Cloudlifter CL-1 and CL-Z - Sound Speeds Review

sound speeds and in this episode we're going to review two products from a company called cloud microphones specifically the cloud lift or CL one and the CL Z both of these are dynamic tube and ribbon microphone activators which means that they use phantom power and adjusting the impedance a little bit to create about 25 DB of clean gain here's what the cloud lifters are doing cloud lifters contain a discreet J fed circuit as the phantom power would signal enters it passes through a capacitor and in turn an internal resistor as the microphone signal increases the transistor allows more 48 volt current to flow and the output signal will be higher once brought back down to 5 volts now some people online claim that they do not actually work all it does is boost the gain and change the timbre of the microphone and you don't actually realize it because you want to believe that they work so in this review we're going to not just test them and see how effective they are we're going to test and see if they actually do anything at all full disclosure cloud microphones did send me these to review so to test these microphones we're going to be using the shure sm7b and we're running it completely flat as you know normally I don't just stick a microphone in my face because on this YouTube channel we don't just discuss the sound of voiceover or gaming we actually discuss all aspects of sound so we just want to make sure we have good sounding sound we don't really care about having a microphone visible but we do use multiple microphones on this show just to let you know but for our purposes today we're going to be using this industry standard sm7b microphone now why I say it's industry standard is it is a very famous it's called a legendary microphone it and and you know for example the sm7 which is the parent of the sm7b and the sm7 a microphone it was the one used by Michael Jackson on his Thriller album now okay that means that what this microphone has a history yes and as a matter of fact the sm5 microphone used to be used in feature films and on television shows but does that reputation really matter anymore and the answer is not really and the reason is because there are so many different manufacturers making so many different kinds of microphones for so many different kinds of projects and the our many many different microphones that are going to sound great for whatever project you're working on so it's not just like oh you want to use this one microphone because it is the legendary microphone it happens to have a history that's what makes it legendary is it the very best microphone to use this day and age that's up to you to decide I'm not going to say yes I will say this though I don't use this one on my channel as my primary microphone well not because it's a bad sounding mic but because I don't feel like it flatters my voice in the way that I feel like I want my voice to sound on the YouTube channel so let's get into this actual microphone and the way it sounds by itself without any cloud lifter on there you are now listening to the sm7b microphone right in front of me this is a dynamic microphone that you can buy online for about $400 now this microphone is dynamic but the principles were going into can also work for a tube and ribbon microphones now these microphones do not require power if you put phantom power to them dynamic microphones are prominent could be hurt two microphones depending on the one could be hurt from it and ribbon microphones you don't want to risk it because it will most likely break the ribbon although a dynamic tube or ribbon microphone does not require power if you use a cloud lifter in line before the mic it does require phantom power in order to activate and power the cloud lifter for right now I'm talking into this mic so you can hear it by itself the way it normally sounds now if I suddenly go quiet that's how this microphone sounds unprocessed that's no background noise cancellation that's no filtering or anything no noise gate it's all disabled what you're listening to is the raw microphone the sm7b microphone the way it is coming straight out of the microphone now depending on the preamps that you have in your system you could end up pushing it pretty hard gain wise to the microphone in order to get a decent level out of it and the higher you push that preamp the more you're going to be introducing noise to the system not just because the background noise comes up as you increase gain but because as you start to max out let's say your maximum is 60 DB if you get 259 it's starting to push that tech pretty hard and it's to naturally get a little noisier as you start getting near the peak now I on this channel record on a sound devices mixed precincts I have plenty of game that I can pull from and I'm not going to ever start introducing the amount of game that you're gonna really have to start throwing off this particular test that we're gonna be doing today regarding the cloud lifter cl1 and the CLC so for this product review we're going to be doing two tests the first one is for noise floor we're gonna take the sm7b microphone the way it is and then we're going to install the CL one and the CL Z and we're going to see if the noise floor of the microphone drops when the level is identical and I'm going to set that level with white noise and we're going to then use that white noise to see what the frequency spectrum changes and how it changes if it changes at all when we install the cloud lifter let's talk first about the cloud lifter cl1 it's a metal enclosure with rubber feet it's got a good weight to it you can't really press and dent it I mean it's it feels bulletproof it feels like I could use this as a weapon in a zombie apocalypse and it's going to still work in the studio after the apocalypse is over we get back to our daily life here's the input and here's the output how do I know this is the input and the output well signal flow dictates that it starts at the female and goes to the male just like in our marriage right start to the female ends up with a male and it's activated by phantom power so that's all it does I mean it doesn't need a switch or anything that's all it is a very simple box you plug your XLR here it goes out there to your preamp and that's it the clz has the same solid build quality as the CL one with the same inputs and outputs the difference is they include a couple switches one of them is the high-pass filter which allows you to totally shape this clz from 150 ohms all the way up to 15,000 ohms we're gonna see how that works in reality it also has an output switch that allows you to go from more to max we'll see how that works too so let's get into our test I'm gonna take this short sm7b mic and put it about 4 inches off the cone on a JBL LSR 305 studio monitor speaker then I'm going to set a level with white noise once that level is set and I know that level is going to be identical on the stock sm-70 and with the cloudlet 4 CL 1 and clz installed i'm - then record that white noise then kill it when I kill it you're gonna hear the background noise and we're gonna do a comparison and see how those sound let's get into it now for our second test we're going to again use white noise and if you don't know what white noise is check out that video right there colors a noise or link down in the description and it will tell you all about it but white noise in short is all the frequencies in the spectrum at the same intensity so that way there it basically looks spectrally like a straight line now when we play that back in just this microphone you're going to see what it sounds like standard stock if you will and then if I add the CL 1 and then the CL z you're going to see how that tonal shift changes with that white noise on the mic I don't have to do voice overs I don't have to do anything else just white noise and you're gonna get an idea of what it sounds like [Music] you are currently listening to my voice through this sm7b microphone through this cloud laughter cl1 now when you normally look online and go shopping for an sm7b microphone it usually is packaged or they try to sell you a cloud lifter cl1 at the same time and the reason why is because they say it does a really good job of lowering the noise floor because you know you have to get it up so high lowering the noise floor while giving you about 25 DB of clean games so that way all it does basically is it drops the noise for we're gonna see how this works let's start with this output level right here currently it's on Moore and when I flip it up to max we'll see what it does [Music] tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu well it seems like it changed not just the level of the output but it sounds like it changed my voice just a little bit now for the high-pass filter it's currently in flat mode which means my voice is not going to be changing a whole lot to give you an idea so my voice is not really changing at all but if I enable this [Music] okay so just more with the highs the lows or at least to my ears but we'll see how this actually sounds if I start to talk into it I'm gonna slowly start adjusting this microphone and we're gonna see if the sound quality changes it sounds to me in my ears like tonally I'm getting a little brighter right now like right now I just lowered it all the way down to 150 ohm mode and right now it sounds more like it's talked to me almost like flip it into flat mode right here that's about the way it sounds maybe there's a little bit of a Tambor change a little bit of a tonal quality shift but not a whole lot but right now if I'm talking directly into this microphone you're hearing it raw now if I slowly start adjusting this impedance up and now it's around let's say Oh what is that it's about 1.5 K so if it's around 1.5 K my voice is sounding a little bit higher pitch it sounds a little brighter than it did before now if I'm gonna go up a little bit higher now I'm right up pretty much at about 12 o'clock and that's around the 3k mark as I continue to go up higher it sounds to me like it's going a little higher and it's shifting my voice a little higher now it almost seemed to over or shifted just a little bit like if I want to dial in on my voice it sounds like maybe right there might be the best of all worlds like if I go a little bit too far right there it almost sounds like there's a little too much almost borderline harshness because of my voice in the way my voice naturally sounds but I don't really think I need to have that I need to back off on the brightness of my voice naturally needs more lows it doesn't need as much highs and I think this would be ideal for someone that needs a little more brightness because it sounds to me like it's increasing the brightness like if I were to have someone's voice on there that has a deeper register like I'll use my base voice that I have in my six voiceover test and we'll see how it does with that and I'll run it on each of that's the the main settings be quick Onix Goblin jumps over the lazy dwarf be quick Onix Goblin jumps over the lazy dwarf the quick Onix Goblin jumps over the lazy dwarf the quick Onix Goblin jumps over the lazy dwarf the quick Onix Goblin jumps over the lazy tor fee quick onyx goblin jumps over the lazy Dorf the quick onyx goblin jumps over the lazy dwarf the quick onyx goblin jumps over the lazy or be quick onyx goblin jumps over the lazy dwarf be quick onyx goblin jumps over the lazy dwarf be quick onyx goblin jumps over the lazy dwarf I'm going to start increasing the brightness of this microphone activator and in doing so my high-pitched sounds in my voice are going to start punching certain words a little stronger and if I was doing a commercial and I needed to punch and emphasize and I really wanted to sound sharp and make people hear what I'm saying that's where you would really see that coming into play but depending on the voice it can be overpowering you don't need to just go all extreme all the way all the way up in my case right now 15,000 hurt 15,000 ohms I should say all the way down to 150 ohms I think for me I would want to have a little bit of a punch to my voice maybe right around there is about what I would go for personally from my voice about a 1 point a 1.5 K boost right there but I think to me that sounds pretty good with this particular clz so what did you think of my testing was that fair did I present the CL 1 in CL Z and an accurate light and compared that to the stock sm7b in a fair way before you listen to my opinion I encourage you to please write in the comment section down below and tell me what you think so here are my thoughts after testing the CL 1 and the CL Z if your preamps are noisier at higher gain settings then you may need one of these but if your preamps are quiet just as quiet as they are at lower levels then you probably don't need one does it actually affect the sound quality yes it does but it's a very minor sound quality difference unfortunately a lot of lower price recorders do have an issue with hiss at higher gain levels and that's just because they have to cut the price someplace and unfortunately it's got to be someplace in the preamp for that price point so here's the thing you can either spend $150 here $250 here or spend that money on a higher price recorder and get better preamps consider this cloud lifters are problem solvers and if you don't always record at your home studio then you may want to have one of these to throw in your bag because you don't know what the quality the preamps are gonna be in the places you're gonna be if you have a portable system and you recorded in a hotel room you recorded your car sometimes that kind of thing you might need to have something like this just to make sure your noise floor stays at a minimum if you're constantly recording in high in studios then you don't need to consider it do cloud lifters change the tonal quality of the sound that enters them yes they do is it enough to be a deal-breaker well that's up for you to decide but I'll tell you for me I would rather have less hiss in the background because I can always equalize my voice how I want it to sound so between the CL 1 and the CL Z which one would I grab believe it or not probably the CL z even though I don't have a lot of low-end in my voice a lot of people in voiceover use roll off simply rolling off 80 Hertz or whatever it is down into infinity or whatever they happen to roll it off to now for me though I don't have a lot of low-end in my voice but I could use this instead of roll-off and play with the timbre of my voice and even if I had low end I could do the exact same thing and get even more out of it that to me is really cool I'd like to be able to do that I like to be able to play with it especially if I'm on the road and I'm trying to record and I don't have a full studio there in full resources yes I know you can play on your laptop you can edit on your laptop dial in your equalization but you don't always know your recording environment and I think that having that available to me if I wanted it is a really cool thing to have if you're using a shure sm7b you really should consider getting the CL one along with it I think it does a good job of lowering the noise for without having to overcompensate on the gain I think that it does not change the tonal quality of the microphone enough to really warrant it as being bad or harsh to the ear or it really negatively affecting it at all and I think if you can't afford it you should really consider the CL Z because I think what it can do and help you tweak out and really dial in on your voice I think that is a valuable feature to have if you want to add a little more punch to your voice especially if you're in a studio environment and you use ribbons tubes or dynamic microphones you really should consider getting that because you don't know who is going to be stepping into your studio and who's you know what their quality of their voice is going to entail so strongly consider that getting the clz especially if you're in a studio on environment for home people though if you do twitch streaming if you do gaming if you do voiceovers podcast something like that and you use the sm7b strongly consider the CL one because I think it's going to give you a benefit with the the lower noise floor I don't think it really sacrifices anything and that's my honest opinion of it you can be a judge tell me what you think down in the comment section below but in the meantime tune in to more episodes of sound speeds for more product reviews and sound advice have a question you'd like answered or want to add something be sure to write it in the comment section down below you can also make a suggestion for future topics of discussion again comment section down below or you can email me at sound speeds at yahoo.com be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications so you won't miss out on future sound advice [Music]

Channel: Sound Speeds

Views: 15,233

Keywords: cloudlifter, cl-1, cl-z, cloudlifter cl-1, cloudlifter cl-z, microphone activator, phantom power, cloud microphones, sound advice, sound tips, sound tricks, audio advice, audio tips, audio tricks, production sound, voice over, voice-over, tips and tricks, sound speeds, sound speed, sound, audio, advice, sound editing, sound mixer, boom operator, boom op, sound utility, sound department, filmmaker, indie, Allen Williams, cloudlifter review, product review, cl1, clz, shure SM7B

Id: A35Ol89_2q8

Length: 17min 38sec (1058 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 31 2017