- I've been using the
RODECaster Pro and the PodMic for about a year and a half now, pretty much since they were released. And every time I make a video
about either of these things, one of the most common questions I get is, why aren't you using
something like a Cloudlifter or a Fethead with that setup? So today, we're gonna see
how much of a difference a Cloudlifter makes when using the PodMic with the RODECaster Pro. (upbeat music) If you're not familiar
with the Cloudlifter, basically what it does is boost the signal from your microphone so
if you're using something like a PodMic or an SM7B
or a dynamic microphone, basically what's called
a passive microphone that sometimes needs extra volume in order to be loud enough,
this helps you with that. Because if you just plug
your microphone into a mixer and crank the volume all the way up, a lot of times what happens
is you'll get hiss and noise and sort of this ugly background stuff. Now, like I said, I've
been using the PodMic, which is a dynamic microphone
with the RODECaster Pro for about a year and a half. I don't really have any of those issues. However, I will say that
when I'm using that setup, I do have my volume knob
turned up pretty darn high, basically usually one notch
away from the very top. And it's loud enough, it sounds great, I get awesome results but
there's there is nowhere to go from there. And one thing I noticed
is actually in RODE's own instructional videos for the
RODECaster and the PodMic, if you look in the
background at the RODECaster that they're using, its volume
is also maxed out entirely. So, that led me to believe
that there probably is a little bit of room for improvement. Now, there are a bunch
of different products that do this same basic
thing, boosting your signal but the two most popular ones are Cloudlifters and Fetheads. Fethead usually goes for about $100. Cloudlifter usually goes for 150 for the single channel version. This is the two channel version because my wife, Heather
and I record together a lot and we do our weekly live stream podcast. And it just made more sense for both of us to be able to use the Cloudlifter, that's why I got this one. It's also a little bit
cheaper than buying two of the individual ones. The individual ones are $150 a piece and the CL-2, the one
with two ports is $250, which is really expensive
and kind of made me hesitant. We're gonna talk about that
later when I kind of get in the pros and cons of the Cloudlifter. The Fethead, on the other hand
is a little bit different. It looks like a big metal
adapter that connects to the back of your microphone and then the cable goes into that. But it does the same basic thing in terms of boosting the signal. The Cloudlifter does not connect physically to the microphone. You run your microphone
into it and then you do need a second XLR cable to go into
your mixer or your interface. So, neither of those
setups is better or worse. It just kind of depends
on what works for you. Do you want something
connected to your microphone? Will that work with your setup? Or do you want something
that's gonna go sort of off by the mixer? And then you do need a
second cable to connect it. Now no matter what you choose, they do run off of phantom power, which means there's no AC adapter. There's actually no
controls on the unit at all. And the reason I chose the Cloudlifter to be totally honest, was
I didn't want something connected to the back of the PodMic. But also, I just really
liked the way that it looks. It's got this super
cool retro kind of vibe. I've got my guitars where
I really like retro style and just sort of it reminded
me of a guitar pedal like an old one and I just
thought it was really cool. That's kind of why I went
with the Cloudlifter. Totally, I guess a valid reason but kind of a ridiculous reason too. And I will say it is built
like an absolute tank. It is super solid. And one thing I was really
happy to realize is that since the Cloudlifter runs off of phantom power, there are no power adapters or
anything you need to connect. So, it does add extra
bulk to a sleek setup like the RODECaster 'cause
now there's another device plus another cable to connect. But there is no power
cable so it doesn't take up another outlet or anything like that. To turn on the RODECaster, like right now I have it on channel two. If I press channel two, I
just turn on phantom power and then that feeds power to that channel. I haven't taken it apart or
anything but if the electronics on the inside are put
together with the same quality as the outside, this thing
should last basically forever. And once you've got this
connected to your mixer and you've got a phantom
power running to it, what it does is it gives
you up to 25 decibels of clean gain. So we're on a mixer, you
can crank up the gain and boost your signal
and you get that hiss. It's not really clean. This does the same thing,
boosting the signal and gives you no hiss. So it gives you a clean boost. The setup that I've got right
now is I've got two PodMics running into the RODECaster Pro. There's no additional processing for either of these
microphones so they're set up exactly the same. One of them, this one
on my left on your right with the purple cable is going
directly into the RODECaster and this one on my right
your left with the blue cable is going through the Cloudlifter. So, let's switch over to the
RODECaster Pro and the PodMics and see how that sounds. This is the PodMic connected
directly to the RODECaster with no additional
Cloudlifter or processing or anything like that. It's just sort of the natural
signal from the PodMic. I have the gain set to plus 35 decibels, which is where I pretty much always use it and have always used it on
podcasts and recordings. And it works pretty well with my voice. And I also have the volume
slider almost all the way at the very top. So, this is also maxing out at about 15 on the broadcast meters, which is great. It's a perfectly usable level. Let's see here, actually. If I go into the level and I turn it down, you'll hear that background
hiss kind of go away a little bit. Now, it's gone but my
voice is also really quiet. As I bring it back up to a
level where it's loud enough to use with my voice,
you do hear a little bit of that background hiss. It's really not too bad. And it's also something
that if it is bothering you, it's very easy to just
get rid of with like Adobe Audition or running
it through whatever software you use. But having the microphone all
the way at the very, very top gives me nowhere to go. Fortunately, I've been
a teacher for 11 years so I'm used to speaking loudly. But if you're somebody who
speaks a little more quietly or your, you know, you have
a guest who's not someone who's used to speaking
loudly, this could be an issue because once you hit that top level, there's nowhere else to go from there. So now on channel two, which
has the Cloudlifter attached, if I put the slider all the way up and put the gain at the same level, this is what that sounds like. So, I'm gonna turn that
slider down a little bit. So we saw a pretty big
difference there, actually. Right now, we're at plus 35. I can have the slider all the way down at what, one, two, three like
four notches from the bottom. So, that's a pretty big difference. And if you listen to the background hiss, so this is what it sounds
like just without me talking on the Cloudlifted channel
versus the other channel. And if I switch between the microphones, the sound quality really
shouldn't be that different. This is the direct microphone,
you might still hear some of that background noise. And this is the Cloudlifted microphone. I can at least in my
headphones here less noise but the sound quality should
overall be the same, basically. Now, one thing that is really cool is since I have so much
more headspace here, I can turn down the gain on the RODECaster and then turn up the volume
here and I can be down, you know, like at plus
27 instead of plus 35. And still get plenty of volume. For me, this would be great, because now I'm one, two,
three, four, five, six. About six and a half notches
from the very, very bottom. I know that's super technical, notches. And there's plenty of volume for my voice. I could increase it if I really wanted to, which would be nice if I didn't
necessarily want to speak super close to the microphone. And that can be very
helpful if you're somebody who does interviews with people
who aren't used to talking into microphones because
they will inevitably never be close enough to the microphone. Whenever you're working with
someone who's just not used to it, they always just
speak a little too far away. And so having that extra room
to kind of boost their signal can make a huge difference
when it comes to mixing the final version of
whatever you're creating. And now another big difference is because the RODECaster's gain is at plus 27 instead of plus
35, like I normally have it and the volume slider
is just above halfway, you'll definitely notice a difference between the background
hiss on this channel versus this channel. So, here's this one. So, if you're listening
to this like on your phone or on your laptop speakers,
you might not actually notice it that much. But if you're listening
to it on your headphones, you should have been able to
hear a little bit of difference in background hiss. Now, is that an issue or not? That's entirely up to you. And again, it comes down to your voice, how loud you normally speak. For $250 though, honestly,
I thought there was gonna be a bigger like night and day difference but it's really more of
like a late afternoon, early evening and day difference. Like it's definitely there
but it's not as extreme as I thought. I thought I'd be able to
either like turn the gain all the way down on the
RODECaster or I'd be able to like keep the volume slider
almost down at the bottom and just have so much headroom, which really ended up showing
me how good the preamps are in the RODECaster. They're pretty dang powerful
and they're pretty dang quiet. And how I found that
out was by connecting it also to my old Yamaha mixer. So, this is more of a traditional mixer. And it's sort of a silly
comparison 'cause I believe this costs like 200, maybe
$220 and they still make these. Whereas this Cloudlifter is $250. So, this preamp costs more
than this entire mixer. But, just for the sake of
reference if maybe you're running one of these microphones
through a different interface than the RODECaster, let's
see what the difference is. Okay, so now I'm gonna switch
back to the VideoMic NTG, which is up here out of
frame just to kind of explain a few things about this mixer. So, where the RODECaster you
can turn on phantom power for each individual channel,
this mixer just has one button right here that will turn on phantom power for all of the four XLR channels. And phantom power, if you're
unaware is pretty magical. Most dedicated mixers have it
and it lets you provide power to a microphone from
the connected XLR cable. Now I should mention though,
that phantom power does not go through the Cloudlifter. So, if you have something
like a condenser microphone that needs direct phantom
power in order to work, the power will go here and
stop and it will not continue on to the microphone. Just something to be aware of. So, let's set up our little test here. I'm going to disconnect this
XLR cable from the Cloudlifter, which is actually one of
my cons to the Cloudlifter, at least on the one that I have, is that it can be really
tough to get the cable out of these connectors sometimes. Actually, to the point where
I'm worried about damaging it. Come on now. I feel like it shouldn't be this hard. I'm like sweating. (laughs) I was actually kind of dreading
setting up for this video, 'cause I knew I was gonna
have to unplug and replug. I feel like that shouldn't
be that hard to unplug. This side of it is normal so I don't know. That's just a weird thing. But anyway, I'm gonna
plug this into channel one of my mixer. I don't know if you can
actually even hear this. It's showing up as like
negative 45 in Adobe Audition. Now we should be getting to a point where it's a little louder. This is the gain entirely
maxed out on this channel, which is probably gonna introduce some pretty serious background hiss. So you can hear the
hiss going up and down. Whereas even on the RODECaster
without the Cloudlifter, I don't think there's nearly
that much background noise. And if you look at Adobe
Audition over here, my levels are just really, really small. So let's go ahead and
add in the Cloudlifter. Press phantom, ooh, okay. There's a difference, just
press phantom power, yikes. So, if I boost up the gain
right around to the level that I would really want it, which would probably be around here, there's actually still at least
I'm hearing in my headphones a bit of background noise. I can get a fairly clean signal, but again, this is the RODECaster
without the Cloudlifter and the gain boosted to plus 35. And this is the Yamaha
mixer with the Cloudlifter and the gain boosted to two o'clock. So. here's the background
hiss on that mixer with the Cloudlifter. And here's the RODECaster without it. So, the reason I wanted to do this test with the Yamaha mixer is just to explain why I wasn't initially totally blown away by the Cloudlifter. And that's because there wasn't such a night and day difference. I'm definitely noticing
a bigger difference on a more traditional mixer,
although still quite a bit of background hiss it sounds like. Whereas with the RODECaster,
even without the Cloudlifter, it still sounds pretty clean. And what that showed me
was that the RODECaster just has really good preamps. It can definitely still benefit
to add something like this, give you a little more headroom, especially if you don't talk
as loudly and authoritatively as me because when people think of me, they think of authority and
intimidation, obviously. So, now we're back to
our original setup using the RODECaster Pro and the
Cloudlifter on this channel and no Cloudlifter on this channel. Honestly, honestly, before
I was making this video, I've been using this for about a week and I wasn't that impressed with it. But going back and forth
for the sake of this video where I'm being extra,
like extra critical of it, to me, this microphone
with the Cloudlifter sounds significantly cleaner than the microphone
without the Cloudlifter. So, this video is actually
selling me on the Cloudlifter more than I was before making the video. And since I am using a
weird mix of not Cloudlifted versus Cloudlifted,
there is a technical term for when you're using a
Cloudlifter on one channel and not the other and that
would be, partly cloudy. Now, earlier I did mention, I was gonna talk about some of
the cons of the Cloudlifter. And the biggest one is just the price. Now like I said, I've only
had this one for about a week but it is built like a tank. I fully have the expectation
especially based on its reputation that it will
pretty much last forever. So it is one of those things
that's pretty expensive but you buy once, you cry once and then you just have it forever. I think if you're using
the RODECaster Pro, you're already using a device that has a really good clean preamp. And that means that whether
or not you need something like the Cloudlifter, it's
not gonna make the biggest difference in the world. Taking that money and investing it into like a nice microphone or just saving that money
might be a smarter choice. If you're using a different
mixer or a different interface that doesn't have quite
the quality preamps that the RODECaster does, then the Cloudlifter makes a lot of sense. So kind of as always,
whether or not it's worth it is up to you. I will say that for me, I was
really debating whether or not to keep the Cloudlifter
because I just didn't see the huge difference that I was hoping. But after making this
video, I do actually notice more of a difference. It's just, it's pretty dang expensive. If you have the budget for it
and the money is not an issue, then yes, this is going to
give you more gain and cleaner sounding audio out of your RODECaster and it's probably a good idea. If you don't have the budget
or it would be a stretch, I don't think you really really need it because you can get such good results just out of here in general. I've been playing around with
audio for many, many years but I'm by no means a total expert. And that is actually how I
like to approach these reviews is yes, I could get
frequency charts and graphs and we could nitpick
every single little thing but I'm more interested
in how does this function in a real world, everyday workflow? You're somebody like me,
you produce your own stuff, you use these tools, is
this gonna make it better? Is it not gonna make it better? If so, does it make it
noticeably better or not? It's pretty simple. It's a pretty down to earth approach. So, I hope that that is helpful. Now as you probably know,
I've got quite a few videos about the RODECaster and
podcasting and podcasting gear. So I'm gonna put a playlist
here that has a whole bunch of those and you can just
spend the rest of the day, bingeing on those videos. There's zero calories. You can binge as many of them as you want. (upbeat music)
