and stop, with live elapsed time on the key.
Key
Drop Marker
Drop a chapter marker into the running recording.
Key
Smart Pad
Fire any SMART pad, with its own colour and state.
Key
Pad Bank
Step through pad banks, or jump straight to one.
Key or dial
Voice FX
Reverb, echo and the rest, per microphone.
Key
Desk Dial
Screen or button brightness, ducker depth, or Bluetooth send level.
SD+ dial
On the deck

The keys tell you the truth.

These are the real key faces, not mock ups. Each one is drawn live from the desk's own state, so a key is never showing you the last thing you pressed.

Look at the monitor keys.

The level reads out in dB and percentage as it moves. When the room is muted the key goes red and says so, which is the difference between glancing at your deck and having to look at your desk.

MIC 1
-8.4 dB 62%
-8.4 dB 62%
MUTED MONITOR
ON HEADPHONES
PANIC
HOLD 1s RESTORE
01:05 REC

Real key art, rendered by the plugin

The hard part

The one feature that ships switched off.

Everything else works the moment you install it. Channel level is opt in, and the reason is worth two minutes of your time.

Why it asks permission
  • The RØDECaster exposes no channel level property at all. I dumped every property on a channel and there is no level, fader, volume or gain among them
  • The only way to move a level is to borrow that strip from its physical fader for as long as you are driving it. That is not a design choice, it is the only route the hardware offers
  • Borrowed strips are handed straight back when you touch the fader, hold the dial, or quit Stream Deck
  • But if the software is killed outright in that moment, the fader is left disconnected, and the desk remembers it across a power cycle. Turning it off and on again does not fix it
So five things protect you
  • It is off until you ask. The dial and volume keys read LOCKED until you tick the box in their settings
  • A helper outlives the plugin. While a strip is borrowed a small companion process runs alongside. If the plugin dies for any reason at all, it hands your fader back on its own and then exits
  • It repairs on start up. Whatever happened, the next launch checks the desk and puts back anything left outstanding
  • Restore Faders. One key, held for a second, gives everything back on demand
  • And by hand. The RØDE app's chain icons toggle the very same setting, so a fader can always be restored without this plugin installed at all
Tested by breaking it on purpose
  • On a Pro II and on a Duo, a strip was taken, then the plugin and Stream Deck were both killed outright with no chance to tidy up
  • The fader came back on its own, with nothing else of mine running, every time
  • Every claim on this page was checked against real hardware, with the desk's own reported state read back after each action
Before you start

What you need.

Requirements
  • A RØDECaster Duo or RØDECaster Pro II, connected by USB
  • Any Stream Deck. A Stream Deck + adds dials, which is where the fader control lives
  • Stream Deck app version 7.1 or later
  • macOS 12 or later, Apple Silicon or Intel
  • Signed and notarised, so it installs cleanly
The full overview

Eight pages on what it is, how it behaves, all eighteen actions, and how it was tested.

Read the overview (PDF)
Available now
Get Mix Companion

Your desk, on the Stream Deck.

One-time purchase, no subscription. Download the plugin, double-click to install, and your RØDECaster is on the keys before your next show.

Mix Companion icon

Mix Companion for RØDECaster

SKU:MIX-COMPANION-001

Your RØDECaster Duo or Pro II, on the Stream Deck. Eighteen actions: faders, mutes, record, smart pads, monitor level and mute, voice FX, cue and more. Two-way, hand-on-fader wins, and a fail-safe guardian that puts your faders back if anything dies. One-time purchase, no subscription.

$29.00
Buy Now
macOS
Stream Deck 7.1+
Duo & Pro II

Built by Neil Farrimond · September 2026