Ribbon microphones are extremely popular these days—and not only in the studio. Ribbon microphones were once perceived only as delicate pieces of studio gear, but more and more manufacturers have released modern designs that suit the durable needs of today's audio engineer. I see ribbon microphones everyday in use on tours; the most common application would be for electric guitar cabinets.
One of the inherent drawbacks of a ribbon mic is that they tend to have low output, and so an engineer has to apply a lot of gain at the preamp stage. This can be problematic because most preamps are not designed to add this amount of gain without adding noise. Cloud Microphones has a device called the Cloudlifter that resolves this issue with ribbon microphones. The Cloudlifter is also a brilliant solution for solving a number of other problems that you may run into while in field.
A Close-up Look
The Cloudlifter CL–1 is a single-channel unit, and out of the box it looks very simple. That’s because it is. A blue enclosure (about half the size of a typical direct box) has one XLR input and one XLR output. No button, no potentiometers, no switches. So what’s going on inside this mysterious little box? The CL–1 provides two distinct stages of gain. It is a patent-pending design that uses discrete JFET circuitry that is free of transformers, capacitors and resistors. The end result is that the CL–1 provides +25 dB of clean gain while preserving the characteristics of the microphone and source.
The CL–1 provides +25 dB of clean gain while preserving the characteristics of the microphone and source.
Full disclosure, a few months before I was asked to review the CL–1 for Church Production, I had already purchased one specifically for studio use—and I’ve found its performance to be remarkable. I was recently engineering a session for Kate Monihan, an artist from the Detroit area. We really liked the sound of the Shure SM7B for her vocals, but if you have ever used one of these dynamic mics, you know that low output can be a potential problem. The song we were recording had a softer vocal part, so I had to crank up the preamp to the point where it was adding unwanted noise. The producer on the session had brought along his personal Cloudlifter CL–1, so we put it between the microphone and the preamp in the signal chain, applied phantom power, and just like that we had an additional +25 dB of clean gain. I was able to back off the mic preamp and the vocal sounded beautiful. I ordered my own CL-1 the very next day.
Forecast on Usage & Performance
Since that session I’ve used the CL–1 on ribbons and other low-output sources in the studio, and they all have sounded brilliant. I should point out that the Cloudlifter is also a safeguard against misplaced 48v Phantom Power on ribbon mics. In my early days as a studio intern I was continuously warned of the dangers of applying phantom power to a ribbon mic, and ever since I’ve been a bit paranoid about it (I’m always double- and triple-checking this).
In a live setting when split snakes and shared I/O are in play, sometimes phantom power comes from the FOH console, and other times it comes from the monitor console. Phantom power can be accidentally applied to a channel and that could be the end of a ribbon microphone. Since the Cloudlifter requires phantom power for use, and it does not let the +48v get to the microphone, it has become a little form of security when I’m using ribbon microphones.
The Cloudlifter can be used in other applications, as well. For example, when recording directly into a digital audio workstation (DAW) interface that does not have a mic pre built in, the CL-1 can provide +25 dB of clean gain. That gain boost can also help when you’re forced to use a noisy or low-gain channel on your console. You can also use the Cloudlifter to boost the output signal over long XLR runs where signal loss would otherwise be problematic.
Cloudlifter technology is also available in other Cloud Microphone product configurations. The CL–2 is a larger version that can do the same job to two sources. The CL–4 is a rack-mount type that offers a four-channel version.
At $150 the Cloudlifter CL-1 is, in my opinion, a no-brainer. Not only can it be used every time you have a ribbon mic in your input list, but it is a valuable tool for use with Y-splits, transformer iso’s, ground lifts and the like.
