I recently upgraded our microphones for our church podcast from some SM58’s to the Shure MV7X Microphone (one day I’ll write about our whole podcast setup). What I didn’t account for was the lower volume floor these microphones would have. They sound amazing, are pretty much plug-and-play, and were a big improvement from the old microphones. However, because of the low volume floor, our podcast producer had to crank the gains of the Focusrite audio interface to get a strong enough signal for recording. It wasn’t until I was able to observe the recording process did I notice this and when I pointed it out it was made known that the hosts (we have cycling hosts) had called this out as an issue, but I never knew!
Thus began my search for something to help resolve this problem, boost the volume floor, ease the pressure from the guests and hosts to get closer to the mic, and remedy some of the recording issues we were experiencing. What I came across is the Cloudlifter from Cloud Microphones. This boosts the signal of quiet audio sources while maintaining the natural sounds of the microphone. It does need Phantom power to work correctly but it gives passive mics up to +25dB. This will not pass phantom power to the microphone either, so you can rest easy knowing you won’t fry your microphone.
This little guy has been a dream. I don’t hear any noise added by this device, but the boost in volume is substantial. We are no longer at risk of not having enough gain from our audio interface and everyone is much happier. If you’re experiencing the same type of issues that we had, I cannot recommend this cloudlifter enough.
